Dealing with pests: What chemical treatments do you use to treat unwanted algae?

[Peace River]

Dealing with pests: What chemical treatments do you use to treat unwanted algae?

Algae can be a pest and there are many ways to manage, reduce, or remove unwanted algae from our reef tanks. Often the process starts with manually removing the undesired algae and review the actions that led to the algae. Somewhere on the list of algae treatment may be the use of chemical treatments. Of course, there are various algae that respond to different treatments. What types of chemical treatments have you found to be effective and what algae have you use those solutions to impact? What methods have you found to be ineffective in fighting pest algae? If you choose not to use chemical algae treatments, please tell us why?

Bryopsis before treatment with Fluconazole; photo by @PiscesPower

 

[Jmas4]

I try not to use chemicals to treat any algae problem in my reef. Algae is caused by an underlying issue that a chemical won't fix long term. And chemicals will undoubtedly hurt beneficial algae, bacteria, and microorganisms.
However, sometimes no matter what you do, you have exhausted all other options. I have used chemiclean 3x in my entire time in this hobby. I will say that each time it was very successful. IMHO chemicals are a last resort.

 

[All_talk]

I vote there is no such thing as "Magic in a bottle". And watch this:




Reef Beef!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Its too easy to use chemicals which often cause other water issues.
Reduction of light, identifying source of issue, utilization of proper cleaner crew and use of RODI water and monitoring of phosphate levels will help.
Often phosphate is the culprit and nitrate is often blamed

 

[Aspect]

If algae is growing then corals should be too is the way I look at it. It's natural, just get the proper creatures to feed on the algae.

 

[exnisstech]

I voted reef flux because I used it once. I will never use it again though. While it did take care of the hair algae the tank became covered in cyano afterwards. I also voted chemiclean because I used it on the cyano and it worked great. Now I'm just waiting to see what is next I should have known better and do now so no reprimands needed please

 

[prodbot7]

I know not actually an algae treatment, but Dino X deserves a shoutout for saving my tank from Dinos… we battled what we thought was a normal algae forever until we finally broke out the scope and saw that we had a large population of Dinos. While correcting underlying conditions is obviously the long term course of action, we had to do something more immediate to save the tank inhabitants and this worked wonders.

 

[prodbot7]

I voted reef flux because I used it once. I will never use it again though. While it did take care of the hair algae the tank became covered in cyano afterwards. I also voted chemiclean because I used it on the cyano and it worked great. Now I'm just waiting to see what is next I should have known better and do now so no reprimands needed please

Haha no reprimanding from me bc I did *exactly* the same thing… and what came next for me was Dinos which made all the cleaning crew super lethargic and ineffective… ran dino x which worked like a charm and now that the cleaner crew has pep in their step again all seems to be going well.

 

[design.maddie]

Look at that! BOOOM!!! None. I am pretty proud of the community for that vote.

 

[ManWithAClam]

i just lower my nutrients a bit and buy some extra turbo snails. has worked pretty well for GHA and Bryopsis

 

[Reefvision]

I have used chemiclean, and hydrogen peroxide but really think it’s more of a bandaid for a bigger issue . In my case I needed to get balance of all bio inputs and exports to see good results.

 

[EugeneVan]

Spot-treat algae

1. Fill a small syringe with 10 mL of regular hydrogen peroxide
2. Shut off all flow and wait for the water to become totally still
3. Treat a patch of algae at it's base – 1-2 square inches in size
4. Wait 10 minutes and and turn the systems's flow back on
5. That patch will be toast

You can probable treat at least 2 patches per day and you might be fine leaving the pumps off for longer – but consider both options experimental and GO SLOWLY in those directions.

 

[vtecintegra]

I had a big out break of bubble algae. Dosed algae fix marine for three weeks, scraped as much as I could (it was starting to flake off), and a couple weeks later it's gone.

 

[BlingityBling]

I've used Chemiclean for red slime very succesfully for two new tank start ups. No issues, no recurring cyano. I have five tanks total so why it happened in two and not the other three I couldn't say... about to start a sixth tank, if cyano appears early on I'll hit it again without fear. I've never had cyano develop after a tank has matured so can't speak to that.

 

[tee89]

I have used all of these products and learned some tough lessons. I had decent results but I dont think its worth the risk. Fluconazole, treatment worked but came at a cost of losing some torches, this was after underdosing. Used vibrant, never lost anything, however it triggered a cyano bloom. Used chemiclean to counter that and then back to square number one of dealing with GHA. Its a vicious cycle. For GHA best solution IME is to keep low phosphates, bryopsis is tough and if you introduced it, I guess you'd have to live with it, never seen any inhabitant touch bryopsis.

 

[coraldreams]

So I used reeflux and the algea is 80 percent gone. The problem is it was gone too quickly and I had no nutrient export method. I got everything under control again with scrubbing and water changes. No more reef roids I think that was the fuel source. No more chemical fixes too drastic and causes other issues

 

[coraldreams]

So I used reeflux and the algea is 80 percent gone. The problem is it was gone too quickly and I had no nutrient export method. I got everything under control again with scrubbing and water changes. No more reef roids I think that was the fuel source. No more chemical fixes too drastic and causes other issues

Forgot to mention euphillia hate flucozanole

 

[Cheezle]

Reef Flux to deal with a massive bryopsis outbreak and Chemiclean to deal with the red slime that came afterwards. I've used Reef Flux 3 times for bryopsis and Chemiclean once.

 

[LPS Bum]

Currently dosing H202 (heavily) to try and combat dinos in my new reef. And running a small UV. Not having much success though.

 

[LPS Bum]

I voted reef flux because I used it once. I will never use it again though. While it did take care of the hair algae the tank became covered in cyano afterwards. I also voted chemiclean because I used it on the cyano and it worked great. Now I'm just waiting to see what is next I should have known better and do now so no reprimands needed please

Agreed.

No one should be reprimanding anyone for the reefing choices they make. There are way too many self described experts on these forums who are more than happy to shame anyone who doesn't agree with them. We're all just doing the best we can.