hydrogen peroxide dosing as an algae outbreak treatment

[Zoa.Mania]

Hello everyone,
I recently learned that h2o2 can be used as a full tank treatment against algae outbreaks.

I'm dealing with pest lettuce algae and valonia patches for quite some time, every now and then I clean my frags, rocks and frag racks but it sure comes back.
Since I have quite a lot of frags I'm pretty much tired of this. The algae suffocates the small colonies plus it's not looking too good as well.

Clean up crew is limited to a lawn mower blenny, conch and turbo snails, and one urchin since my country has a very short white list and my tank is too small to hold a foxface plus I had a bad luck with kole tang that munched on my zoanthids.

Tank population:
2 green chromis
1 green mandarin
1 loan mower blenny
1 Magnifica gobby
2 fire shrimps
1 urchin
Few conch snails
Tons of turbo snails

As for corals:
Tons of zoanthids and mushrooms
1 green slimer acro
1 red cap monti
1 chalice

Po4 is at 0.04 for a long time (I use phos004 by fauna marine)
No3 is stable at 10-15ppm

So I thought about this h2o2 full tank treatment, I gathered some info from searching the forum but I feel like I still have some gaps.

From what I found the formula goes like this:
1ml of h2o2 (3%?) per 10 gallons after lights out with no flow for 20-30 minutes for 5 days straight

let me know if I got everything right above please

-Does this treatment works against valonia? (I know it probably works against lettuce since I used it in frag dips)
-Does the 1ml/10gal goes for tank volume or system volume? (considering I need to turn off flow I guess it's tank size)
-Do I need to dose some bacteria as well?
-Do I dose it straight to the tank or maybe mix with some tank water and then pour it to the tank?
-Have I missed anything?

Thanks in advance for any advice

 

[Kmst80]

You need to fix the root cause of your algae problem.
I don't think you will kill valonia with h2o2 but i haven't tried. I have it in my 200 gal and nothing eats it but its not getting out of control either.
If you want to try hydrogen peroxide why not treat the frags outside of your tank?...here is an awesome guide of how to

Peroxide dipping guidelines (for corals)

A while back Justin Credabel published this chart detailing the concentration of hydrogen peroxide appropriate for dipping various genera of corals. I've used these guidelines myself a few times to remove algae from coral frags and it's been quite effective. Justin Credabel's hydrogen...

humble.fish

I did the dipping on hairalgae and it was successfull but eventually came back, until i fixed the problem in itself.
When i had to much valonia i did disloge it and suck it up at waterchanges.

 

[Koty]

Your parameters are fine. Adding H2O2 is adding free radicals, which are toxic to all living things, especially those who use light for photosynthesis that have to deal with radicals that are byproducts of this process. I would try the smallest Scopas tang you can get. They are not so colorful until you look closely...IME They eat almost all kinds of algae. Also, Algae do not cause so much damage that justifies H2O2 or antibiotics or all other kinds of sneak oils that will probably slow the maturation of your tank.

 

[gbroadbridge]

Hello everyone,
I recently learned that h2o2 can be used as a full tank treatment against algae outbreaks.

I'm dealing with pest lettuce algae and valonia patches for quite some time, every now and then I clean my frags, rocks and frag racks but it sure comes back.
Since I have quite a lot of frags I'm pretty much tired of this. The algae suffocates the small colonies plus it's not looking too good as well.

Clean up crew is limited to a lawn mower blenny, conch and turbo snails, and one urchin since my country has a very short white list and my tank is too small to hold a foxface plus I had a bad luck with kole tang that munched on my zoanthids.

Tank population:
2 green chromis
1 green mandarin
1 loan mower blenny
1 Magnifica gobby
2 fire shrimps
1 urchin
Few conch snails
Tons of turbo snails

As for corals:
Tons of zoanthids and mushrooms
1 green slimer acro
1 red cap monti
1 chalice

Po4 is at 0.04 for a long time (I use phos004 by fauna marine)
No3 is stable at 10-15ppm

So I thought about this h2o2 full tank treatment, I gathered some info from searching the forum but I feel like I still have some gaps.

From what I found the formula goes like this:
1ml of h2o2 (3%?) per 10 gallons after lights out with no flow for 20-30 minutes for 5 days straight

let me know if I got everything right above please

-Does this treatment works against valonia? (I know it probably works against lettuce since I used it in frag dips)
-Does the 1ml/10gal goes for tank volume or system volume? (considering I need to turn off flow I guess it's tank size)
-Do I need to dose some bacteria as well?
-Do I dose it straight to the tank or maybe mix with some tank water and then pour it to the tank?
-Have I missed anything?

Thanks in advance for any advice

The best way of controlling pest algae once you have nutrients under control is the use of animals that eat it.

As another poster mentioned, Scopas Tangs are useful for control of Valonia.

I do not believe H2O2 should be used outside of a controlled dip.

 

[Baka Mop]

I'm currently dosing H2O2 for a different reason, but I can at least tell you what it's done to some algae. For what it's worth, it did nothing to the film algae that grows on the glass and rocks, but I also had a few nasty tufts of hair algae growing on my galaxea colony, and I can tell you that it's completely cleared up.

Just know that you could lose some inverts and MAYBE some soft corals if you do higher concentrations. I lost a fire shrimp and cleaner shrimp, but I can't be sure that it was because of the dosing, since I still have 1 cleaner and a pistol shrimp alive. Humblefish also suggests you run carbon the entire time you're dosing.

I'm dosing at the edge of what people would consider reef safe at 1ml per 3 gallons, following a dosing schedule on the humblefish forums, to try to get rid of either a velvet or brook outbreak in my tank that killed over half my fish, and it seems to be working so far, because I've added four chromis to the tank two weeks ago and they are thriving. So it definitely isn't snake oil. My biofilter has not seen a noticeable change and ammonia is not detectable, but I think my pod population has drastically decreased since I've started dosing, but that's a pretty easy to fix once I'm done with dosing.

 

[Zoa.Mania]

You need to fix the root cause of your algae problem.
I don't think you will kill valonia with h2o2 but i haven't tried. I have it in my 200 gal and nothing eats it but its not getting out of control either.
If you want to try hydrogen peroxide why not treat the frags outside of your tank?...here is an awesome guide of how to

Peroxide dipping guidelines (for corals)

A while back Justin Credabel published this chart detailing the concentration of hydrogen peroxide appropriate for dipping various genera of corals. I've used these guidelines myself a few times to remove algae from coral frags and it's been quite effective. Justin Credabel's hydrogen...

humble.fish

I did the dipping on hairalgae and it was successfull but eventually came back, until i fixed the problem in itself.
When i had to much valonia i did disloge it and suck it up at waterchanges.

The root cause of the problem is that its everywhere in the system,
I occasionally treat the frags with h2o2 outside the tank, but I'm tired of this routine as this lettuce algae sure comes back since it's in the system. so I thought a whole system treatment would do the job once and for all.

Your parameters are fine. Adding H2O2 is adding free radicals, which are toxic to all living things, especially those who use light for photosynthesis that have to deal with radicals that are byproducts of this process. I would try the smallest Scopas tang you can get. They are not so colorful until you look closely...IME They eat almost all kinds of algae. Also, Algae do not cause so much damage that justifies H2O2 or antibiotics or all other kinds of sneak oils that will probably slow the maturation of your tank.

First things first, I'll look into that Scopas tang it could be a good option.
this type of algae does cause much damage since it suffocates small frags for its faster growth rate.
The only thing is I have a 16G frag tank connected to that system and I don't know how to manage to "naturally" keep it clean

The best way of controlling pest algae once you have nutrients under control is the use of animals that eat it.

As another poster mentioned, Scopas Tangs are useful for control of Valonia.

I do not believe H2O2 should be used outside of a controlled dip.

thanks, I'll look into that Scopas tang solution.

I'm currently dosing H2O2 for a different reason, but I can at least tell you what it's done to some algae. For what it's worth, it did nothing to the film algae that grows on the glass and rocks, but I also had a few nasty tufts of hair algae growing on my galaxea colony, and I can tell you that it's completely cleared up.

Just know that you could lose some inverts and MAYBE some soft corals if you do higher concentrations. I lost a fire shrimp and cleaner shrimp, but I can't be sure that it was because of the dosing, since I still have 1 cleaner and a pistol shrimp alive. Humblefish also suggests you run carbon the entire time you're dosing.

I'm dosing at the edge of what people would consider reef safe at 1ml per 3 gallons, following a dosing schedule on the humblefish forums, to try to get rid of either a velvet or brook outbreak in my tank that killed over half my fish, and it seems to be working so far, because I've added four chromis to the tank two weeks ago and they are thriving. So it definitely isn't snake oil. My biofilter has not seen a noticeable change and ammonia is not detectable, but I think my pod population has drastically decreased since I've started dosing, but that's a pretty easy to fix once I'm done with dosing.

The algae on the glass don't bother me as much.
I'll keep everything you said in mind


Thanks to all of you for your good advice!
I'm looking into that Scopas tang solution as I always prefer a natural solution

 

[Magic031707]

You need to fix the root cause of your algae problem.
I don't think you will kill valonia with h2o2 but i haven't tried. I have it in my 200 gal and nothing eats it but its not getting out of control either.
If you want to try hydrogen peroxide why not treat the frags outside of your tank?...here is an awesome guide of how to

Peroxide dipping guidelines (for corals)

A while back Justin Credabel published this chart detailing the concentration of hydrogen peroxide appropriate for dipping various genera of corals. I've used these guidelines myself a few times to remove algae from coral frags and it's been quite effective. Justin Credabel's hydrogen...

humble.fish

I did the dipping on hairalgae and it was successfull but eventually came back, until i fixed the problem in itself.
When i had to much valonia i did disloge it and suck it up at waterchanges.

I've heard a Scopas Tang will eat Valonia. Don't know if that is a option.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

i dipped 3% h202 at 3 parts seawater to 1 part h202. There were no ill effects from what i observed. This was AFTER i dipped the zoas for 10 min in revive.

I hope to avoid valonia and other algae’s with this method.