Highly Recommend Reeflux HD Treatment

[BearTheSquare]

FOR BRYPROSIS:

Hey everyone, just thought I'd share my personal experience of flucozanole incase anyone is in the same situation I was in with my tank.

 

Starting mid-summer I added a frag of sunny d zoas from a local reefer after removing a few pieces of, what looked like at the time, hair algae. This was definitely the start of my problem. At first the algae grew very slowly, but soon spread to take over the rest of my zoanthid rock to the point where you could not see most of the polyps. I finally grew tired of manually pulling the algae off my rock and doing water changes basically every day for no results. The algae would grow back over and over getting worse every time. By mid-December the algae had spread to almost every rock in the tank and even the powerhead and I figured that I might as well risk the flucozanole treatment that I had read about so much. I was not sure how my tank would respond to it, but if it kept growing the way it was I figured I would shut it down in a few months anyways. It was definitely Bryprosis.

 

I added a little under the 200mg capsule as I my tank is under ten gallons with rock and equipment, let it run without a water change for 15 days, and just finished up the treatment this evening. I'm very happy with the results and glad I won't be shutting down the tank for this pest algae. I have very limited knowledge on how this treatment works, but I am sure glad it does.

 

Here are some pictures from before the treatment and honestly it got way worse before I broke down and ordered Reeflux HD (I know they're blurry, but I was not very happy with the way everything was looking):

 

 

 

Here are some pictures that I took after I did a 40% water change. The Bryprosis was basically dead after 10 days, by the 15th (today) it is completely gone:

 

 

And yes I know the aptasia infestation in my tank is out of hand I have 6 Bhergia coming in after New Years.

 

Just thought I'd share my results with everyone, here's to hoping it does not come back!

[Pjanssen]

Good to know. Thanks for sharing your experience

[mcarroll]

On 12/30/2019 at 7:24 PM, BearTheSquare said:

flucozanole

...for...

On 12/30/2019 at 7:24 PM, BearTheSquare said:

hair algae

???

 

 

 

On 12/30/2019 at 7:24 PM, BearTheSquare said:

I finally grew tired of manually pulling the algae off my rock and doing water changes basically every day for no results.

 

This tank was wa-a-ay worse.....check out how he does it.

 

 

[BearTheSquare]

2 hours ago, mcarroll said:

...for...

???

 

 

 

 

This tank was wa-a-ay worse.....check out how he does it.

 

 

It wasn’t hair algae, that’s just what I had thought it was during the summer. It was 100% Bryopsis and the treatment took care of it. Trust me I watched that video 100 times thinking I was doing something wrong when it kept coming back. Realized after a few weeks of manually pulling it multiple times a week and not remembering hair algae being so coarse (from my tank back in 2011, lol). I have heard the treatment also works for hair algae too, but I’d rather just beef up the CUC, manually pull, and lower nutrients to deal with that.

 

For example, after completely pulling off all algae from a section of a rock it would look like this again in 3-5 days (picture from google):

 

Trust me it was very much a last resort  to drop flush medicine in my tank, but I’m glad it worked out with no losses. I tried everything else I could think of or read about from July until December with no results.

[mcarroll]

The original photos looked a lot like hair algae (e.g. Derbesia) and not much like the Bryopsis image sampled from Google.

 

Derbesia:

 

Your tank:

 

Bryopsis:

 

But we'll agree that it's Bryopsis since you are there with it and those aren't very useful photos.

 

I'm still curious about a few things if you don't mind....

 

Day One

How long did you allow the algae to grow unchecked before acting?

 

Cleanup Crew

How many snails did you have when you started actively working against the algae?

 

And how many did you add during the course of trying to remove your algae?

 

How many snails are there now?

 

(Please count only herbivores.  Do not count Nassarius, bumble bee, hermits, etc, which are scavengers.)

 

Nutrient Levels

What were your nutrient levels like when you first detected the algae growth?

 

Did you do anything to alter those nutrient levels either before or after noticing the algae?  (If so, what did you do?)

 

Setup Issues

Was your tank started with live rock or dead rock?

 

What kind of cycling method did you use?

 

How old was the tank when the suspected frags were added?

 

(Sorry!  A lot of questions, I know.  This isn't the first time the subject has come up....and most reports of bryopsis are very scanty in detail....much like most reports on antibiotic use against algae.  More details will definitely be appreciated! 👍)

[BearTheSquare]

@mcarroll

 

No need to be sorry about the questions, hopefully this thread will help someone dealing with similar issues at some point. I'll try to answer them the best I can...

 

First, I agree completely with the picture looking more like hair algae than Bryprosis. I am still kicking myself for not taking more/better pictures of the tank at its lower points. Those pictures were all taken after manual plucking and water changes. Once I would pull the algae it would just show the stems, which do not show the "fan/palm-like" branches of Bryprosis. 

 

Setup Issues:

Tank was started with live rock and live sand.

 

Cycled 5 to 6 weeks without adding any livestock and no water changes until tank could process 2ppm of ammonia.

 

Added CUC consisting of 5 dwarf blue-legged hermits.

 

Tank was started early March and the frag was added late June so about 3 1/2 months. Before the frag was added I inspected it, pulled off what I had believed to be hair algae wrapped around the stem, gave it a good look over afterwards, and placed it in the tank. Prior to adding this piece of coral there was no nuisance algae visible in the tank, and definitely not in this spot. The algae had grown back to the exact length in two days, in which case I thought that I must have imagined pulling it. I removed the entire rock from the tank, placed it in a bucket of tank water, inspected it again, pulled off the newly grown algae, and thought this should do the trick. The tank had no prior algae problems, and seeing it creep across the rock daily from that specific spot is why I believe that frag must have introduced it.  This algae did not spread rock to rock if I left it alone, but instead began to fan/palm and grow thicker (something I wish I would've taken a picture of). To go along with this, I understand the whole new tanks go through an ugly phase situation and deal with nuisance algae (my 29 gallon biocube was a prime example of that), but this was not the same.

 

Day One:

Sort of answered above, but before it even went in the tank. I started my first reef tank when I was 11 years old and documented it on this forum back in 2010, but ultimately tore it down because of hair algae. There was no way that I was going to let it get me again, especially in my own apartment and all I couldn't look at it. Again, treated it a couple days later again with manual removal outside of the tank. Once it continued spreading I gave up on pulling the rock out of the tank and began pulling during the water changes. I also spot treated with peroxide a few times to not much avail.

 

Clean Up Crew:

When the coral was introduced I had no snails, but once it began to spread I bought three Mexican Turbo snails with the idea it was still hair algae. I would pull during water changes, lift them, and place them on the rock where I had pulled. Not one would touch the stuff, they'd go back to the glass or scour around the tank in other places.

 

I added a handful dwarf ceriths as well as I had read about them helping with hair algae, but again no touching the stuff.

 

Still abut the same, lost a couple ceriths and a turbo to the hermit crabs for shells.

 

Nutrient Levels:

Throughout the course of the algae I did not see any real rise in nutrients nitrate/phosphate (I should start journaling my nutrients), but I know thats normal for most algae that eats up nutrients. I had no deaths in the tank, my goby jumped ship and my dog's appetite kept the decay out of the tank. However, when I saw the algae continue to spread on the rock I did the following just in case.

 

I cut feeding in half, about a quarter cube of mysis every other day instead of every day. Stopped pouring the tank water/ro that the food was thawed in back into the tank. Checked TDS of water going into the tank, cleaned equipment, cut my light cycle down, and ensured no sunlight got into the tank. All of these steps to no avail. After the treatment I saw a small rise, but nothing too worrying as all the algae was gone.

 

In all, I really did think it was hair algae as I had not even heard of Bryprosis until later this year. Once I saw the post I looked in my tank, said that explains a lot, and tried everything else possible before fluco. Hope that answers everything for the most part, when I tried it I was at my wits end and if it did not work I would have most likely taken down the tank. Was it a combination of everything I did in combination with the medicine or just the medicine doing what it does I'm not completely sure, but it worked in the allotted time and thats all I could really ask for.

 

Edit: 

When I started getting more careless with pulling/plucking is when the algae began popping up around the tank; behind powerhead, top rock, etc. I'm guessing that by that point I was just spreading the seeds all over by not sticking to one particular spot.

 

[BearTheSquare]

59 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

Bryopsis:

The palm shape of the algae, along with the highlighted center is what gave it away for me. I thought my algae scrubber was coming apart on my rock when it started taking over.

[mcarroll]

So the point is moot with your tank since the algae is (currently) gone, and there's no blame in this.

 

So just to review:

• Starting a tank with just scavengers (hermits) was an invitation for some algae to take-over sooner or later.
• Scavengers may even slow a tank's development in those early phases due to preying on the organisms that you want to be spreading.  
• Without persistent pressure from herbivores (which in a reef tank includes you), taking over is simply what algae do in reef environments,
• Taking the brutal eradication approach where you're removing your rocks from the tank repeatedly probably caused the algae to spread more.  It would have had a negative effect on (the few microscopic) competitive organisms on the rock, throwing favor to the algae.  The trauma to the algae itself from being scrubbed is a direct cause of spreading as well.
• Sounds like you only added three turbo snails and about "a turbo snail's worth of Cerith's" (an even smaller herbivore) in the course of your battle.  We'll call that 4 turbos for simplicity.
• Four turbos (see above) is better than none, but still too close to none in the scheme of things.
• You'd shoot for a number that up to two turbos (or equivalent) per gallon until you get results. 
• For a 10 gallon like your tank, that means up to 20 turbos....which is a lot more herbivore pressure than you had, to say the least!
• You did the right thing in placing the turbos on the algae you manually cleared, at least from the sound of it.  But if there's too much algae-covered area for them to cover, then there's just too much for them to cover.  The algae will definitely grow back when that's the case.
• From your pics I can tell your algae was everywhere.  You needed LOTS more snails IMO.....no fewer than double what you had.  But you know the ultimate target number as well now.....potentially WAY WAY WAY more than you had.
• Mature green algae is generally inedible by our small herbivores.....bryopsis or not.  This is why manual pulling is such a big part of the equation. 
• For one thing it keeps the algae at a size that's physically grazable by our snails.
• For another it apparently keeps the algae from fully developing it's anti-herbivore defenses....which are just chemicals the algae produces that taste bad, making the mature algae unpalatable.
• Employing a UV filter and/or a micron filter to eliminate a percentage of algae propagules (a high percentage for a well-implemented system) would go a long way toward slowing the spread of algae, allowing your cleanup crew more time to cover their allotted area.
• It doesn't sound like you were forcing nutrients to be "ultra low" or anything along those lines -- that should have been to your benefit if things had been slightly different overall.

IMO it's hard to say with certainty that none of those things would have helped or that the treatment was really necessary.   Even though you did a lot of work, you were kinda far away from the needed basics for chem-free control.

 

(I'm still glad the tank's doing better now!!  I'd continue with the use of activated carbon and water changes to be sure 100% of that treatment is out of the water.)

[BearTheSquare]

@mcarroll

 

It's tough to break down exact steps of what I should've done as it is in the past. I mean really there's an infinite number of things I could've done different that might have helped or might not have. Tough to say one way or the other which would've worked best on this particular species, other than not adding it to begin with.

 

I think all of those things most likely would have played a factor in lessening it, but will never know whether it would have completely rid the tank of the algae or not. I believe that when dealing with your tank issues whether it be algae, pests, etc. it is best to research them extensively. I am not going to say that I did everything right, but I will say that I did my best to ensure everything stayed stable in my tank and corals/fish were healthy. I'm just going to say that I have not read many (any) success stories without the use of fluco on bryprosis. I'm sure its different tank to tank as all things are in this hobby, but I'm just glad that it worked for me this time around. 

 

I can say that I am 100% sure it was Bryprosis and I do not believe the meds would have worked anywhere near the same if it was not (hair algae or anything of the sort). Thanks for the advice and hopefully someone in the future can use those steps too. There's a ton of information going every which way on the internet, which is great in some ways terrible in others. The only fix that worked for me was this, not saying every tank would respond the same way nor should everyone nuke their tank with chemicals every time something goes wrong (I don’t like the idea of chemical treatments for most things). I just read all that I could, tried different things, and ultimately dropped yeast infection medicine into my tank as a Hail Mary. Glad to get another viewpoint in this thread though, hopefully if this gets looked up down the road they'll take both mindsets into account! 

 

Again, thanks for the conversation and kind words.

[mcarroll]

9 hours ago, BearTheSquare said:

I'm just going to say that I have not read many (any) success stories without the use of fluco on bryprosis.

No doubt.  And what I posted in that list was mostly just what I would "liked to have seen" so that better info would be available now after the fact.  Doing those things MAY have had an impact on your algae, but even with 20/20 hindsight that's impossible to say for sure.  None of it was a criticism....you did what made the most sense at the time.  👍

 

Algae in general is a little bit of a hot-button issue that's surrounded by hobby mythology anyway. 

 

As a result there aren't a lot of algae threads where folks do all the right things.  Very few.  (But they're out there.)

 

The trend with Bryopsis tanks doesn't leave any good example tanks for someone to follow who has an algae problem.  The popularity of this med has made the situation worse.

 

This was pretty much the same state of things on Dino threads before a few years ago, except there was no magic bullet. 

 

Folks with dino outbreaks were losing their livestock, folding up their tanks and leaving the hobby or throwing away their live rock to replace it.....extreme measures to say the least.

 

But Dino's only took a few solid days of reading combined with a few good example tanks to work with before we could crack it....and that changed the whole trend with dino outbreaks. 

 

Suddenly folks were able to take steps to solve their dino problems.  It wasn't a boogeyman like everyone was thinking.  "Going nuclear" turned out to be the wrong option.

 

Sooner or later Bryopsis will end up like this too IMO. 

 

Solvable.