Peroxide saves my Tank! With pics to Prove It!

[Genj]

Seems like a good way to rid yourself of any unwanted algae on newly acquired love rock...

 

I wonder if it kills aiptaisa as well? BTW, love rock is the best type of rock. except it can cause a bit of a rash.

Edited April 26, 2011 by Genj

[Psychosis]

Wow. I spent 5 minutes typing up a response on a smart phone and accidentally delete it. I need smaller thumbs.

 

Short version, I had good luck with 50/50 dips, particularly with Acropora. Be careful with large lps colonies. I'll redo my original post later.

[Genj]

Wow. I spent 5 minutes typing up a response on a smart phone and accidentally delete it. I need smaller thumbs.

 

Short version, I had good luck with 50/50 dips, particularly with Acropora. Be careful with large lps colonies. I'll redo my original post later.

 

Don't forget to follow up! I look forward to hearing your findings.

[damage31]

I'm trying this on my 29 biocube. Currently dosing 2.5ml of 3% daily, and am on day #3. Starting to see some die off of the hair algae, and have not seen any new cyano pop up.

[gabe_j]

i just dropped in 10ml's in a 40 breeder yesterday, if all looks ok i'll drop 10 more today.

[brandon429]

its near magically specific lol

for years even up till now regarding algae all you get is 90 ways you should be preventing it. and, people who follow those rules still get it sometimes, anymore im only interested in what kills it now then we can spend years hoping our prevention efforts are working. if you burn it with fire or peroxide, its just gone./ i like that way better now


*********edit 11/6/15 10:25 pm a looking back reflection after about 500+ tank results cross linked in these pages over five years

Hadn't read these first pages in five years, we just stay busy at the end of the sixty pages I was rereading here to see what new users read.

Reefmiser, I'm reading what I just typed here above after seeing the initial energy you created back then, and this shocks me. My entire reefing life changed in this post above at this specific time in 2011, I went from a preventer and partial failure algae hater, with an ornery patch in my old reefbowl I knew might overtake it again, to complete and permanent algae immunity for the rest of my reefing life. In this exact post above, neurons clicked:

-algae is now optional, farm it if you like, or don't, an opt out button just fell from the sky-


The most profoundly impactful aquarium option I've ever seen in 26 yrs of hardcore aquarium dedication is your thread and the ability to opt out of algae in the pico reef

[dixiedog]

for years even up till now regarding algae all you get is 90 ways you should be preventing it. and, people who follow those rules still get it sometimes, anymore im only interested in what kills it now then we can spend years hoping our prevention efforts are working. if you burn it with fire or peroxide, its just gone./ i like that way better now

 

 

 

I couldn't agree more.

 

Now why don't you guys impress me and come up with a miracle cure for CYANO! I have the cleanest, most pristine, most over-skimmed tank I've ever personally seen, and I still can't get rid of it entirely. And all anybody ever says is it's your water. Kiss my dimpled, freckled, pimpled, hairy BUTT.

[brandon429]

agreed. I start arguments in "algae is consuming your nitrate and phosphate" threads I think it hardly ever happens.

 

people attribute a green plant that doesn't grow in biomass much as the ability to fix all kinds of nutrient issues in my opinion, in 2005 here it was mangroves (great for biodiversity, poor for fixation) and now its some balls of chaetomorpha in a tiny refugium handling the bioloading for a production area 20x volume with fish and daily feeding.

 

online I stated googling around for pictures and articles about reef eutrophication and found several articles showing devastating red cyano in Australia in low nutrient waters. You are seeing similar conditions in your tank that have been seen in nature.

its a presence thing, a hitchhiker thing, not always a nutrient thing. in nature its a predation thing additionally, nothing wants to eat it

 

wanna know what Id do?

drain your tank to that level or lift the rocks out one by one and have a spray bottle of peroxide ready, mist the coverage of cyano. I really think it will beat cyano w a direct approach. rinse rocks well and reinstall

 

 

Not that I debate nutrients will cause one or more primary producer infestations, but it isn't always tied to that. after spending ten years tring to keep horrible gha out of my reefbowls it came down to just simply killing it, and letting someone else figure out how to 100% prevent it and its cousins like cyano

[brandon429]

Wanted to add in support some week-after findings regarding coralline.

 

peroxide, especially when applied in the spot treatment system i like, has a strong tendency to bleach pigmented marine organisms

 

some got on a section of tubipora musica pipe organ coral, turned the all-red, heavily pigmented pipe organ skeleton stark white. It bleaches coralline on the live rock upon direct contact, Id like to hear from the systemic-dosing community if its affecting your coralline color at all? thats very helpful to know

 

I don't mind waiting for the coralline to re spot, its just nice to have the algae gone. The growth was in a rear part of the reef I didn't want to take apart, its years-set solid in coralline. THere was no way to curve a lighter down there to burn it or I would have done that two months ago. Then this peroxide thread and I fashioned a bent dropper into the tank, held the dropper right above the growths and let looks some drops

 

one week later the spot is 100% bare after a direct application and all the tiny live rock growths like sponges, sabellid worms and associated pods are exactly the same. The peroxide zeroed in on green hair algae and simply killed it like roundup.

 

going forward its reef roundup lol

B

 

ok, when Marc weiss puts out some magic solution for algae cure that works wonders we know what it is. you could put a food dye in it and make it seem like a complex formula...wow neat business idea.

[acropora1981]

Does this work with tougher/thicker algae like feather caulerpa and bubble algae, or is it more for filamentous algaes?

[brandon429]

Im reading it works on green photosynthetic plants regardless

 

really wish you'd try a light spot treatment with before and after pics thing coming weekend, it would be gone by then. By testing only that one spot you could really see how fast it will kill growth plus I want to log some feedback on whether it will kill valonia. it certainly kills, absolutely kills within a week, bad red brush algae (>? genus) and cyano and very highly likely your valonia. the starter of the peroxide thread already established it will work on bryopsis, I say if its green or brown or red and a plant it will go with peroxide.

 

even though everyone is doing systemic treatments in adding it to the whole tank, I know I can recommend a spot treatment where you drain the tank water down to the desired level, dropper on some peroxide, let sit for two mins then refill, becuase ive done that in a very tiny reef aquarium with no harm to the inhabitants.

 

 

peroxide simply adds an extra oxygen atom its not specifically antibacterial but algae will rot away after using it. I think its important not to overdose, its pretty strong, but if a one gallon tank with 20 mixed corals thats five years old can handle it then any reef can. I would especially recommend nonsystemic dosing, spot treatments only, in the presence of fish that haven't been tested in it.

 

I haven't read of a fish death from it by the way, its just dangerous to recommend things for peoples tanks if one hasnt tried it themselves. the spot treatment accomplishes with about 5 drops what 50 drops would be used in a full tank water dosage, its way less peroxide added to your tank in spot treatment runs of any bad organism.

 

also want someone to test it on aiptasia and log it here, whether or not it kills it is 50/50 since we are dealing with cnidaria.

 

the plants show the most powerful toxic reaction, but not the non plant life. all copepods and sponges are thriving in my tank so it is not a powerful toxin when added in small doses, Im sure due to the scale testing with gallon models. It does bleach the heck out of coralline be warned, just enough to cover the base of an algae stand will kill it all, save it from running down the rock face

[BLoCkCliMbeR]

i played this game about a 1.5yrs ago. it doesnt really affect bubble algea. (not that i saw anyway). i was hoping maybe it would keep the spores from spreading after you pop them, but i have the patience of a 3 year old and i gave up.

 

i had to deploy anyway im tankless.

[DaJMasta]

Another note: don't do large doses if you have hydnophora. Lost mine today - I think I noticed it was pissed a bit too late and the tank got a couple more doses afterwards which killed it. Acros and montis are fine despite being a little brown, but the hydnophora did not make it through my dosing.

[gabe_j]

hey 2nd day dosing I noticed it pissed off my Rbta pretty quick it deflated the tentacles and shrink it a bit for a couple of hours. it still kinda blah but it's not totally bad cuz this afternoon it was HUGE my wife had to take a pic I'll try and loaded it tomorrow.

[brandon429]

this is all very interesting. my brown montipora that got the peroxide directly spilled on it has come back, but it was initially stressful. So far these reports only reinforce spot treatments when possible, save the full tank dosing for terrible outbreaks is how I interpret the feedback especially since we don't know what is affected and what isn't.

 

Id be curious to know how the valonia does with direct spot application. if it still doesn't work its not suprising, direct application to a favites brain and to blastomussa merletti did not have any affect, its a touch and go game apparently.

[gabe_j]

well i'm trying to bring back my tank from some rediculous gha infestation. i've finally got my tests back in order

 

po4=<.25

nh3 =0

mg= 1350

ph= 8.2

cal=480

dkh=8

 

finally i had to get rid of a few fish sorry chromis lol. i manually removed about 80% of the gha i left the rest to use as my "test" sample. when i dose the h2o2 i drop it right into the flow of my vortech so its' instantly dispersed everywhere. but with in seconds the tentacles retract on the nem. then it deflates like a ##### for a few hours. but by the next day its even bigger than before. i did stop dosing vodka a week prior for this experiment. also i dunked a smaller rock with some gha and acans on it in a 50/50 solution with 3% h2o2 for 2 mins and returned it to the tank. interestingly the pods were unaffected now the bristle worms present pretty much died on contact its a good thing i've got plenty lol.

 

so corals that have been affected are

rbta

tabling acro

zoas

gsp

the affect is mild at worst no die off or anything just i notice that they react to the dosing

 

unaffected are

acans

favia(seems to like it alot!)

stag

chalice

shrooms

rics

torch

some zoas

all fish and inverts are fine

 

current doing regimine is 10mls for the tank.

tank is a 40br

lr=50-60lbs

ls=0

skimmed using cpr

2cups o'carbon in reactor

 

 

hope all that info helps someone.

-gabe

[Genj]

Good info gabe. I just dunked a few pieces of LR into an bucket based 60/40 (h202) solution. Some had zoas on them, and today they are open an looking great. after the dip, I scrubbed the GHA with a brush, and then rinsed it in fresh saltwater.

 

12 hours later, the GHA is turning pale and I expect it to look pretty good soon.

 

Of note, this method causes bristle worms to literally eject themselves out of the live rock. It was quite amazing to find one small rock with no less than 20 worms. They die in about 1 min in the solution.

[brandon429]

how amazing is that...the difference in susceptibility among animals. since I drain my tank and do spot treatments, my banded shrimp rode the water line down and was all coiled up on the sand waiting for me to refill (thinking you !??!?XX er) and in the meantime he was swimming in all the peroxide runoff from my dosing, I didnt even see him literally under that rock with it landing right on his head.

 

upon refill he looked a little drunk and bubbly, but in 5 mins swimming around like normal picking detritus off the rocks. that was a week ago now he's totally fine.

 

so we can concur peroxide is an anti-hermodice ya

 

some people will do anything to kill fireworms!

[Reef Miser]

Hey Brandon, thanks for tending to this thread and keeping it going. I hadn't checked on it for awhile and was happy to see that it had grown by a couple of pages in my absence. I'm glad to see people modifying and perfecting H2O2's use.

 

One thing that I have noticed, is that the die off seems somewhat related to light intensity. It seems like the brighter it is, the better is works. I don't know why this is or if this is just anedotal evidence, but seems to be my experience.

 

Snails are generally unaffected by mild doses. I have accidentally dipped them and they were fine.

 

Xenia is the only thing that got wiped out in my tank by systemic dosing. I dosed about 10-15mL (into a 20g display with ~8gallon sump) everyday for a couple of days. It didn't really ever come back. Maybe this is actually not a bad thing. being a weed itself.

[Psychosis]

Well, I still don't have access to an actual key board, but I can confirm that Hydnophora should not be subjected to peroxide. I dont know why, but it doesn't respond well at all. I lost the majority of my mini colony after a dip.

[Reef Miser]

Bummer about the hydnophora. So I guess that and xenia are the only casualties so far.

[gulfsurfer101]

I decided to give it a shot on my 30g. I have this weird brown algea that looks almost furry on most of my rockwork and have been noticing some slime red algea(cyano) on my glass and walls. I'll try and get a pic of my rocks up so we can see the results.

[MedRed]

Im reading it works on green photosynthetic plants regardless

 

Not true. In the FW world we use peroxide directly on green plants to rid them of nuisance algae like cladophora. All of the higher level plants are unaffected... only algae is adversely affected by peroxide. Most of the plants in reef tanks are algae so they may be affected by peroxide.

[brandon429]

thanks for the tip about the light sensitivity, that gives ideas

 

its starkly harmful and starkly distilled water to some individuals. no mid ground

 

 

fascinating

it would not take a long time to catalog a list of basic coral receptivity

 

glad you took time to post it or I might not have tried it.

 

 

the peroxide is the only thing that fixed my problem with zero side effect and zero effort. I lost no corals by spot treating it so its perfect for tight space work. also I recommended someone try a very light, diluted application of peroxide across a patch of red cyanobacteria by spraying it from a hairspray bottle or something while the tank is drained. Id really like to know what systemic and direct applications do to cyanobacteria.

Edited April 29, 2011 by brandon429

[DaJMasta]

Bummer about the hydnophora. So I guess that and xenia are the only casualties so far.

 

 

Could hydrogen peroxide be the mythical substance that can actually kill xenia?!