Bryopsis.... The battle/struggle is real!

S

Ssindt

Premium Member
So after seeing many people post on other forums about getting bryopsis and struggling to stop it. I reached out to a friend also battling bryopsis to see if we can stop it. This was over a month ago. This is from the start till now of what we have done. I?wanted to try different actions to see if we can stop it. There has to be some way to stop it, I'm tired of people losing money on this algae.Base of line of the test.?Tank has several frags covered along with rock and sand.?The first action we checked all levels.cal 460alk 9.5ph 8.0mag 1050no4 .5 Red Sea?po4 .15 Hanna checkerFirst week we?added no3/po4 to get phosphate and nitrates lower. Cut feeding back to once ever 2 days. Also ordered Kent tech M and started dosing to rasie mag over 1700/1800. We raised mag 100 ppm over 7 days getting it to 1700ppm with in the first week. Corals all seemed fine bryopsis was still spreading. Testing N04 and P04 at the end of the week n0 .25 maybe less color wasnt easy to see and p04 was .05.?Second week still dosing no/po week N04 .00 and P04 .03. Mag 1800ppm corals all seem to be happy. Bryopsis shows little to no change. After reading tons of forums and articles it seems Kent has changed Tech M and it hasn't been affective for a while now. Started dipping Zoas in 10ml to 50 ml of peroxide, we won't dip sps or chalices read it will do more harm.?Third week still dosing no/po week N04 .00 and P04 .03. Mag 1800ppm corals all seem to be happy. Bryopsis is gone on most zoa's that were dipped, ?Manual removal has put a dent in the growth. Not sure if high mag is also helping.?Fourth week still dosing no/po week N04 .00 and P04 .03. Mag 1800ppm corals all seem to be happy. Bryopsis is gone on most zoa's that were dipped, starting to see growth back on rocks and sand. Still ?searching came across a product by underwater creations called vibrant. So we ordered to give it shot. He is at the point of wanting to shut the tank down. It's getting frustrating. Also came across a some top crown snails that are said to possibly eat the bryopsis, we want to try to use vibrant at this point to see if it does work for us.?Fifth week (current time line) Vibrant came in the mail and we dosed per their instruction for tackling bryopsis. Per their instructions 2x dose a week for battling bryopsis. First dose is in the tank, I will keep updating any progress. I also dosed the stuff to my tank (it says it will prevent the glass from getting algae). So I will track the process of dosing and see what happens.?I've attached a picture of a zoa frag, chalice, and candy cane covered in bryopsis that we didn't dip to see if any changes occur.?
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Good post. ?FYI, Continuum is owned by Kent, who did the Kent Tech-M stuff years ago. ?His version will tackled bryopsis. And so will one product by Brightwell also will deal with it, and there seems to be some type of brotherhood partnership between Chris Brightwell and Continuum. ?So that's worth chasing down. ?I took a picture of their bottle at MACNA, but don't have it handy.
 
Sorry to hear about your troubles. ?I recently won a battle with nuisance algae, but it took a lot of manual removal. ?It was hard to say what algae I had, but it looked similar to what you have (hard to tell from pics). ?I was able to pull out a snail shell that was covered and dip it in peroxide which caused the algae to die, so I assume it was bryopsis. ?Here is what I did to get rid of ALL of it.When I started getting the algae, it was on a couple of rocks in a dead spot of the tank. ?I went on vacation for 3 weeks and when I came back it was all over the place including the sand. ?I vacuumed most of it off the sand during a water change as well as the long ones coming off the rocks. ?I got a sand sifting goby to keep the sand clean. ?He did a great job and keep it off the sand, but the rocks were getting out of control.Next, I pulled my biopellet reactor offline and added GFO. ?I also added Prime to my mixed saltwater in case I was adding fuel to my algae bloom fire. ?I continued to do weekly water changes using a strong siphon and a toothbrush to get the algae off the rocks. ?It would look good when I was done, but you could tell it was still growing. ?I also starting running 2 days with only the blue LEDs (no T5s) and then half of the T5s on (front and back on different days). ?I wanted to reduce the light in the tank. ?After a week of GFO and Carbon, I pulled the carbon and started NoPox at half what they recommended using a doser to add the full days amount slowly over 24 hours. ?It is important to have strong skimmer action during this part. ?My large Avast skimmate locker would fill twice a day for the first few days and I would replace with new saltwater. ?This slowed to one full locker a day for a week. ?A few days after starting the NoPox, I started to see the algae turn lighter in color. ?When I did my next siphon water change, it came off WAY easier. ?The next water change got the rest of it. ?Now my skimmer has slowed back down to normal and I have started to reduce the amount of NoPox being added daily.I am not sure which of these contributed the most to getting the algae gone, but I can tell you EVERYTHING was covered with it before I started. ?The only downside to this was that I lost a few LPS frags. ?I lost a torch and a hammer with a frogspawn not looking too good. ?My zoas lost their color, but my guess is that these guys are in shock from me taking their dirty water away.Keep us posted and good luck!
 
Posted by: melev?Good post. ?FYI, Continuum is owned by Kent, who did the Kent Tech-M stuff years ago. ?His version will tackled bryopsis. And so will one product by Brightwell also will deal with it, and there seems to be some type of brotherhood partnership between Chris Brightwell and Continuum. ?So that's worth chasing down. ?I took a picture of their bottle at MACNA, but don't have it handy.? ?We also read that contuninum could be an option. Might try that after using vibrant for a month or so.??
 
?I was skeptical about continuum after this post.??http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/man-vs-bryopsis-kents-continuum-and-vibrant-treatment-thread.262845/
 
H2O2, every single day until it stops coming back. ?Mine was a different similar mystery algae, and took a couple days before it even showed damage. ?Then took around a month for it to stop trying to grow back.Chaeto in the 'fuge started growing a lot faster a week or two after I started as the tank found a different way to consume the nutrients.
 
Where you dosing the tank with ?hydrogen peroxide? Sps or chalices in the system? And or what dose per gallon did you use??
 
Day 2 of Vibrant in the system. Some spots of bryopsis look white at the tips don't know if it's due to mag at 1800-1900 for a month plus vibrant. I will say water looks really clear the glass is still clean in my other tank that I'm testing also.?
 
Posted by: Ssindt?Where you dosing the tank with ?hydrogen peroxide? Sps or chalices in the system? And or what dose per gallon did you use??? ? said:
I put the H2O2 in a syringe or pipette, turn off all pumps so the water is still, and inject it directly into patches of algae in small quantities. ?I then waited 10 minutes and turned the pumps back on. ?You want the H2O2 to break down the algae where you put it, not swirl around the rest of the tank so much like using kalk on aiptasia you want to move slowly so as to not stir up the water.I started at 1 cc/10 gallons/day and slowly increased up to 10 cc/10 gallons (or 1 cc/gal). ?At this point I still wasn't seeing any harm to my livestock, but I was getting nervous (without any real reason) so I stopped increasing. ?After not too long that was enough to treat all of the algae in the tank daily so there wasn't a need to increase more. ?Once I started getting things under control I dosed the amount?needed to treat all algae spots in the tank, even if it was only 1 cc/10 gal. ?The important thing here is that most of the H2O2 was broken down in the algae mats, not free floating in the tank water. ?As a point of comparison there were less bubbles forming on non-algae items in the tank during this than when I dump 2 cc/10 gallons directly into the water with pumps running.?Most patches of algae had to be hit for two or three days in a row before it would take them out. ?Pretty much everything tried to come back once or twice. ?As soon as a patch started turning from white (dead) back to green, or a single sprig tried growing out of a crack or root in the rocks it got hit again, daily, until it was gone. ?It was depressing at first seeing little progress, but after the first week there was visible progress in a couple areas and I slowly moved around the tank until it was clear.I don't think I had any chalices at the time, but there were a few SPS pieces, a bunch of LPS (acans, euphilia, duncans), zoas, nems, etc. ?Fish were a pair of clowns.I saw zero negative effects on the fish or coral.
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I'm not finding a picture, but my tank had so much algae you literally could not see the rocks. ?It was like a moss scape in a freshwater tank but with little corals sticking out for a year. ?This was after manual removal daily for a month, various other chemical treatment attempts, vodka dosing, etc.
 
Day 3?bryopsis isn't showing any signs of dying.?The other tank I dosed glass is growing algae so the claim to keep glass clean isn't holding up.?
 
Hi Ssindt,Maybe some of my experience with Bryopsis will help. ?I was at the point to a few years back to just shut the tank down as well. ?However, I was successful doing the following. ?I raised the mag to 1500 and nothing. ?So I bought a 2 little fishies Phosban reactor (150 model), ran phosban and then switched to rowaphos in it. I bought a bunch of tooth brushes with small heads on them for accessing most if not all the cracks and crevaces within the rocks. ?everyday I would scrub the hell out of the tank, including the wandering snails' shells of the junk. ?Vacuum it out with a syphon. As I was doing that, I was vacuuming out the sand bed. ?I was doing ~20% water changes every week. ?I finally got rid of it after a good month and and a half. ?But it was a daily chore as the stuff kept growning back. ?Remember the bryopsis is like a nutrient sink, along with the rocks and the sand. ?I am willing to bet, as the bryopis decays it releases the nutrients back into the tank. ?Also, it's probably leaching back into the tank from the rock and the sand bed if it hasn't been maintained diligently. ?I have never used NO/PO or any dosing type chemical, only the reactor media. ?I was changing the media out every 2 weeks, as i was trying to keep it as high of an absorbent capacity as I could. ?I switched to the rowaphos as I was reading it had a very high absorbent capacity. ?remember to not allow any of it to dry out or I think it will go bad. ?This is what worked for me, but I was on it everyday and it cleared up. ?I kept the reactor running, performed every other week 20% water changes, kept vacuuming out the sand bed and all stayed well until I had to take the tank down due to my job turning into a full time travel situation. Now that has stopped I will be setting up another tank in, hopefully, a year. ??Good Luck and Hope something I wrote about helps you. ?
 
?I messed it up it should've said day 4?now it's day five but forever reason this new format you cant edit posts on mobile with this new website :(..?But?nothing has has changed in hoping dosing vibrant next will ?start showing more changes.?Also this post is about vibrant and trying it out to see if their claim is true or they are just selling snake oil. But I really appreciate all the tips maybe after two months?of testing vibrant I'll hit it with peroxide and some other media.??
 
The below thread is following both Vibrant and Lithium treatments for Bryopsis. The Lithium treatment is supported by elemental water analysis and the experiment is quantitative. ?The Lithium test is in progress. ?It is interesting ?that the elemental water analysis found?a large (>10x) increase in Lithium associated with Kent Tech M dosing. ?http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/tech-ms-magic-bryopsis-killing-ingredient-lithium.200498/page-8[READ THE ENTIRE THREAD (8 pages).....IT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS but very interesting. ]
 
<p>Yeah that's one I was following I figured it be worth trying the vibrant. Read people had luck with it. I've read contuninum also has high levels of ?lithium.?
 
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