The secret to algae control in the nano reef: stop growing your invaders on purpose. i dare you to post a challenge

[brandon429]

I like to speak in before and after pics.

 

 the sand rinse thread is there on that recent post about making chemiclean useless. I’m only a little perturbed you’d post doubts but no before pics, this playground is for participants only and we still want your massive challenge if you ever want to test model it. It’s some serious work I don’t take it lightly, and I accept fair doubt don’t let anyone jack with your tank unless they seem prepared. I back edited in those links, shoulda opened with them agreed.

 

[brandon429]

This one stops cyano and spirulina and diatoms and dinos in all nano reefs

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-official-sand-rinse-thread-aka-one-against-many.230281/

 

the only form of invasion that technique won’t clear is an anchored one like you have in that seriously well grown coral nano you posted.  I’m hungry for it because it will challenge my system/approach for sure. It’s a tough invader.

 

going off the large reefcentral thread, we see that rhodophyta will display the classic neon pink change before dying, the hallmark of stumbling onto something that works. If we could test rock your growth and get that pink change, we’d have the first true indicator of success modeled for us right there, if it works at all.

 

Not affecting those fine corals is the challenge. I sure hate to see you mess with nutrients, clearly the sps like the current balance. Your invader is caused only by non quarantine import, it has nothing to do with nutrients promise. If you don’t choose surgery, I feel a lucky clean up crew is your only other option and even that leaves the anchors in place, it’ll never go away.

 

****your wiry algae tank presents the utmost challenge (not the cyano one) as you have solid coral growth we have to work among. All those other threads are bare live rocks we are dumping peroxide across, easy street.

 

if we had the chance, I’d have you lift out one single test rock and use a knife tip to surgery/debride and DIG those anchors out between the corals. Rinse rinse 

 

then go back over the surgery spots only, outside the tank, and  put 3% where the algae used to be. Saran Wrap or angled dripping of the rock would be positioned to block your corals from contact in tight spaces. Let it burn anchor points a while. rinse off, put that rock back in and we take no further action until we check it for regrowth characters compared to the untouched rocks.

 

naturally, we’d need pics of all that.

 

[brandon429]

Ill bring examples of the psychology of tank invasions here in case we don't get our own examples going until steam develops:

 

 

 

 

 

Cyano is about to make them take their tank down. Cyano is the easiest invader in reefing to beat, proof is given, lets watch for key variables regarding hesitation and purposeful continued farming, or not, here

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cyano-going-to-cause-me-to-shut-down-my-tank.343703/

 

 

[HarryPotter]

Quote

All those other threads are bare live rocks we are dumping peroxide across, easy street.

 

I can kill algae off rocks with bleach, leaving zero trace of the invading algae. The purpose of your "solution" is to get rid of the algae without harming corals, no? 

Can you make clear instructions on how to fix the problem? I dont care about the psychology of tank invasions. What is the solution- I want a numbered step by step list of what to do. No links, this should be easy for you to provide. 

 

Quote

if we had the chance, I’d have you lift out one single test rock and use a knife tip to surgery/debride and DIG those anchors out between the corals. Rinse rinse 

 

then go back over the surgery spots only, outside the tank, and  put 3% where the algae used to be. Saran Wrap or angled dripping of the rock would be positioned to block your corals from contact in tight spaces. Let it burn anchor points a while. rinse off, put that rock back in and we take no further action until we check it for regrowth characters compared to the untouched rocks.

 

Okay, so this rock.

 

 

You are saying that I need to use a RAZOR to cut it all off as deep as possible and then spray h202? 

 

 

[seabass]

I kind of agree.  200 pages takes some time to comb through.  A summary of the techniques and what they address would be helpful.

 

I've read a number of posts and have used many of the techniques discussed (stripping clean sand beds, peroxide treatments, etc), many of these are very effective.  However, I have also had invaders that seemed immune to these techniques.  I kind of wish I had a current example for this challenge.
 

In one, I ended up removing and fragging infected items to eliminate the invader as even rasping away the rock along with peroxide wasn't enough to eliminate the problem.  This also included removing infected snails.  The remaining rock was bleached and re-cured.

This was actually after manual removal of about a gallon size container of algae.

 

In another, I broke down my 100 gallon tank and bleached it due to a dino invasion.  I tried several techniques including removing the sand, blackouts, etc.  Finally, I moved the livestock to another tank and sterilized the 100 gallon.

[brandon429]

well said, and quite well documented / gold contributor.

[HarryPotter]

Quote

However, I have also had invaders that seemed immune to these techniques.  I kind of wish I had a current example for this challenge.
 

In one, I ended up removing and fragging infected items to eliminate the invader as even rasping away the rock along with peroxide wasn't enough to eliminate the problem.  This also included removing infected snails.  The remaining rock was bleached and re-cured.

 

So @brandon429's method does NOT always work, thats what I infer from this post. Sometimes it is ineffective. Which is fine. But that is why I dont like the fanatical way he describes his total solution. If it was feasible and worked, a hidden "secret" to control algae, there would be far more evidence. And no, I don't consider 300 pages of anecdotal comments about the method to be evidence. I could find you even more evidence that vaccines cause autism, that the earth is flat, and that we never landed on the moon.

 

 

I have probably 70lbs of rock, all covered with corals and other critters. Razoring off every speck of algae is a stupid idea. Perhaps that is why his method only works for nano tanks. And I dont see any long term effect, as the spores you were not able to remove just grow back. 

[brandon429]

 

[jahnje]

2 hours ago, seabass said:

I kind of agree.  200 pages takes some time to comb through.  A summary of the techniques and what they address would be helpful.

 

I've read a number of posts and have used many of the techniques discussed (stripping clean sand beds, peroxide treatments, etc), many of these are very effective.  However, I have also had invaders that seemed immune to these techniques.  I kind of wish I had a current example for this challenge.
 

In one, I ended up removing and fragging infected items to eliminate the invader as even rasping away the rock along with peroxide wasn't enough to eliminate the problem.  This also included removing infected snails.  The remaining rock was bleached and re-cured.

 

In another, I broke down my 100 gallon tank and bleached it due to a dino invasion.  I tried several techniques including removing the sand, blackouts, etc.  Finally, I moved the livestock to another tank and sterilized the 100 gallon.

so did you have a refugium on this tank and any micro fauna? Just curious.  

[jahnje]

so @brandon429 I'm going to try an reiterate/summarize what you are suggesting. I think I read most everything at this point, and have some sort of vague idea.  

 

1. Quarantine stuff so that it doesn't get in in the first place.
2. Rinse any new sand you get esp. live sand. Get rid of all of the silt. Tap water will work as long as the last rinse or so is with salt water. 
3. If you have an outbreak, take direct and immediate action to remove it, don't wait.
4. If possible cleanse the area with mechanical means, fire or H2O2.
5. Don't be afraid to remove all of your old sand bed, and rise it to remove all silt.
6. An inch or so of sand bed is much easier to keep clean and completely rinse or replace if needed. 
7. This is all easier on a pico/nano system than a large tank, therefore even faster direction action is needed. 
8. Having detectable nutrients in the water (P & N > 0 ppm) to support micro fauna in a preventative nature is advisable, but is not a quick enough cure. 

Please let me know what you think is wrong or missing. You too @seabass.  I'm just trying to wrap my head around all of this info. 

 

 

[brandon429]

That is excellent and thank you for changing pace with that, yes yes.

 

All I can rely on to get tanks that don't die, and somewhat of a consistent set of after pics is taking action

 

Its much better to have systems that are so balanced, with grazers, and uptakes etc that things handle themselves

 

but I think starting with a mix and hoping that comes about doesn't work like earning that cruise control condition, after manual gardening through the maturation stages.

 

Theres a work element missing in nearly every algae correction thread I work into, in my opinion.

 

well done

 

 

 

 

[brandon429]

Test rock easy list

 

 

We don't want you to waste time taking an action on your whole tank only to get growback, you'll think its all been a waste of time. Growback is how some of the tanks in the peroxide thread didn't work out, or pass the test so to speak. It never was the initial kill we had trouble with

 

where did it growback from?

 

The holdfasts, buried deep in the convolutions and interstices of the rock. A parrotfish bites that off in nature, a hawksbill turtle bites it off and poops the sand, digests the algae.

 

Now that's work

 

enter rasping, and not on your whole tank, on a test rock. If it works off the the rock, and someone has eighty pounds to go through, then the benefits of not ever hesitating again have been commuted. At least you have an option, everything else is a guess it seems. Hesitation got us to eight pounds worth, hesitation prevents the fix, or even a decent and fair run at a modeling run. Hesitation can lock down a reefer, lets don't.

 

how to test rock in larger systems so that we don't waste time (a tiny system doesn't need a test rock, just clean the darn tank)

 

1. remove a rock with partial offender growth, we are reaching for a cure here, not a continued challenge like the whole tank is. A moderate infested test rock, take it out

 

2. get a steak knife, and turtle off that algae, scrape, make marks. Dig. If its corals abutted with the growth, then work carefully like a dentist does around your gums and teeth (but you still bleed, bc he's being decisive)

 

3. rinse all this off outside the tank, don't let bits float around in the tank like when people scrub inside the reef.

 

4. after clean, and after there's no more algae due to your hand and knife, put 3% peroxide as a target on the former algae points (holdfasts exposed, rasped, now killed) let this sit a few mins and rinse off with saltwater.

 

Let this rock exist in your tank among the untreated rocks, make sure a cloudable sandbed is never at play in any algae challenge, and from that test rock behavior you have a real biological plan that you may upscale, if you like, using variables and modeling that are unique to your lighting, topoff water nutrients, ambient lighting etc.

[seabass]

1 hour ago, jahnje said:

so did you have a refugium on this tank and any micro fauna? Just curious.  

No refugium.  I had a decent amount of micro fauna at first; however, peroxide treatments nearly eliminated all of it.

 

1 hour ago, jahnje said:

Please let me know what you think is wrong or missing. You too @seabass.

I've recently been trying a number of different things.  Above, it was suggested that carbon dosing, GFO, and other nutrient controls might be to blame for an uptick in dinos.  There may be something to that (if nutrient levels drop too low); however, I feel that the trend of using all dry rock might also be a contributing factor.  Tanks cycled with Dr.Tim's One & Only just don't compare to rock taken from the ocean.  Disclaimer, all of my current rock started as dry rock.

 

I've been trying to improve the diversity with actual live sand, pods, micro inverts, and macro algae.  I'm now trying to create a more diverse and mature ecosystem prior to adding any coral.  I feel that forcing coral to go through the ugly stages of your tank is hard on the coral, and hard on your pocketbook.  It also limits what you can do to correct problems.

 

3 hours ago, HarryPotter said:

So @brandon429's method does NOT always work, thats what I infer from this post.

I don't believe they will work in every situation.  In my case with the algae, I feel that the rock was porous enough that I could never eliminate all of the holdfasts even after spending numerous hours of scraping layers off of the rock, and buying dozens of gallons of peroxide.  If the problem were more localized, I feel that it would have worked.  All I could manage were cosmetic improvements (in some cases, fairly impressive improvements).

 

In the case of the dinos, I feel that lack of biodiversity helped the invader take hold.  By the time I seriously tried to get rid of it, it was well established with no competition.  I could never seem to tip the balance in my favor.  Also, a number of people suggested that there wasn't a cure.  Anyway, both of these instances were very time consuming and I decided to cut my losses on both counts.

[brandon429]

well said agreed

[HarryPotter]

2 hours ago, brandon429 said:

well said agreed

 

Agreed that your solution does not work for everyone? 

[Clown79]

There is definitely not 1 sure fire way to get rid of an algae takeover.

 

 

I think it really depends on the cause, sand isn't always the cause because bare bottom tanks have algae issues.

 

If sand is the cause, washing it or replacing it completely is a course of action.

 

It's beneficial to find the cause while getting rid of the problem.

 

 

 

 

[brandon429]

Harry 

 

 

dude

 

 

 

For the love love of Pete w someone out there post me an algae challenge with some pics on this page, something we intend to see through to the end, that’s my breakfast. 

 

Continuing:

 

You and I are not posting to or working with peer reviewing scientists nor are we that. Ergo, my stuff is a collection of testimonies and chats but actually after pics galore too, if you’ll click a link. Just look at the pics alone if you want, that’s not anedocte when Jpeg sans algae is there

 

Im not even sure peer reviewed stuff exists for algae work in an aquarium

 

I would have taken responsibility for you working your tank w my offers and stuck around until completion, or fail, that’s my offer. You know for a fact those threads would have negativity in them if it was warranted. I think you are the first, and we didn't even get a go, heh.

 

Of course it wont beat all I agree with you man.

 

 

Why else did fluconazole becomes everyone’s favorite uncle. 

 

 

Will you just read the sand rinse thread, it’s turning so positive with new posters I haven’t ever met before as of this morning. That’s what I recommend for your cyano issues not the wiry stuff. 

[Clown79]

On 15/12/2017 at 9:16 AM, brandon429 said:

Harry 

 

 

dude

 

 

 

For the love love of Pete w someone out there post me an algae challenge with some pics on this page, something we intend to see through to the end, that’s my breakfast. 

 

Continuing:

 

You and I are not posting to or working with peer reviewing scientists nor are we that. Ergo, my stuff is a collection of testimonies and chats but actually after pics galore too, if you’ll click a link. Just look at the pics alone if you want, that’s not anedocte when Jpeg sans algae is there

 

Im not even sure peer reviewed stuff exists for algae work in an aquarium

 

I would have taken responsibility for you working your tank w my offers and stuck around until completion, or fail, that’s my offer. You know for a fact those threads would have negativity in them if it was warranted. I think you are the first, and we didn't even get a go, heh.

 

Of course it wont beat all I agree with you man.

 

 

Why else did fluconazole becomes everyone’s favorite uncle. 

 

 

Will you just read the sand rinse thread, it’s turning so positive with new posters I haven’t ever met before as of this morning. That’s what I recommend for your cyano issues not the wiry stuff. 

I wish I had taken pictures of my 10g during the months of gha I dealt with and the after pics since removing the sand and replacing.

The few hrs of work replacing the sand was well worth it.

 

I didn't wash the sand because the black sand grain size was the culprit and I didn't want it in the tank. 

 

 

 

 

[StinkyBunny]

On 12/14/2017 at 11:09 AM, HarryPotter said:

 

I can kill algae off rocks with bleach, leaving zero trace of the invading algae. The purpose of your "solution" is to get rid of the algae without harming corals, no? 

Can you make clear instructions on how to fix the problem? I dont care about the psychology of tank invasions. What is the solution- I want a numbered step by step list of what to do. No links, this should be easy for you to provide. 

 

 

Okay, so this rock.

 

 

You are saying that I need to use a RAZOR to cut it all off as deep as possible and then spray h202? 

 

 

You need a Zebrasoma tang in that tank, that algae would be gone in no time.

[brandon429]

 

 

Nothing was ever said about a razor above, there's no help until attitudes chg but we are here when its time to undo whats been done.

 

 

about six posts have been removed by other posters directly above mine right here, which changes the flow of the thread. Harry above has declined all assistance, am working building examples for other tanks now and w update soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Part of the way a nano reef keeper should be using test rocks early on, especially if their tank is large, is to learn the characteristics of your invader from a model that matches it's surroundings. Set your allowances, or disallowance, from its performance where you have full control. if we choose to test rock, we use a rasp that is inflexible and forces out  the invader by the holdfasts., a knife tip in fact is a good one. We use varying strengths of peroxide against certain targets so that we know what the simple kill levels will be, this stops tank loss and wasting time when upscaling to the larger job.

 

All other forms of algae options affect your entire system's nutrient balance, which in the case of red invasive algae has nothing to do with the invasion.  Not quarantining substrates is the case of Harry's invasion, it is not nutrient related.

When my whole reef got taken over and half my corals were stung and killed by hundreds of red mushroom corals, I caused that by import and inaction. I made a thread about undoing it, too.

 

. 

 

 

 

 

 

[brandon429]

The thread on tough love and personal responsibility for our invasions still remains. Right now, at reef2reef, work is being done along the lines in this thread.

 

I have not shown them this thread, for the offense would surely cause more purposeful growth of the invader Im about to clean out. 

 

 

we are working with reef keepers, not algae, in restoring some nanos and the pics are coming soon.  linked threads should be watched for any behaviors and attitude changes towards algae that resulted in a clean tank.

 

I want this to be the first thread in reefing where algae problems are not reacted to as a problem or indicative of an imbalance in a tank. I want readers to leave asking themselves "am I the cause of my own invasion?" "if so, how is that undone, and is there any proof to these claims that my tank will be turned around if I turn around?"

 

the reason for doing this isn't to build enemies

 

its to show you that the locus for algae control isn't lighting, nutrients, the decade we're in, topoff water, sunlight, an overfeeding incident, your nitrate, your phosphate,  a bad hitchhiker, always something other than us, its merely what you farm on purpose or not.  Taking responsibility and accountability for a sustained tank invasion is just a painful coming to terms, that's all. itll pass and whats left behind will sparkle nicely.

 

[HarryPotter]

?

[brandon429]

as of page 3, the direct examples begin. This is where readers can simply try out some unique ways to handle algae issues, and ideally I want to link action type algae control threads here, something where the keeper made an impactful move.

 

https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/385494-the-fools-reef-2-gal-cookie-jar-my-experience-with-filterless-reefing/?page=5&tab=comments#comment-5608772

 

 

These are questions I would ask about his thread

 

is it invaded

 

are there any direct actions being applied by the reefer, that may differ from invaded tank keepers actions

 

does he have things much easier since this is a tiny pico

 

how does that change anyone's charted course to being algae free, say in a 29 gallon nano? Does that mean there is a gallonage cutoff where people actively will into being algae invaded?

 

 

Heres a large tank with a one year follow up

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/algae-outbreak.249581/page-5#post-4368183