High Tide Aquatics

toothbrushing rocks?

JRocha

JRocha

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I have had these rocks in my tank for over 3 years now. I used to toothbrush my rock back when I first started. My rocks were always clean. Now I have a turf algae problem and my fowlers and chevron tang can only do so much. my nitrates stay about 20ppm and no matter how much I change the water and filters it stays the same. I was bored yesterday and decided to use a turkey baster and blast my rocks. man so much crap(detritus) shot out from the rocks. was nasty. clouded my tank pretty bad. anyway if I toothbrush my rock will this help get rid of my nitrates and turf algae? hate to sound like a newbie but was wondering if anyone toothbrushes their rock or if there is any ill effect? I have plenty of powerheads and 1 seaswirl. about to have 2 seaswirls soon. but somehow the crap just sits there. and yes I have a euro reef rs250 skimmer.
 
If it is indeed red turf algae (not red cotton candy algae), I have had tremendous results with turbo snails, in two different tanks. I notice the smaller turbo snails do have a hard time rasping through super thick carpets of red turf algae, so some manual removal may be in order to thin things out before the turbos can go to work. They're only a couple dollars normally, so I'd give them a try before you you re-brush all of your rocks. Best of luck -it is a nasty little algae!
 
well its not red turf. its green. and its not hair algae cause it is a lot thicker than hair algae. its what the fowlers is eating in the pic
fowlerspics187.jpg
 
got a few but not enough for my 240. but i don't think they would help cleaning off the rocks all the way. I want to get rid of the detritus as well. the rocks don't look it but when I blasted them with a turkey baster a big cloud of detritus comes off. I just think if the detritus is gone then the other algae can not feed off of it.
 
I baste off my rocks regularly to prevent the build up of detritus :)
If you only do it once in a while, I'd imagine you'd be kicking up much more at a given time, than if you were to baste as a regular part of your weekly maintenance.
 
FWIW, In my experience a toothbrush has done absolutely nothing to red turf algae. I don't think anything short of a really hard wire brush would remove it.
 
well its a green turf algae and yeah it does nothing to red or green turf. rock gets a little cleaner.just tried it.
 
I have some deep dark red w/ blue highlight algae on my tonga branch rock. I haven't tried to remove it because I kind of like it, but I think at some point it will be kind of invasive, none of my clean up crew (emerald crap, turbo snail, ceriths, astrea, and hermits) eat it. I am kind of curious what type it is, I think it has runners in the rock and it gets maybe 1/4" inch.
 
mine stays very short but thats cause my fowlers loves it. I used to have 7 tuxedo urchins and they decided to stop eating algae and start eating my pulsating pom poms and zoos. so I never tried any other urchins. do you have an urchin in mind? I doubt I'm gonna go the torch route. I have way too much rock to try and pull them out. I don't really want emeralds cause people say when they get big they tend to eat fish, but I think my marine bettas and my dwarf golden moray might get to them first before they can do that. I have well over 100 trochus snails the real black footed ones and they don't do much. I have a few mexican turbos, but I want to try more to see what happens.
 
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