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Bubble Algae question


Jakesaw

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Update on tank - Photos

 

My DINOs have been getting a big nasty lately.  I'll be testing Phos / Nitrate later today.  Still have not done a WC. 

-----------

EDIT: nutrient update

Phos- not measurable on test kits (  Added 10 ml of Neophos after testng )

Nitrate - down from 25 to 2 since I stopped overfeeding. ( Going back to heavy frozen food dinner feeding )

-- Explains the DINO and why it's important to track numbers. 

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Here's some pics from yesterday

 

IMG_20220713_152522.thumb.jpg.56b5057bf257c428ded7294306ee72f6.jpg

Above Pic - seems to have replaced all the older larger Bubble Algaes with tiny microscopic ones.  Most clealr to the right of ACAN on the right.  Not sure if this is part of the process of clearing - but that is what is happening.   My acan has shrank up a bit - not as full as normal but healthy.  It's been through worse. 

 

IMG_20220713_152512.thumb.jpg.fd453a0604972f3ff194e1b1d55f7c62.jpg

You can see some DINO on the rocks.  I blee it off surfaces before pics, but not running any mechanical filtration so some has settled.

 

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Other side of tank next

IMG_20220713_152441.thumb.jpg.db7bbcc1caa69b9a34321f777d2444d2.jpg

Plenty of black, clear, and small greens here. 

 

 

IMG_20220713_152438.thumb.jpg.d05aaada26b325b7d742a13031975082.jpg

 

Everything is alive.  My emerald crabs are eating everythihng but Bubble Algae lately.   The purple Candycane is a bit haggardly b/c my clown attacked it when I didn't feed hiim dinner the other day.  Woke up and the coral was lying in the sand and flesh did not like being in sand  It's not glued to anything. 

IMG_20220713_152515.jpg

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Dosed my week Vibrant 5 Today.  

 

DINO is looking a bit out of control.  Corals preetty happy though.  My duncans are out more than they have in quite some time. 

 

Only coral looking unhappy is my candycane coral that Clown bullied into sand overnight a few days ago. Laying in sand with crabs and other critters, something did some damage to the flesh.  Hasn't healed up yet. 

 

Candy canes are good healers, but with this vibrant treatment - not sure if it'll hamper that. 

 

I could be due for another 3 day dark out. 

]

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ryans.salty.crew
12 minutes ago, Jakesaw said:

Dosed my week Vibrant 5 Today.  

 

DINO is looking a bit out of control.  Corals preetty happy though.  My duncans are out more than they have in quite some time. 

 

Only coral looking unhappy is my candycane coral that Clown bullied into sand overnight a few days ago. Laying in sand with crabs and other critters, something did some damage to the flesh.  Hasn't healed up yet. 

 

Candy canes are good healers, but with this vibrant treatment - not sure if it'll hamper that. 

 

I could be due for another 3 day dark out. 

]

Hi just a suggestion for food. I feed frozen 1-2 times a week and pellets 3-4 times a week. Frozen food, even when over feeding, doesn't have a lot of nutrients. I know some % of frozen food is just water. Pellets are "easy to overfeed", meaning they will take affect on your phos/nitrates.

 

When I had my dino's, raising my nutrients level steadily and not cleaning the tanks glass is what ultimately defeated them. Try to clean the filter sock/floss at least every 2 nights when the lights turn off. This will help manually remove the dino's since they tend to migrate out of the display at night. 

 

Allow other green algae's to dirty the wall and soon they will starve the dino's. It's a slow process but it will work over the span of a few weeks. 

 

After hearing about "RiP cLeAn" and dosing chemicals, the advice above was given to me by a 25+ year reef keeper. Give it a shot!

  • Thanks 1
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7 minutes ago, 10g4Me said:

When I had my dino's, raising my nutrients level steadily and not cleaning the tanks glass is what ultimately defeated them. Try to clean the filter sock/floss at least every 2 nights when the lights turn off. This will help manually remove the dino's since they tend to migrate out of the display at night.

That worked me with a past DINO ( different variant though ).  Hair algae took over glass and dino's disappeared.  Snails munched all the hair algae away.  I was growing some nice coraline on back wall, just not fast enough

 

I was removing a filter pad daily with this DINO.  eventually stopped using them. 

 

10 minutes ago, 10g4Me said:

Allow other green algae's to dirty the wall and soon they will starve the dino's. It's a slow process but it will work over the span of a few weeks. 

 

Doesn't apply so much when you're dosing Vibrant algacide to kill off algae.  

 

I'll definitely use some of that advice though along the process.  Right now - I'm focused on the bubble algae while keeping everything else manageable.  It's my most persistent pest and needs to go. 

 

Once it's clear ( for a bit of time ),  I'm going to replace my sand, clean the rock a bit and get a fresh sandbed. 

 

Thanks

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just dosed my friday Vibrant again.  Visually, my tank is as bad as it's ever been bubble algae wise.  It's everywhere still.  My experiment with Vibrant so far is ineffective for my tank.  It's all over my circulation pump, every rocks- a few corals which I cleaned.  Last night I did my weekly circulation pump cleaning.  Today I pulled at leaast 10 unbroken new algae bubbles from impeller case.   I'm going to ultimately do a deep clean on this tank manually removign everyting and cleaning with Hydrogen peroxide, new sand, etc at some point as a learning experiment.

 

But ultimately I think I'll be starting with fresh new rock adn a fresh tank, thoroughtly inspectint, dipping, cleaning everything thta goes into it - including hydrogen peroxide dips.  Don't want this stuff in my tank ever again.  It'sdownright awful.  

 

I was able to pick up a 2nd viparspectra on the cheap though so I have transition / QT tank options.

 

 

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Having some silverish bubbles today, I dosed again ( Friday + Sunday )

 

Hope I'm not poisoning my fish.  Gonna observe how they handle things til Friday.  May do an every 4 day dose depending how things go.  

 

Pulled another dozen bubbles off my Powerhad today.  - ugh

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I was able to beat it by continually manually removing the bubble algae. It took a few months. I would get all of it visually and then a new one would pop up and I just kept up on it till it was gone. 
 

The first cleaning was the most work but after that it was just removing stragglers.  
 

I dipped powerheads in peroxide after cleaning them and applied a little peroxide to areas I removed them from the rock. 
 

I tried not to pop them but didn’t worry if I’d did. I don’t believe it significantly spreads them. 

Anywho that was two years of maybe 3 ago and it has never returned. 
 

Vibrant is something never allowed in my tank 🙂 I would add an army of female emerald crabs before I would touch that stuff. 

 

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@Tamberav

 

How bad was your bubble algae?

 

Re: Hydrogen Peroxide - that has been my go to when removing BA from Frag.  It does seem to do a good job keeping the frag clean for a while.   It's my go to after removing ba manually

I'd have to drop an entire rock in the stuff after manual clean / removal.

 

I've got a clean 10 gallon waiting for new sand / rip clean.  Have to find time to do it while not disturbing the biology too much.  10 gal will still be alive for a while, but not moving this rock to bigger tank.  That has to be dry rock or bust. 

 

My 10 gal is learning project in the hobby right now.  But currently my only main tank.

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Pretty bad. I have put entire rocks in diluted hydrogen peroxide for bryopsis before. I use tank water and enough peroxide for good bubbling then dipped for 5-10 min. I would not do a whole tank though. 

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I pulled out a small rock to get started.  It was about 85 percent covered in BA.  I didn't take pic before cleaning.  But I got the container. of most of the removal. 

 

IMG_20220808_120848.thumb.jpg.8111d95eaec8083c18f7521f93976419.jpg

5 gal Menards bucket with removed Bubble Algae

 

No Hydrogen Peroxide today, I'd have to soak the entire rock and didn't want to disrupt the ecosystem that much..  I rinsed rock thoroughly with clean saltwater.  I didn't have my tweezers so couldn't get to all of the BA, but removed the lions shar of it.  Was worse than I had thought.  

 

I can rotate around the tank over time and inspect the rock frequently as the Vibrant seems to NOT have been working at all.  I will take before and after pics of next rock I clean.    

 

Looks like we're in chapter 3 of bubble algae battle.

 

Appreciate your help.

 

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Jake

 

curious

 

Im watching your tank in despair for months on end, yet every rip clean we do comes out shiny and stays that way as long as the owner doesn’t go full passive aggressive lock down on follow up gardening

 

*can understand not wanting to start off with the easy win/ big cleaning and sand rinse/natural hesitation/ but given the raw contrast between five page rip clean threads I’m thinking we pattern out far better than you can find for the current method + page five pic updates.

 

 

we expend 1/10th the effort and cost you’re going through

 

 

 animals in chronically invaded reefs are bathed in lysed invader cell contents with each succession of growth that is killed off internally and rotted in the tank  

 

 

why keep on a non working track?

 

if you expended half this effort in growback control after a rip clean you’d have won six months ago.

 

You have tank fix options that have a same day compliance date and since you own a nano, the follow up work required for mass delay would be easy to implement in a fully clean setup

 

we would never dump vibrant in the tank it would be undiluted outside the tank directly applied only to growback cells. You’d never adjust the water again (animals hate that) you’d be lifting out rocks and treating them externally with creative means, vs hands off/only through water action

 

 

*removing rocks for cleaning, then setting them back in a non rip cleaned tank won’t sustain, it’s got to be all at once. You can see the resurgence of valonia and dinos isn’t stopping. Gha comes soon 

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Regardless of what you choose don’t give up, half the reason we don’t have a universal valonia cure is because most people give up at the stage you’re at.

 

I see your corals are open, fat, they’ve been feeding there’s really lots of growth potential and that live rock isn’t low quality it’s good high surface area with coralline inclusions. We could do well rip cleaning that tank

 

 

you should persist until you win with the same setup, don’t trade rocks for new or you lose a crucial means of influencing tank restoration works. Never stop trying to make that exact tank comply, long term, is my recommendation the hobby needs to see what works or not for the better of it all

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30 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

Regardless of what you choose don’t give up, half the reason we don’t have a universal valonia cure is because most people give up at the stage you’re at.

 

I see your corals are open, fat, they’ve been feeding there’s really lots of growth potential and that live rock isn’t low quality it’s good high surface area with coralline inclusions. We could do well rip cleaning that tank

 

 

you should persist until you win with the same setup, don’t trade rocks for new or you lose a crucial means of influencing tank restoration works. Never stop trying to make that exact tank comply, long term, is my recommendation the hobby needs to see what works or not for the better of it all

Will definitely be doing a Rip clean ( perhaps over weeks )- but tried the easy chemical route first and it flopped.  I'm actually surprised I got so little from the Vibrant approach.  Today's 1 rock clean was first step toward RIP.

 

I want a bigger tank, but no way I'm bringing BA infested rock in there.  May start a 2nd tank for that reason.  But I'm not giving up on the 10 gallon rock

 

One thing I'm curious of is these BA have grown along with my coral. I presume they have been absorbing alot of nutrient from water.  Will have to watch parameters and start some Water Changes to keep things in check I am anticipating as I remove Bubble algae nutrient absorber. 

 

I must endure! fingerscrossed

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57 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

 

why keep on a non working track?

 

 

Lack of experience and everybody online and in person has their own approach.  You say RIP clean, plenty of others say different approaches.  With no experience who am I to make correct choice of one over another.  I'm choosing the best path I can think of at the time and giving it a chance to work.  When it proves not to work, I move on to next thing. I gave vibrant enough time to demonstrate  - it's not doing much of anything for my tank.

 

I'm on to aggressive manual removal path now.  A variant of RIP clean that will likely end up Ripped in due time. 

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1 hour ago, brandon429 said:

Never stop trying to make that exact tank comply, long term, is my recommendation the hobby needs to see what works or not for the better of it all

WHy " THAT EXACT TANK "

 

I was thinking same rock / new sand new 10 gallon aquarium.  They are cheap and I have one lahying around clean and unused.  

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I think he's coming from an angle of getting more information. If some specific setup of reef tank just won't work out (say, a 50gal with 1 lb of rock and no additional biomedia), it can be interesting to see that specific thing not working out, to figure out why. Also to see if there's any way to wrestle that specific setup into working. I'm inclined to generally agree, as long as any brain-having, pain-feeling critters in the tank aren't suffering from it. 

 

Though there is a point at which a setup can get too frustrating, enough that it might drive someone out of the hobby, so you do want to stop before that point. 

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On 8/9/2022 at 10:03 AM, Tired said:

I think he's coming from an angle of getting more information. If some specific setup of reef tank just won't work out (say, a 50gal with 1 lb of rock and no additional biomedia), it can be interesting to see that specific thing not working out, to figure out why. Also to see if there's any way to wrestle that specific setup into working. I'm inclined to generally agree, as long as any brain-having, pain-feeling critters in the tank aren't suffering from it. 

 

Though there is a point at which a setup can get too frustrating, enough that it might drive someone out of the hobby, so you do want to stop before that point. 

Been pulling about 10 - 12 Vallonia Bubble algae out of my Coralia powerhead daily.  Removed an entire colony from around the magnetic base yesterday.  Used an eyedropper to get some Hydrogen Peroside on it to hopefully keep anything from growing back.  There are cracks around the plastic that I'm sure I was unable to reach for manual cleaning. 

 

In a day or two I'll remove another rock for cleaning.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tank is hopeless.  Bubble Algae has taken over and will not let go. 

 

I had a 4 day blackout ending yesterday.  Today I did an examination and everything is healthy looking but Bubble Algae is everywhere.  The powerhead that I cleaned last week - completely covered with bubble algae over teh entire grate.  

 

I ran it in Hydrogen Peroxide and water for 20  minutes today - but I'm sure the bubbles will re-appear again.

 

The best way to defeat Bubble algae is to never let it enter your tank in the first place.  

 

Quarantine / quarantine / quarantine

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tank is still alive - have no problem getting rid of it, but still hanging onto it for mature rocks at the moment. 


The past week, I cleaned some more rock - and finally got a fairly rough cleaning on all 4 rocks in tank and took a ton  of Bubble Algae out of tank.  Here's some pics

 

IMG_20220830_164123.thumb.jpg.967aaeae0148c7e7f5936049860633fa.jpg

 

Debris from 2nd rock above.

 

IMG_20220905_124551.thumb.jpg.53172b725b157ce33cbfcdf4e6f0543e.jpg

 

Most of Rock 3 and 4 I cleaned today 

 

 

 

IMG_20220905_141611.thumb.jpg.2b052c83d8cfed65b6df784ef1cf9b37.jpg

 

Mostly cleaned rock - without wiping down front glass of sSW residue.

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I cleaned my snails of BA manually and used small pipette to douse with Hydrogen peroxide.  Not sure if I had it on long enough b/c I didn't want to harm my snails out of the water too long. 

 

Also found these wierd soft tissue ( I thought at the time to be sponges ) in between my 2 cleaned rocks from today.  I pulled one out and the rest I left in there as I didn't want to kill off a healthy organism that may be beneficial. 

 

IMG_20220905_141651.thumb.jpg.62b6b5cb4249d2a130497eb2ce3c8233.jpg

 

Tank view of suspected sponge that fell out of rocks when cleaning.  It was green in color.  Curious what it might be.

 

IMG_20220905_141755.thumb.jpg.bd1859f3f130ee63e2788e5f16bb6239.jpg


Removed for closer examination One side ( YIKES )

 

IMG_20220905_141812.thumb.jpg.a9007bf2ad7307f86a3c2a653c15b527.jpg

 

Other side of suspected sponge ( Yikes again... )

 

Looks to me like one of my Emerald Crab had pulled off a few colonies and hauled them into his favorite hiding place.  I have 5 - 7 of these still sanwdwiched between 2 medium sized rocks.   Thinkin I need to remove them...What do you think?

 

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The 2 rocks let out alot of detrius when I rinsed them with fresh saltwater in sink.  Tank had alot of detrius stirred up so I hooked up HOB filter with some filter floss and turned back on Protein skimmer. 

 

I saw a little bubble algae loosened that found some places to land in sand.    Tried to remove as mch as I could see with turkey baster..  I may try and do this again more thoroughly with fresh sand and a 20 gallon to landing.I really do want my clown to have more space to swim.  The 10 gal is pretty small for him.  

 

Also - I have never added any pods to my tank and wondering if they could maybe help fight back my BA issue and keep it in check or help rid myself of it alltogether. 

 

BA still sucks btw

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Worth adding that my Clownfish hated me messing withhis Home cave.  He hid for about an hour after the cleaning.  Also - Trying to fit rocks together in the same shape they are removed iis always a challenge.  Never can get it quite right - but close enough is best I could do.

 

My Talbot damsel didn't seem to be phased by the cleaning at all.  He was swimming the tank exploring the entire time.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/5/2022 at 3:43 PM, Jakesaw said:

The 2 rocks let out alot of detrius when I rinsed them with fresh saltwater in sink.  Tank had alot of detrius stirred up so I hooked up HOB filter with some filter floss and turned back on Protein skimmer. 

Too bad you lost those sponges!  (That was the "yikes" right?)

 

You shouldn't get getting detritus buildup like you're describing – it starves the coral of potential nutients!

 

The tank I just took down was my original setup from 10+ years ago.  Even after so may years running, there was NO detritus hiding anywhere, not even under the sand.

 

Including the HOB filter, what does the tank have for flow right now?

 

Obviously keep the skimmer on.  What media, if any, is in the HOB?

 

On 9/5/2022 at 3:43 PM, Jakesaw said:

Looks to me like one of my Emerald Crab had pulled off a few colonies and hauled them into his favorite hiding place.

There's a little bit of literature available on the Mithrax crab....this is their M.O.  They hide.  Usually under calcerous algae, but a coral will work.  Not very ideal cleanup crew....but they work out sometimes.

 

On 9/5/2022 at 3:43 PM, Jakesaw said:

Also - I have never added any pods to my tank and wondering if they could maybe help fight back my BA issue and keep it in check or help rid myself of it alltogether. 

How's the tank's cleanup up crew right now?  What's in there?

 

On 9/5/2022 at 3:50 PM, Jakesaw said:

Worth adding that my Clownfish hated me messing withhis Home cave. 

😅 You're lucky he didn't try to take your arm off!  (He's build for it, and clowns are a little bit known for it!)

image.png.08e451ed0a27d9c9db4a0fb5b386dbd7.png

 

On 9/5/2022 at 3:50 PM, Jakesaw said:

Also - Trying to fit rocks together in the same shape they are removed iis always a challenge.  Never can get it quite right - but close enough is best I could do.

That's why CUC is so important....they do the work in those spaces WITHOUT the need for so much disruption. 👍

 

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