High Tide Aquatics

Battling bubble algae // Good time to reboot?

thesassyindian

thesassyindian

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Folks,
So I’ve been battling bubble algae in my tank due to my own negligence with delaying water changes.

I am considering resorting to Vibrant since I currently don’t have any SPS in the tank.

The other option I am strongly considering, is hard resetting the tank with new rock and sand, since my main arch is being taken over by GSP and Green Hairy Mushrooms.

Is changing out the rocks part-by-part an option in a 13gal nano?

What are your opinions?
 
I have had great success with emerald crabs taking care of bubble algae. Would probably only need 1-2 in a tank that small and a few weeks of time.
 
thesassyindian said:
Folks,
So I’ve been battling bubble algae in my tank due to my own negligence with delaying water changes.

I am considering resorting to Vibrant since I currently don’t have any SPS in the tank.

The other option I am strongly considering, is hard resetting the tank with new rock and sand, since my main arch is being taken over by GSP and Green Hairy Mushrooms.

Is changing out the rocks part-by-part an option in a 13gal nano?

What are your opinions?
Click to expand...
Emerald or pitho crabs. Water changes seem to do little to abate the issue.
 
You can take out and clean up 1 rock at a time. Just don’t do more than half or so at a time so you have plenty of bacterial filter remaining. Putting the rocks back in after cleaning is the more risky part since stuff will be dead on/in there, go slow.

Water changes are not going to fix the problem.

With your small tank size I personally would just manually clean/scrape every inch and repeat as needed to knock it back. Including the mushrooms you don’t want.

I don’t have experience with Vibrant. It’s basically a non-reef-safe algaeicide that was repackaged and misrepresented to the community to sell bottles. That said, some people swear by it.
 
If you have sand, I wouldn’t worry about taking the rocks out and scrubbing them all at once. You’ll have plenty of bacteria in the sand. Plus the die off that will happen with the rocks out of the tank will be minimal especially if you scrub them in a bin/bucket that has saltwater in it.

If you’re replacing with new mined rock (like Marco rock), I wouldn’t worry about replacing all the rock at once if you keep the sand. Even less concern if you have bio media as well.

If you’re going to use live rock or any rock that has been in water before, then cure it before putting it in the tank. You don’t know how much organic material have built up in the rocks.
 
Oh, and one other thing. If you plan to keep any coral that has plugs or rock on it or pretty much any coral that has substrate that isn’t covered with tissue, it will be very difficult to not reintroduce bubble algae. It’s just a matter of if the right conditions exist to allow it to grow out of control again.
 
I have a bunch of cooked live rock at my place in Redwood City. I haven't been maintaining it, it's just in rubbermaids with water, but it's completely clean. I once through pods in it and maybe some macro.

If you want to trade rock some LMK.

If it were me I'd start with what @JVU said. Pull some, scrub the crap out of it, I'd even go so far as to use Hydrogen Peroxide on a toothbrush, rinse it in saltwater, put it back in. If a rock was really bad I'd swap it out or give it a peroxide soak for a bit.

I'd personally also do it incrementally, just to avoid the chance of an oops. I'd also make sure my CUC is still a good amount, and replace died off snails.

IME tuxedo urchins won't eat bubbles from bubble algae, but will eat it otherwise. I don't have any bubble algae except in the crevices I would expect urchins not to be able to get to.
 
I have a bunch of live rock (not enough for a whole tank … 3 or 4 medium prices… but it’ll have bacteria) in a 40 breeder I want to take down. It’s not pretty but I think you can scrub the gunk off. Free if you want it.
 
I can't rave enough about the emerald crabs from reefcleaners; they literally have a money-back guarantee if the emerald crabs don't eat the bubble algae. 5 of them did so well in my tank that after they all cleared the BA, there was so little algae that I think starvation caused them to die and now I am down to 1 lol.

Reef Cleaners - Clean up Crews and Macroalgae

We specialize in algae eating invertebrates, natural filtration, and algae solutions for saltwater aquariums.
www.reefcleaners.org www.reefcleaners.org
p.s. the bumblebee snails from them were also very effective against pest vermetids and hydroids
 
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