Bryopsis Cure: My Battle With Bryopsis Using Fluconazole

[revhtree]

Very encouraging results so far! How does all the other spots of bryopsis look?

 

[NCreefguy]

Very encouraging results so far! How does all the other spots of bryopsis look?

All of them are almost gone. Just a few strands left that are either white or turning white. I don't think that any of it will last longer than another day or two judging by the looks of it.

 

[Pongo]

Just to let people know fluconazole has a low solubility.

Long ago when I was a pharmacy tech we used to use ethyl alcohol to get fat soluble ingredients into solution before diluting with RO water.

It might be worth a try to use a very small amount of grain alcohol first and see if you can get it fully dissolved, then proceed with geometric dilution.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Long ago when I was a pharmacy tech we used to use ethyl alcohol to get fat soluble ingredients into solution before diluting with RO water.

It might be worth a try to use a very small amount of gain alcohol first and see if you can get it fully disolved, then proceed with geometric dilution.

Might be worth a shot if anyone doses NOPOx (methanol) to try this with their daily NOPOx dose to see if it improves it's soluability

 

[Woolleson]

Has anybody purchased this in the UK. Looking around can only see 150 mg capsules for £2.50 each. I run a 350L system so aprox 300L net. My calculations need about 1400mg.

Any links to a bulk buy online store?

 

[Pongo]

This is from Wikipedia, but I believe it to be accurate.

"In a powder form, it appears as a white crystalline powder, and it is very slightly soluble in water and soluble in alcohol."

 

[NCreefguy]

Has anybody purchased this in the UK. Looking around can only see 150 mg capsules for £2.50 each. I run a 350L system so aprox 300L net. My calculations need about 1400mg.

Any links to a bulk buy online store?

Hopefully someone can chime in and help you out. I've only used Payless Pet Products to get mine.

 

[NCreefguy]

Might be worth a shot if anyone doses NOPOx (methanol) to try this with their daily NOPOx dose to see if it improves it's soluability

Yeah that might work. Although my tank gets an outbreak of the brown slime nastiness if I go near it with Vodka. But it doesn't mind Vinegar.

 

[Woolleson]

Hopefully someone can chime in and help you out. I've only used Payless Pet Products to get mine.

Thanks. I looked at PPP but don't want to import. Did that with vibrant and got hit by import duty [emoji34].

Hopefully will get a source [emoji106]

 

[bubbaque]

This might of been answered but do you need to get a prescription to get this?

 

[Rick.45cal]

Yeah that might work. Although my tank gets an outbreak of the brown slime nastiness if I go near it with Vodka. But it doesn't mind Vinegar.

Mine is the complete opposite. If I dose a vinegar or VSV mixture I get the brown crud with cyano thrown in for good measure! Funny how probiotic systems work

 

[Rick.45cal]

This might of been answered but do you need to get a prescription to get this?

Not if you buy "Fish Flucon"

If you get it for your dog, or you, then yes you do!

 

[NCreefguy]

This might of been answered but do you need to get a prescription to get this?

Normally Fluconazole does require a prescription if its for human use. But you can buy a huge list of these types of meds if they are being used to treat fish.

 

[NCreefguy]

@Rick.45cal beat me to it


So how's the tank looking Rick? Any changes yet?

 

[Rick.45cal]

The really long strands have been progressively turning tranparent, some ends look shrivelled and white in places. The lettuce nudibranchs are seriously chowing down on it now. Such a satisfying sight!

Everything else looks happy as can be and it's business as usual! The only thing that I don't like is that I have shut down my continuous waterchange system, so I know everything is gonna be a little cross at me for that. It's ok, in a couple weeks I'll turn it back on and set it up to make a 20% waterchange and roll from there.

I dialed my skimmer level back so it is skimming very dry, dust is collecting in the collection cup. I also removed my carbon. I'll start skimming again in a couple days. (I know you don't have to do it, but nothing is gonna be sorry they got extra stuff to eat this week). I'll keep track of my nutrients and adjust my NOPOx dosage accordingly and I think we will be good to go!

Incidentally this thread is about to blow up like the Vibrant thread did, as soon as you take that picture of that frag all by itself, with no evil satan weed around it. It won't be long and this thread will be 125 pages long

 

[NCreefguy]

The really long strands have been progressively turning tranparent, some ends look shrivelled and white in places. The lettuce nudibranchs are seriously chowing down on it now. Such a satisfying sight!

Everything else looks happy as can be and it's business as usual! The only thing that I don't like is that I have shut down my continuous waterchange system, so I know everything is gonna be a little cross at me for that. It's ok, in a couple weeks I'll turn it back on and set it up to make a 20% waterchange and roll from there.

I dialed my skimmer level back so it is skimming very dry, dust is collecting in the collection cup. I also removed my carbon. I'll start skimming again in a couple days. (I know you don't have to do it, but nothing is gonna be sorry they got extra stuff to eat this week). I'll keep track of my nutrients and adjust my NOPOx dosage accordingly and I think we will be good to go!

Incidentally this thread is about to blow up like the Vibrant thread did, as soon as you take that picture of that frag all by itself, with no evil satan weed around it. It won't be long and this thread will be 125 pages long

Sounds like everything is moving right along. Big changes are headed your way, probably around day 4.

I hope the frag will be all clean in a day or so. It has less strands now than it did at noon so it won't be long.I will definitely post the pics.

Also I'm starting to notice a little change in some of my other hair algae. Some of it is actually getting a somewhat white look to it as well.
Too soon to tell whats going on there but I'll keep an eye on it too. It would not hurt my feelings at all if it cleared my tank of all nuisance algae.

 

[Mark costa]

First, I want to say that I am in no way shape or form telling anyone that they should try this in their tank. Yes Fluconazole can be used as an anti-bacterial med for fish diseases and I haven't seen any adverse reactions from using it, but I just don't want anyone to come back and say that they killed their fish/corals or inverts and blame me. This was not my discovery as I am just following what some others have already done. If you try this it is at your own risk and don't shoot the messenger.


Okay so like I have said in another Fluconazole thread,I always inspect and QT everything before it goes into my tank. I had a several frags in qt for a few weeks and all seamed fine. Before transferring them to my DT I brushed off what looked like regular green surface algae and thought nothing of it.Well after about a month all three frags had a healthy helping of Bryopsis growing on them.
I've had to deal with this years ago so I know what kind of a struggle it can be. I did not want to just sit around and hope this cleared itself up because I knew this could get really bad.I had a tank full of Bryopsis years ago and tried everything I could to get rid of it and it just kept spreading everywhere.
Finally after gallons and gallons (system was almost 400gls)of Kent Tech M I was able to melt the Bryopsis away but it was no picnic.

Now after learning that Kent Tech M has changed and doesn't work anymore I read about some people having success against Bryopsis using Vibrant.I tried Vibrant for a couple of months and it did damage the Bryopsis fern/fan leaves but it wouldn't kill it off completely. I know people say to just give it more time but let me show you what can happen when you give Bryopsis time in your tank.(BTW I'm not knocking Vibrant or @UWC I think he has been a stand up guy on this forum and some people have had great success using their products)

They did not call me the Bryopsis King for no reason........

It was like this across the entire tank. Notice for you tang lovers out there that mine had no interest what so ever in eating any of the Bryopsis.If they would have kept the rocks picked clean this would not have reached being the forest that you see.I have more pics but it's ugly and I think you get the picture.As you can see,this would be my reason for NOT wanting to wait too long on this.

Anyway this brings me up to using Fluconazole. After searching the good ole web I found that some people(some over seas) were using Fluconazole in a one time dose to kill off Byropsis. At first I thought that this was too good to be true.I mean most people were saying that their tanks were Bryopsis free in about 10-15 days give or take a few days. Then they started posting before and after pics and also saying that they had not lost any fish or corals!! OMG sign me up! I thought. Well after doing a little more research I found out that Fluconazole can be used to treat infections/diseases in fish and that the dosage I would need to use was considered somewhat "safe" for the fish so I placed an order..

There were two different dosages that were being used. One was 9mg/L and the other was 150mg/30L which is 5mg/L. I have 200 gallons of total water volume in this system which is 757L. So 757L x 9mg/L would be a dose of 6813mg. 757L x 5mg/L would be a dose of 3785mg.
I went with 4000mg so it was 20mg per gallon.
Everyone was seeing their results when using the lower dose so I went with the lower dose.

*Also note that if I were using Fluconazole to treat my fish for infections I would need to dose this same amount every 24hrs for no less than 5 days but not more than 10 days.

This made me feel somewhat better about using it because this would be a one time dose and not building up 5-10 times as much in my aquarium over the course of 5-10 days.

So let the battle begin!!

Before I dosed the tank I turned off my actinic lighting,changed my filter socks from 200 micron to mesh filter socks,turned off the UV channels on my Radions,removed my GFO/GAC filters and removed my skimmer cup.

I apologize in advance for my blurry pics as photography is not my strong suit.

Before the treatment started...

After 1 day of treatment...

After 2 Days of treatment...

So far 2 days into the treatment none of my fish,corals or inverts are showing any signs of stress. More info and pics to follow...

Some time ago was in hospital paid lfs store for water change and he used same stuff you are. I had90 gal three days later with skimmer off whole time did another water change 2 wks later gone no coral loss or fish. Good luck

 

[rockworm]

I posted a shot of some bryopsis yesterday. I had touched up the photo with Lightroom to try to get it closer to the colours I was seeing. Fortunately, I retained the original. I used the same camera settings, same lighting and same time of day (did not even clean the glass, lol) because the change from yesterday to today is dramatic. Yesterday, most of the tips were white. Today most all bryopsis is white. I am surprised how quickly this stuff works.
Yesterday

Today

 

[NCreefguy]

I posted a shot of some bryopsis yesterday. I had touched up the photo with Lightroom to try to get it closer to the colours I was seeing. Fortunately, I retained the original. I used the same camera settings, same lighting and same time of day (did not even clean the glass, lol) because the change from yesterday to today is dramatic. Yesterday, most of the tips were white. Today most all bryopsis is white. I am surprised how quickly this stuff works.
Yesterday

Today

That's a beautiful sight!!! It's going to start breaking up and falling apart now!

 

[rockworm]

That's a beautiful sight!!! It's going to start breaking up and falling apart now!

Yup. The floaties have already started. I turned the skimmer on but I don't have filter socks. I am really enjoying watchimg it die. [emoji3]