Lyngbya Eradication Plan

[j.falk]

I'm having some major Lyngbya problems recently and have devised a plan to try and get rid of it.  Has anyone ever tried anything like this before?

- Take the rocks out of the tank.

- Scrub all the algae off with a toothbrush.

- Pour 3% peroxide over the rock to kill off the algae or dip the rocks in a bucket of straight peroxide.

- Place the rock in a tote with new RODI saltwater, heater and powerhead.

- Break down the tank, clean everything, wipe it down with peroxide and then rinse everything off.

- Refill the tank with new saltwater and place the rocks back in the tank.

I'm hoping to clean the rocks without killing all the beneficial bacteria off of them so that I don't have to completely restart my tank over from scratch.

[seabass]

Are you sure that you have the correct ID?  Lyngbya is a type of cyano, the lower pic shows a macroalgae.

 

IME, 3% peroxide doesn't always kill all of the holdfasts, so algae has the ability to return.  The peroxide treatment will, however, probably kill most all of the micro inverts.

 

TBH, I'm not sure what effect, if any, peroxide will have on the biofilter.  But, without other non-bacterial life on the rock, you might as well bleach it, dechlorinate it, and reestablish the biofilter.

 

Instead, have you found anything that eats it?  I haven't dealt with this particular algae.  If not snails, maybe an Emerald crab or urchin.  Sometimes a cleanup crew will feast on the new growth, but not on established macroalgae.  Maybe manual removal (maybe even brushing) will help the cleanup crew control or even eliminate the problem.

[j.falk]

John at Reefcleaners id'd it for me.  But whatever it is, it's going bye bye.  

 

I have a box of new rock arriving today and I've already decided I'm just going to bleach this old rock, completely break the tank down, clean the carpet of Lyngbya off the back glass and restart everything from scratch.  

 

I've been manually brushing and removing it off the rocks during my weekly water changes.  But the more I do it, the more it seems to spread to new areas of the tank.  I've also noticed that my female clown is constantly biting chunks of it off and spitting it out (which I'm sure helps it spread even more).