Bubble Algae breakout...

[Ondie]

So recently I've changed form fluro lights to LED, and since then I've had a crazy amount of bubble algae pop up, I've spent a full day taking out every rock and scrubbing them and a 40% water change, and it still comes back even after every second day of sucking as many bubble out as I can see and do.

 

Is there any other treatments available? I'm starting to lose corals now and have read that emeralds might eat my shrimps and corals and give the algae a miss all together. Read that a Foxface works most of the time but i'm not sure that a 40G tank is big enough for one.

 

Currently have 2 ocellaris clowns, a lawn mower blenny, a small yellow tang, Scooter dragonette, spotted dragonette, a purple fire fish and a clown goby. All my fish are small and live peacefully with each other.

 

Please help me.

 

Thanks

[Sunar357]

Don't scrub bubble algae! It'll pop and send spores everywhere and make it spread more. You just need to gently pop it off the rock still in bubble form.

 

Some emerald crabs will eat it also...one I used to have did.

[brandon429]

There is only one thread in this forum that has over 80,000 views, check it!

[justin carnecchia]

Once it's in there I don't think you can get rid of it completely, so the task then becomes managing it. As mentioned above emerald crabs are known to eat it. I was having a hell of a time with it and added an emerald, got it under control within a couple weeks. Unfortunately the crab turned out not to be an emerald but another member of the genus and I pulled him when I caught him eating on a montipora. I talked to Albert Theil about it and he said it was extremely unlikely that true emerald crab sp. sculptis would attack corals. Since pulling the crab I had the bubble algae come back some but it seems like my Mexican turbo snails are eating it now.

So anyway I would say get an emerald crab, and some turbo snails. You aren't going to beat it with nutrient control and you won't get it all pulling it. Finding something to eat it is your best bet.

[jedimasterben]

There is only one thread in this forum that has over 80,000 views, check it!

Huh? Even kat's thread has over 400,000 views lol, not to mention almost the entire lounge.

 

Oh, you probably mean in this subforum

 

 

Peroxide is the way to go. Take a small pipette (I use 3mL ones from Amazon that were like $4 shipped for 100x, turn off ALL water movement in the tank, and then spray each bit with one pipette full, spraying it VERY slowly. You can see where the peroxide is in the water since it will be very 'swirly' due to the differences in salinity. My tank is over 65g with the return pump off, so even 100mL of peroxide will not do harm (just make everything mad for a bit). In your 40g, I'd use half that amount. Leave the pumps off for an hour or so after the peroxide is on it, and then turn all your flow back on.

 

Emerald crabs are hit or miss - mostly miss, unfortunately. Rabbitfish will eat bubble algae, as will Red Sea Desjardini sailfin tangs (the former being a more guaranteed thing). I had a dozen emerald crabs that didn't touch the bubble algae I have, and the rabbitfish is too new to really be settled in, it's barely coming out to eat at feeding times, so I went back to peroxide, and every bundle of it is now clear, and today I'll be spraying the little miscellaneous bits I see.

[Seadragon]

On 10/28/2013 at 2:12 PM, justin carnecchia said:

I had the bubble algae come back some but it seems like my Mexican turbo snails are eating it now.

 

It's funny that you say this because I just caught my Mexican Turbo Snail eating Bubble Algae too!  Damn snail eats everything!  It ate my Cotton Candy nuisance algae.  It ate my Red Dragon's Breath macroalgae.  It ate Green Hair Algae.  And they can get pretty big too, might have to rename them all after monsters... Godzilla and family.

[new-age]

Try to overdose fluconazole.

You will find many topics how to dosing fluconazole.

It is worth a try.