paratiddies Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 So I started my first tank (BC 8) on Jan 31st and everything was going swimmingly until the last few days. I had some cool hitchhikers - a couple of micro brittles, asterinas, sponges, ball anenomes, a huge amphipod, and a ton of pods. I had a pretty light cycle, a few diatoms towards the end and what I thought at first was a little GHA. I ordered my CUC from reefcleaners (great company btw) and by the time they'd arrived I'd had a pretty big outbreak of algae - so I put the crew in and watched them not touch the stuff :/ I did a little research and found out that I had bryopsis instead of GHA, the stuff is pretty hard to remove manually so I've decided to try the Kent Magnesium dosing method but I have a couple of questions: 1. What kind of light cycle should I run while I'm battling this stuff? I was running them for 6 hrs a day but I've cut them off completely since I realized what this stuff was. Luckily I don't have any corals so I should be pretty flexible in this dept. 2. Do I need to be feeding the CUC? I've been feeding the nassarius snails a little pellet food but I don't think that the nerites and ceriths are getting much to eat because I think the bryopsis has been choking out any GHA for the most part. I had 2 small patches of film algae that the snails wiped out day 1 but haven't seen any since. That, plus the fact that I received about 3x as many snails as I was expecting has turned my tank into Thunderdome, saw the nassarius' playing soccer with a dead dwarf cerith before I left for work this afternoon. Thanks guys, this site's been a great help so far Link to comment
GokesReef Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Bryopsis can grow for months in complete darkness.. The only way I've seen to effectively remove it is dosing Kent Tech-M heavily until your MG is about 1800-2k Wiped mine out in ~2 weeks. Also, start using better water. Link to comment
paratiddies Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 Hmm I didn't think about the water, I figured that it probably came in on the live rock I bought from a local reefer. I've been using pre-mixed salt water from my LFS and the purple capped distilled water from Wal Mart. One other question is should I be running Chemi Pure Elite or anything else while dosing the Kent M or would that be defeating the purpose? During the cycle I just had filter floss over the drip tray in chamber 2 and was planning on running the Chemi Pure once it was over. Thanks Link to comment
GokesReef Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Water sounds good then, and it probably did come in on a frag or LR. That's how I got mine. I ran chemipure elite through my treatment and it still worked. Not sure if it had any impact on the process one way or the other. Link to comment
C4rN4gE Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Read these: http://www.reef2reef.com/forums/general-re...efing-tool.html http://dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=2...ryopsis#p625500 They speak mostly about killing dinoflagellates, but many reefers also mention that bryopsis takes a bad hit when its used. Link to comment
paratiddies Posted February 23, 2011 Author Share Posted February 23, 2011 Read these:http://www.reef2reef.com/forums/general-re...efing-tool.html http://dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=2...ryopsis#p625500 They speak mostly about killing dinoflagellates, but many reefers also mention that bryopsis takes a bad hit when its used. Thanks for posting these, I hadn't heard of using peroxide to treat this stuff but I like the idea of trying it first. I figured that I've got about 5 to 6 gallons of water after allowing for rock and sand so I dosed about .6 ml, I'll update with the results good or bad Link to comment
GokesReef Posted February 23, 2011 Share Posted February 23, 2011 Also curious to see how it comes out. How long do they say it takes to expect results? Link to comment
paratiddies Posted February 23, 2011 Author Share Posted February 23, 2011 Also curious to see how it comes out. How long do they say it takes to expect results? I read all the way through the thread on reef2reef and most people saw results in 3 or 4 days, for now it doesn't seem to be spreading so I'll give it at least a week before I move on to the Kent M. Did my first dose last night and I will say that the water looks super clear. It's a little tough to tell if the bryopsis has changed color at all because I've done a couple of water changes this week trying to curb it and the stuff traps sand like crazy so they all look a little brown Link to comment
paratiddies Posted February 26, 2011 Author Share Posted February 26, 2011 I've been dosing the peroxide for 4 days now, I really haven't noticed any of it dying but at least it's not spreading anymore. The good thing is that it's mostly just on the back wall and sand, and only on one spot of LR. I'm out of town this weekend, but planning on doing a couple of good manual removals plus water changes early next week. So far, I'd say the verdict on the peroxide is positive - it's not making the stuff melt away but it's stopped the spread and nothing in my tank seems to be affected, granted it's just CUC and hitchikers at this point Link to comment
Arkayology Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 Be careful with dosing Mg. I had a thriving stomatella population until I dosed Mg for bryopsis. Link to comment
squirrelieygrrrl Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 amen, i damn near nuked my prized trachy, its still in rough shape and i quit dosing the mg two weeks ago. didnt even kill the byropsis to boot. Link to comment
danilew Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 If you don't have any fish or corals in there yet, why not just take the CUC back to the LFS, scrub the tank/rock/etc.. (whatever has the bryopsis) and start the cycle over? Link to comment
squirrelieygrrrl Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 ime byropsis is one of those things that no matter how hard you try to manually remove you just cant seem to get all the bitts off and it will come back. even with aggressive scrubbing. Link to comment
paratiddies Posted February 27, 2011 Author Share Posted February 27, 2011 If you don't have any fish or corals in there yet, why not just take the CUC back to the LFS, scrub the tank/rock/etc.. (whatever has the bryopsis) and start the cycle over? This will be my last resort, I know I'd only be out about $50 at this point if I just started over but I really like the scape with the live rock I"ve got - after seeing how tough this stuff is to get rid of I'd just buy new rock and completely start over ime byropsis is one of those things that no matter how hard you try to manually remove you just cant seem to get all the bitts off and it will come back. even with aggressive scrubbing. This is what I'm afraid of, I bumped up to dosing a full ml of peroxide today and some of the greener stuff started to brown a little almost immediately - encouraging Link to comment
GokesReef Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 Glad to hear the peroxide is seeming to go well. When I did Mg, the only downside was my LR took on a slightly browner tint. This was counteracted by increased coralline growth, though. None of my inverts had any troubles. But, like I said, I did the short and fast method, so they didn't have a lengthy exposure. And yeah, manual removal works, for a day or 2 when its back to being... everywhere. Link to comment
jfarabaugh Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 take the rock out and hit the bryopsis with a butane lighter.....it wont come back http://www.amazon.com/Zippo-Cabarnet-Mini-...d/dp/B00176IJU4 Link to comment
paratiddies Posted March 1, 2011 Author Share Posted March 1, 2011 take the rock out and hit the bryopsis with a butane lighter.....it wont come back http://www.amazon.com/Zippo-Cabarnet-Mini-...d/dp/B00176IJU4 If it were just on the rock I'd definitely give this a shot, I don't know how it'd work on the plastic back wall though In other news I bought an emerald crab yesterday and he's gone to town on this stuff - he's eaten every bit of it off the rocks, all of it on the back wall that he could reach, and all but a little patch that was on the sand! This guy has been chowing down since he hit the water, it sounded like people have had mixed results with them eating bryopsis but I guess I got lucky. I'm gonna remove a couple of rocks and scrape the back wall really good next water change and I should have 99% of this stuff out of there, I feel a lot better knowing that he'll munch on any of it that I miss siphoning out - it definitely spread around the tank when I tried to manually remove it before Link to comment
Nate Dawg Posted March 1, 2011 Share Posted March 1, 2011 Don't lettuice slugs love to eat bryopsis? Link to comment
paratiddies Posted March 1, 2011 Author Share Posted March 1, 2011 Don't lettuice slugs love to eat bryopsis? I've heard that, but I think they'd need a lot more to survive than my tank's got and apparently they like to get sucked into power heads and nuke tanks Link to comment
squirrelieygrrrl Posted March 1, 2011 Share Posted March 1, 2011 i tried that route too, damn near ended in disaster. they are really best suited to a low flow planted macro tank, not a reef. mine was definitely more trouble than he was worth, despite him being really neat. to the point i had a sea hare love affair. also, he seemed more interested in other types of algae, and cyano curiously enough. rather than the byropsis. Link to comment
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