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Cultivated Reef

Fluconazole Day 1


FollyFish

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So it feels like I have been losing the war against algae now forever. The things that I have tried are as follows (in order):

1) Manual removal every water change until the cup I was using was full.

2) Larger water changes each week from 3.5G to 5G

3) Changing food, using less and rinsing the frozen food first

4) Changing the lights - less strength and shorter time

5) Added more herbivorous: Tail-spot Blenny, Snails, Emerald Crab

6) 3 days of dark - first time just lights off

7) Vibrant Aquarium Cleaner - 3 months (caused a massive Cyano outbreak)

8 CemiClean to take care of the Cyano outbreak

9) Added a HOB refugium with cheto

10) H2O2 in tank dose, saw no change quite after the 4th day of dosing (got scared when the behaviour of my corals changed) and did a massive water change

11) 3 days of dark - 2nd time covered the tank in garbage bags and lights off

12) Looked into Kent Marine Tech M Magnesium and decided that there was too much risk to my inverts

 

So now here I stand with my corals slowly being choked out by nasty green stuff, literally the only plants I haven't been able to kill in my life without trying.

 

My numbers are as follows:

PH - 8.1 to 7.8 depending on when I test

Nitrite - 0

Nitrate - 5 ( I have always run my tank a little dirty for my softys)

Phos - 0

Amo - 0

salinity - 1.025

 

I am once again going into the breach this time armed with Fluconazole. Today was my first day dosing 300mg of Fluconazole with the hope that it lives up to its hype as I am out of ideas and my next choice will be a tank tare-down and a complete reset. 1928084797_20180603_1729081.thumb.jpg.058a9a149ef7e44eb875e55c4ca23002.jpg

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I am going to try.

 

Forgot to mention 25G cube tank, no sump, no skimmer, current livestock is

 

5 fish (Black Ice Clownfish, Neon Goby, Tailspot Blenny, Yellow Watchman Goby, White Banned Possum Wrasse)

2 shrimps (Fire Shrimp and Randals Pistol Shrimp)

1 Emerald Crab

10 snails, (8) Narissus and  (2) Trochus (as seen in pic covered in algae too)

Corals are a mix of LPS, Softies, and NPS

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A Little Blue
20 minutes ago, FollyFish said:

I am going to try.

 

Forgot to mention 25G cube tank, no sump, no skimmer, current livestock is

 

5 fish (Black Ice Clownfish, Neon Goby, Tailspot Blenny, Yellow Watchman Goby, White Banned Possum Wrasse)

2 shrimps (Fire Shrimp and Randals Pistol Shrimp)

1 Emerald Crab

10 snails, (8) Narissus and  (2) Trochus (as seen in pic covered in algae too)

Corals are a mix of LPS, Softies, and NPS

Cool. Looking forward to your experience and hopefully a success story. 

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If this is bryopsis or GHA and if you followed the instructions to the tee. You should see great results at around 15 days. It worked for me. Did large water change at 20th day due to be out of town. But it got rid of it and haven't seen it return. Cheato is alive as well. Good luck 

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7 hours ago, Segalplayer said:

what test kits are you using?

 

I got rid of mine by manually removing and adding snails directly to the infected area

A mix of API (until they run out) and Salifert. My phos, mag, calcium is salifert. The rest is API. 

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8 hours ago, jdmcbuilt said:

If this is bryopsis or GHA and if you followed the instructions to the tee. You should see great results at around 15 days. It worked for me. Did large water change at 20th day due to be out of town. But it got rid of it and haven't seen it return. Cheato is alive as well. Good luck 

My LFS told me that it is bryopsis (mostly) with a little GHA for fun. The GHA I can pull out but when I tried that with the bryopsis it is so attached that I would lift the rock its on and when I did get some up I just ended up spreading it. 

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2 hours ago, FollyFish said:

My LFS told me that it is bryopsis (mostly) with a little GHA for fun. The GHA I can pull out but when I tried that with the bryopsis it is so attached that I would lift the rock its on and when I did get some up I just ended up spreading it. 

It will dissolve on its own. Let the flucanzole work its magic. Just trust it and be patients. Wait the entire 14 days if you still see left over leave it for 20. Than do water change and add carbon back. 

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Here are some random pics of my fish that I took today to make me happy; hope you enjoy too. BTW the photo of Simi my possum wrasse was taken just before he knocked the snail off the glass. It was the second snail he did that too. 😞

 

 

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So day 3, while I think some of the algae is looking thinner (could be wishful thinking), its not turning white/grey like in some of the pics I have seen online. I wonder if it is because I only dosed the tank 15mg per gallon instead of the 20mg that is suggested. Maybe the lower dose will take longer to show any effects.

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A Little Blue
18 minutes ago, FollyFish said:

So day 3, while I think some of the algae is looking thinner (could be wishful thinking), its not turning white/grey like in some of the pics I have seen online. I wonder if it is because I only dosed the tank 15mg per gallon instead of the 20mg that is suggested. Maybe the lower dose will take longer to show any effects.

Increase dosage for a day or two and see what happens. 

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I did a 10mg dose and my bryopsis was dead in 3 days, did a water change and it never returned. GHA takes a lot longer I hear... 

 

Bryopsis will have very apparent feathers.

 

Goodluck and don't fret, it's not Dino so you're going to be alright 🙂

 

Image result for bryopsis

  • Haha 1
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4 hours ago, FollyFish said:

So day 3, while I think some of the algae is looking thinner (could be wishful thinking), its not turning white/grey like in some of the pics I have seen online. I wonder if it is because I only dosed the tank 15mg per gallon instead of the 20mg that is suggested. Maybe the lower dose will take longer to show any effects.

Be patient. You had a lot of bryopsis in your tank. I didn't have as much as you did and patches would disappear daily after day 5. It will just thin out and appear white or fuzzy 

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Day 5

 

Some things that I have noticed.

1. Some of the algae is thin on a rock that I have a powerhead pointed at, where the algae is now gone from the rocks are white.

2. It is easier to pull the algae off my snails.

3. Simi (possum wrasse) has some scales missing as seen in the picture. I don't know when it happened. It must have been some time today because when I fed everyone last night he was fine. While none of the fish are flashing that I can see, they also tend to be distracted by the humanoid food provider and too busy begging when they see me, for me to get a good overview of behaviour.

4. All of my corals have very full/long extensions, I'm not sure if its because of the drugs, less algae (I hope) or the change in the lighting intensity/length on.

5. Grendal my Yellow Watchman Goby has taken to grabbing tuffs of floating algae out of the water and dragging them into the tunnels. While I thought it was funny when he did this with a piece of clove coral, the rotting algae in the tunnels has me a little more concerned. I wonder if he has been doing that all along and that is why I never seem to be-able to get the algae off/out of the sand.

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27 minutes ago, FollyFish said:

Day 5

 

Some things that I have noticed.

1. Some of the algae is thin on a rock that I have a powerhead pointed at, where the algae is now gone from the rocks are white.

2. It is easier to pull the algae off my snails.

3. Simi (possum wrasse) has some scales missing as seen in the picture. I don't know when it happened. It must have been some time today because when I fed everyone last night he was fine. While none of the fish are flashing that I can see, they also tend to be distracted by the humanoid food provider and too busy begging when they see me, for me to get a good overview of behaviour.

4. All of my corals have very full/long extensions, I'm not sure if its because of the drugs, less algae (I hope) or the change in the lighting intensity/length on.

5. Grendal my Yellow Watchman Goby has taken to grabbing tuffs of floating algae out of the water and dragging them into the tunnels. While I thought it was funny when he did this with a piece of clove coral, the rotting algae in the tunnels has me a little more concerned. I wonder if he has been doing that all along and that is why I never seem to be-able to get the algae off/out of the sand.

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Let the medicine do its thing. Dont agitate or manually remove it. It will disappear on its own. 

 

One good advice I can give you is to stop messing with the tank when your trying to get something under control. You added fluc leave it alone dont stick your hands in there. Dont add anything new. Dont change equipment. Dont try any other medication. Just trust the process. You dont have much in corals to be worried about trace elments being depleted. Especially CA mg alk. It take alot to deplete levels quickly. 

 

Your not going to harm your corals even if you went a whole month with out a water change. If you feed half a bottle of fish food and 20 cubes of frozen. You will create an issue. Feed once a day make sure fish eat all of it in one feeding. Or skip a day or 2 of feeding. The fish will survive your tank will thrive and you wont cuase algae outbreak after you rid of your bryopsis and GHA.

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Day 7

 

I think the algae is now more of a grey/green. The algae that I know for sure was bryopsis that was on the very front rock with the paly is gone.

 

I also think that I am going to add another 150mg pill to the tank to bring to total to 450mg per 20G of water. This will up my total to approx. 22mg of fluconazole per 1 gallon and I think it will help as I have been adding RODI water to the tank to make up for evaporation.

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Folly, I heard the GHA takes a bit longer 15-20 days to die off.

 

One thing I know is that the material is very poorly soluble in water. You want to make sure it is solubilized before you add it to the display tank. Maybe premix it in some tank water in a cup and stir well.

 

Figure if the stuff sinks to the bottom of your tank in solid form its not going to ever reach the algae. Did you do anything to solubilize, or just drop in?

 

 

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