Late stages of my Valonia battle. Any recommendations?

[argiBK]

I've been battling Valonia in my tank for the better part of the last 6 months, had an epically bad infestation that I've managed to all but exterminate with dosing Vibrant weekly.

Thing is, it's gone from the visible rock surfaces, but I keep finding patches of the algae that appear to be protected by encrusting orange sponge. Whenever I've seen a patch, I remove manually, but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to catch it all (I'm assuming there are patches in inaccessible crevices within the rockwork).

Has anyone experienced this specific combo, Valonia + sponge? Did you find that the Valonia came back after you metered away from your eradication routine?

Also, for those of you who's fought the good fight against the green bubbles, did you get complete eradication? Or, were the late stages of the battle more like managing a long-term / chronic, albeit, minor nuisance?

I really just don't want a resurgence, but also want to stop the Vibrant and eventually restart my chaeto reactor and dosing phyto.

Thanks!

 

[MnFish1]

I've been battling Valonia in my tank for the better part of the last 6 months, had an epically bad infestation that I've managed to all but exterminate with dosing Vibrant weekly.

Thing is, it's gone from the visible rock surfaces, but I keep finding patches of the algae that appear to be protected by encrusting orange sponge. Whenever I've seen a patch, I remove manually, but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to catch it all (I'm assuming there are patches in inaccessible crevices within the rockwork).

Has anyone experienced this specific combo, Valonia + sponge? Did you find that the Valonia came back after you metered away from your eradication routine?

Also, for those of you who's fought the good fight against the green bubbles, did you get complete eradication? Or, were the late stages of the battle more like managing a long-term / chronic, albeit, minor nuisance?

I really just don't want a resurgence, but also want to stop the Vibrant and eventually restart my chaeto reactor and dosing phyto.

Thanks!

I have learned to live with 'little patches' - which I periodically manually remove. I had a big problem after a die off following a long power failure - which caused a lot of area covered with coral to be 'open' - and it just 'took over'. I tried crabs, etc - which did not seem to help. I believe that I have fish (or something) that eats it - because it only now grows in weird areas - like near the outflow - or the very top edges of the tank. I did use vibrant (one dose) - so not sure that did much.

It would be interesting (to me) to see a picture of the valonia/sponge combo? Hope this helps - glad that you were able to get rid of most of it.

 

[Dkmoo]

Emerald crabs works great.. it used to not work for me but I figured out the difference maker in my tank at least.. they dont go after bubbles if there are easier alternatives - such as the soft half-melted vibrant-treated gha. Esp since in my battle the vibrant couldn't keep up with new gha growth so there was always a good supply of easy gha for them

What finally worked for me, after months of this, believe it or not, is actually reef flux RX. After I used RX the gha completely disappeared in 1 week, which forced the emeralds to go after the bubble algae, which then disappeared completely a few weeks later. 3 month later now and im still 100% bubble free. The emeralds since them move onto the steady supply of gha diet and help keep them under control along with the rest of my CUC.

I have a lot of sponge too, don't seem to bother the emeralds and they just walk over them to pick out the bubble.

 

[argiBK]

It would be interesting (to me) to see a picture of the valonia/sponge combo? Hope this helps - glad that you were able to get rid of most of it.

Here's an example I just found. The sponge just encrusts around the valonia and it just seems to protect it from the bacteria culture in the Vibrant.

Also, with the Vibrant, you need to dose consistently. I've been dosing every week for 4 months, it took about 6 weeks to begin to see any progress.

Emerald crabs works great.. it used to not work for me but I figured out the difference maker in my tank at least.. they dont go after bubbles if there are easier alternatives - such as the soft half-melted vibrant-treated gha. Esp since in my battle the vibrant couldn't keep up with new gha growth so there was always a good supply of easy gha for them

What finally worked for me, after months of this, believe it or not, is actually reef flux RX. After I used RX the gha completely disappeared in 1 week, which forced the emeralds to go after the bubble algae, which then disappeared completely a few weeks later. 3 month later now and im still 100% bubble free. The emeralds since them move onto the steady supply of gha diet and help keep them under control along with the rest of my CUC.

I have a lot of sponge too, don't seem to bother the emeralds and they just walk over them to pick out the bubble.

I have probably 6 emerald crabs, and they end up communing on the other side of the tank (where there's much more rockwork), lol! I'm sure they've helped to eradicate as well. Thankfully no GHA, or other nuisance algae for me (though the Vibrant has really allowed cyano to come back, also another reason I want to stop Vibrant).