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Beating Bryopsis-Started TechM-Done!


Pjanssen

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I'm going to do it! It will not define me (or my tank!). Today I start my battle with bryopsis using techM and gradually raising my magnesium level above 1500mg and possibly as high as 1900 (still doing some research on that). I considered using peroxide, but as the bryopsis is in between a lot of Zoa and Paly colonies I fear damage to them. First I will manually remove as much as possible. Will post pics along the way showing progress. Hopefully I don't lose any snails along the way.

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ReefWeeds

Rooting for you! I think you can also dose peroxide - small amounts - but not sure if that will work with bryo.

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Elizabeth94

I was beating bryopsis in my old tank, but it was a battle. I gave in towards the end because my parents didn't want a tank that had algae in the living room.

 

What I did was really simple. I did not use the Kent method, though I would probably try that if I needed to today. I took my canister filter and used it to suck up and pluck all the bryopsis I could. EVERYDAY. The good thing about doing this is the fact that you don't need to do water changes since the return of the canister just goes right back into the tank.

 

Within the first week the algae was turning white and dying. It became so easy to suck it up because it got weaker. Still, this was a lot of work and yes, I did some decent water changes every few days to keep nutrients down.

 

I was so clos to beating it.. But I took the tank down and sold all my equipment (huge mistake, since my Ecotech Radion was one of the things I sold..).

 

I thought I read somewhere that peroxide isn't strong against bryopsis. I am not sure though. This was just my experience with the beast. It deff doesn't like being pulled out constantly.

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These are the areas that I can see and get a decent picture. There is more but because of location and size I just can't get a decent focused picture. I'm going to try to pick all of this off.

 

26699886152_7575e7a4ae_n.jpgBryopsis Journrny by Penny, on Flickr

26699886732_45d8ff12a5_n.jpgBryopsis Journrny by Penny, on Flickr

26699886992_de4eefd07e_n.jpgBryopsis Journrny by Penny, on Flickr

26699888002_6b142d59a4_n.jpgBryopsis Journrny by Penny, on Flickr


some of it I can take the rock out and clean it outside of the tank. Most of it is on major pieces of rock and would require disassembling everything so I will have to leave them in the tank. I wondering if that might cause spores to travel in tank causing new growth elsewhere in the tank.

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Elizabeth94

In my experience, riping the algae didnt spread to different areas of the tank. But of course, that doesnt mean it cant. I cant stress enough that you need to be agressive wih it. Kent shouls help for sure, I personally would manually remove as much as you can too

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Manual removal.

Peroxide to spot treat it (but this just temporarily resolves the issue - it WILL come back)

Kent TechM to 1600.

 

Multi pronged approach is needed.

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tdannhauser30

Mine just recently went away with heavy water changes manual removal and a DIY algae scrubber. Got nervous about putting all that tech M in my tank.. Good Luck!!

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I had no luck with Tech M at 2000PPM, it actually killed one of my BTAs and put one in very bad condition. When I have time im just going to break the tank down and acid bath the rocks, then restart. During this time I'll hold my livestock in a separate tank. Peroxide makes it go away but I haven't been successfully completely eliminating it.

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ugh! So maybe I should rethink this? I just took out what I could. Not as much as I thought, it always looks like more under water. Of course, now I have to rearrange my tank again, because it never goes back how you think it was. Plan to do a small water change today, even tho I just did a large one on Sunday. Magnesium is currently at 1320. Doesn't seem to far to 1500 which is my understanding to be the recommended level for about 4 weeks.

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brandon429

you have a beatable situation nice pics

 

just to frame your approach and predicted outcome: what you are contemplating is how all bryopsis tanks are handled, not different, not decisive so outcomes vary in this mode. this is why outcomes are similar for ten yrs... we are advised to treat the topwater where a benthic/anchored invader is doing business, that will continue to give about 40% return on work.

 

 

To win (be able to stop treating for this after a few rounds, a finite invasion):

 

add the rasping element which is how its dealt with in the wild. you don't have to start whole tank, do one rock, if you like the results compared to the rest of the tank then do take down your tank and win this, and re set it back up without detritus and in a skip cycle fashion. but first, only a little test.

 

you need to use a metal tool to dig/scrape/rasp the algae off the rock where its anchored. this is what turtles, parrotfish do...they take substrate layers with them on the bite, then excrete it as beach sand. replicate that you will win. that patch regrows w coralline in time, and no invader if you burnt out the holdfasts.

 

whats been missing all these years in bry battles is working the anchors not by adding stuff to the water, where the upper limits of tolerance are set by your nontargets (stresses to them listed above) but by using your peroxide and kent on cleaned off areas only to burn the holdfasts that regrew in halo's tank above example. it was missing the critical step covered here

 

anyone with an ongoing bry problem is skipping this step, we show it powerful. we are all trying to avoid hands on work :) at all costs to our tank we can see in the myriad bryopsis plagues that endure each decade.

 

to win, we add tech m, peroxide, or both to the cleaned areas not to the water or to a target you can see. I am documenting beating valonia in my tank with this, and any other algae growth from those I can convince to get to work. Most want to ignore this finding, dump things in tank, then report they didn't work :)

 

again, your bry can be beaten within about a week with this hard work technique, and no form of peroxide can hurt your zos or palys at all, no matter how applied. the tech m sure might.

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you have a beatable situation nice pics

 

just to frame your approach and predicted outcome: what you are contemplating is how all bryopsis tanks are handled, not different, not decisive so outcomes vary in this mode. this is why outcomes are similar for ten yrs... we are advised to treat the topwater where a benthic/anchored invader is doing business, that will continue to give about 40% return on work.

 

 

To win (be able to stop treating for this after a few rounds, a finite invasion):

 

add the rasping element which is how its dealt with in the wild. you don't have to start whole tank, do one rock, if you like the results compared to the rest of the tank then do take down your tank and win this, and re set it back up without detritus and in a skip cycle fashion. but first, only a little test.

 

you need to use a metal tool to dig/scrape/rasp the algae off the rock where its anchored. this is what turtles, parrotfish do...they take substrate layers with them on the bite, then excrete it as beach sand. replicate that you will win. that patch regrows w coralline in time, and no invader if you burnt out the holdfasts.

 

whats been missing all these years in bry battles is working the anchors not by adding stuff to the water, where the upper limits of tolerance are set by your nontargets (stresses to them listed above) but by using your peroxide and kent on cleaned off areas only to burn the holdfasts that regrew in halo's tank above example. it was missing the critical step covered here

 

anyone with an ongoing bry problem is skipping this step, we show it powerful. we are all trying to avoid hands on work :) at all costs to our tank we can see in the myriad bryopsis plagues that endure each decade.

 

to win, we add tech m, peroxide, or both to the cleaned areas not to the water or to a target you can see. I am documenting beating valonia in my tank with this, and any other algae growth from those I can convince to get to work. Most want to ignore this finding, dump things in tank, then report they didn't work :)

 

again, your bry can be beaten within about a week with this hard work technique, and no form of peroxide can hurt your zos or palys at all, no matter how applied. the tech m sure might.

 

Okay Brandon, let me see if I understand you: Take out one piece of affected rock and scrub the heck out of it with maybe a wire brush or chisel. spot treat the newly exposed area with peroxide and/or techM paste, put back in tank and watch for results. If it works, continue with rest of rocks?

On a side note, this appears to be something totally different

26795694965_9fb8e858f2.jpgIMG_3223 by Penny, on Flickr

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Elizabeth94

Agreed. Mine was getting its butt whipped when I ripped it out every day. It was turning white and dying by the first week. I didn't use any additives.

 

EDIT: That doesn't look like bryopsis close up.

 

 

 

again, your bry can be beaten within about a week with this hard work technique, and no form of peroxide can hurt your zos or palys at all, no matter how applied. the tech m sure might.

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And thanks for the compliment on the pictures. I've been playing around with my camera settings and really trying to capture better images. I was reading Jeramy's thread on photography. I miss his little bouncing elephant.

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EDIT: That doesn't look like bryopsis close up.

 

 

I agree. Just found it when I pulled out a small rock. Wondering what it is. reminds me of a tiny version of a seaweed that we look for when fishing for dolphin (mahi) off the florida coast

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brandon429

That looks like c racemosa but either way it's not hard to beat with peroxide, that macro you show above. Many fish w go after that macro for natural possibilities too...can experiment no prob...some grow it in refugiums it's a nice plant in that context

 

only the bryopsis is a takeover concern. Would enjoy linking your details to big peroxide reads if you try even a small spot. While I wouldn't want to scrape my fine coralline totally off with pure surface removal, my goal was to target the actual tuft areas however large they may be with the tip of a kitchen knife and I did rasp a good bit leaving marks on the rock

 

Then the peroxide is the clean spot cleaner, invisible bits fryer...see what we did? We took a ratio of peroxide typically dwarfed by the amount of target biomass we purposefully leave in the tank, making the 3% work uphill, and now we've reduced targeted biomass to invisible, removing nearly all anchors, and that same bit of peroxide is now reverse and way overblown to the actual targets left. results. It's the price of not force cleaning the very first time we saw, but this is true decisive.

 

It's post gold for us to see before pics of a test rock untreated, then one treated externally with peroxide with no rasping.

 

Then one test rock rasped clean, peroxide, but try and leave it looking nice still be detailed in the rasping. Compare those three I think the rasped will win and we've wasted no time on a small trial. Although the non rasped bry will die, it comes back. The rasped comes back few, and then stays gone until next reimport from not quarantining (the vector detail for all benthic invaders)

Top water dosing is for non holdfast invasions, water transient ones

 

Parrotfishing and forced clean is for prevention and catchup in benthic invasions where natural clean up crews etc didn't perform.

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That looks like c racemosa but either way it's not hard to beat with peroxide, that macro you show above. Many fish w go after that macro for natural possibilities too...can experiment no prob...some grow it in refugiums it's a nice plant in that context

 

only the bryopsis is a takeover concern. Would enjoy linking your details to big peroxide reads if you try even a small spot. While I wouldn't want to scrape my fine coralline totally off with pure surface removal, my goal was to target the actual tuft areas however large they may be with the tip of a kitchen knife and I did rasp a good bit leaving marks on the rock

 

Then the peroxide is the clean spot cleaner, invisible bits fryer...see what we did? We took a ratio of peroxide typically dwarfed by the amount of target biomass we purposefully leave in the tank, making the 3% work uphill, and now we've reduced targeted biomass to invisible, removing nearly all anchors, and that same bit of peroxide is now reverse and way overblown to the actual targets left. results. It's the price of not force cleaning the very first time we saw, but this is true decisive.

 

It's post gold for us to see before pics of a test rock untreated, then one treated externally with peroxide with no rasping.

 

Then one test rock rasped clean, peroxide, but try and leave it looking nice still be detailed in the rasping. Compare those three I think the rasped will win and we've wasted no time on a small trial. Although the non rasped bry will die, it comes back. The rasped comes back few, and then stays gone until next reimport from not quarantining (the vector detail for all benthic invaders)

Top water dosing is for non holdfast invasions, water transient ones

 

Parrotfishing and forced clean is for prevention and catchup in benthic invasions where natural clean up crews etc didn't perform.

 

omg! I feel lie i'm back in high school science (I won't mention how many years ago) Where I felt lucky to pass with a C! But I will try for the sake of all mankind! ok, maybe just for us nanoreefers! Tonight!

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brandon429

this action just saved my tiny old tank from valonia, one of the worst risks, even beyond your bryopsis (if that's what it is)

 

for any of the top three benthic invaders like bry, valonia and brush algae I just cant take chances anymore they get the rasp as the first go, not the last after all other failed.

 

for easy stuff like cyano, some brown on the walls or a bit of green we have to scrape off, that's typical reefing and something I don't go chem crazy on, they come and go. to me, discerning between risks and choosing actions grossly opposite of what the masses do is exactly how to stop algae takeovers, so that people reading these posts in 2029 aren't suffering from the same tank invasions we've suffered from since the 90s

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So at the urging of, and under the direction and virtual supervision of Professor Brandon429, I am taking and documenting a different approach. Much like a high school science project, we are taking three different approaches to see which is the best option for the removal of bryopsis.

1. strictly mechanical removal of patch of bryopsis by scraping off of rock, then rasping to remove as much of the anchors as possible.

26733980411_a74eb5ed28_n.jpgIMG_3224 by Penny, on Flickr

 

2. Same as above, but then dousing the exposed area with 3% peroxide before returning to tank. 26528985680_afbb2d80f7_n.jpgIMG_3229 by Penny, on Flickr

 

3. No scraping, just 3%peroxide applied directly to bryopsis patch.

 

But here's the thing. Before I got the post from Brandon, I had already manually removed what I thought was all visible bryopsis using just a nylon brush. I will have to try to find the areas that i treated and redo using the rasp. Fortunately I was able to find a patch that I missed that I can use for the strictly peroxide test.26733980041_289d62f372.jpgIMG_3228 by Penny, on Flickr

 

So did I miss anything Professor?

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brandon429

prof verbose opiner says good to go :) for sure this is helpful for many challenge tankers to see, I'll link it to the two big peroxide thread upon completion thanks tons for building that comparison setup

 

Xenia are sensitive to peroxide keep him free of it if poss

should be a neat experiment and the nice part is, if it doesn't work we can see and measure that before you spent hours rasping the whole tank. In focus of the rasped items, we can consider all kinds of clean spot treatments. I'm curious to see how peroxide does external treatment rasped vs non rasped, and should it not work as well as tech m does as the external treatment that's fine...our goal is to find what burns the holdfast out from the rasping pits.

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prof verbose opiner says good to go :) for sure this is helpful for many challenge tankers to see, I'll link it to the two big peroxide thread upon completion thanks tons for building that comparison setup

 

Xenia are sensitive to peroxide keep him free of it if poss

should be a neat experiment and the nice part is, if it doesn't work we can see and measure that before you spent hours rasping the whole tank.

 

Funny you mention the Xenia. I have a love hate relationship with them. Trust me, even if I happen to eradicate this particular patch, i've no doubt that another will show up somewhere! I've even considered doing it on purpose. so as far as applying the peroxide, should I just take the affected rock out and use a syringe to apply directly to the bryopsis?

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brandon429

Yes that's perfect, and you've used a new bottle it seems so that we aren't dealing with some flat bubbly~ let these external treated areas sit in the air, cooking a couple mins then rinse off and put back in tank

 

hit em' twice or so during the external treatment, this is a due war we have here. With this change up, your only possible failed outcome is grow back too fast but we didn't spike any param tank wide at all, snails and crabs will like our approach.

 

Fascinating extension of our test:

On your rasped test rock if curious to know if a tank wide dosing of any chem would have worked for you, you can hit that sample rocks both with a peroxide solution diluted down to equal one mil per ten gallons, the known safe tank wide dose, or you can hit the cleaned areas with Kent at the saltwater/tech m ratio you were contemplating dosing your whole tank with, forming a mini model long before you dose anything tank wide.

 

see how fun that inversion is

 

We are testing grow back prevention after rasping that mimics what it will be like if you did dose the whole tank with 1500 ppm magnesium, or 1:10 peroxide and we still haven't assaulted the clean up crew with all this testing.

 

 

I personally feel all experimental tank wide dosing in reefing, for any invader, should be suspended until the micro test says it works for a particular invader/particular setting.

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ok. that's my project for tomorrow morning. can't compete with hockey and basketball playoffs. Islanders just scored! Heat are up by 1 against the raptors (in case you were interested

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Yes that's perfect, and you've used a new bottle it seems so that we aren't dealing with some flat bubbly~ let these external treated areas sit in the air, cooking a couple mins then rinse off and put back in tank

 

hit em' twice or so during the external treatment, this is a due war we have here. With this change up, your only possible failed outcome is grow back too fast but we didn't spike any param tank wide at all, snails and crabs will like our approach.

 

Fascinating extension of our test:

On your rasped test rock if curious to know if a tank wide dosing of any chem would have worked for you, you can hit that sample rocks both with a peroxide solution diluted down to equal one mil per ten gallons, the known safe tank wide dose, or you can hit the cleaned areas with Kent at the saltwater/tech m ratio you were contemplating dosing your whole tank with, forming a mini model long before you dose anything tank wide.

 

see how fun that inversion is

 

We are testing grow back prevention after rasping that mimics what it will be like if you did dose the whole tank with 1500 ppm magnesium, or 1:10 peroxide and we still haven't assaulted the clean up crew with all this testing.

 

 

I personally feel all experimental tank wide dosing in reefing, for any invader, should be suspended until the micro test says it works for a particular invader/particular setting.

UHM... This would be a whole lot easier if you were here. Now I have to do math? Ugh! ok. I can do this. tomorrow. definitely tomorrow. 1 1/2 glasses of wine in and tonight is not the night for "fun" inversion/conversion problems! (i thought I was just using straight 3% peroxide and skipping the techM

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brandon429

Didn't mean to confuse w tech m just a brainstorm for later if the peroxide doesn't work am very keen to see the peroxide outcome initially

I was an enthusiastic but unathletic young man in school which had me turn to a life of drones and heavy metal current day to compensate lol

 

am no good for sports. But post a pic of algae and things get all serious

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Didn't mean to confuse w tech m just a brainstorm for later if the peroxide doesn't work am very keen to see the peroxide outcome initially

I was an enthusiastic but unathletic young man in school which had me turn to a life of drones and heavy metal current day to compensate lol

 

am no good for sports. But post a pic of algae and things get all serious

 

ok. So just to be clear, we are not doing techM this go around. And I just went on your profile page. Where do you "scooby" dive in Texas, and what do you see?

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