I couple of months back I had an issue with Dinos. I ended up aggressively dosing po4 to get rid of them. They event went away, but my phosphate was through the roof. I ended up changing my setup a bit and adding a better skimmer. I’m running gfo and carbon dosing carefully to get po4 back down. In the meantime I grew turf algae like a champ. It in unrelenting. I can literally grab handfuls. I found that a hydrogen peroxide dip does remove it. I took out a smaller rock and squirted hydrogen peroxide all over it , plus brushed it to see if it helps. If this does the trick I’ll do it to my bigger rock structure. If it doesn’t I may just remove my rock and bleach it. I’m worried this will abuse too much of a biology upset. Any other suggestions? I refuse to use fluconazole or anything that might put acros as risk.
Turf algae: wanting to bleach rocks
- Thread starter Cflow
- Start date
You will find carbon dosing won’t help much with lowering phosphates…the phosphates are binding to rock and sand…I had turf algae and a pin cushion urchin mowed it down
Unfortunately my LFS never has urchins. I have a couple of emerald crabs that seem to pick at it, but they hardly put a dent in it. It’s almost like they just maintain their own yard.
So I believe I found a solution. The rock that I squirted with 3% H2O2 is clean. I manually removed what I could and brushed it as well as possible. The remaining algae either died or was eaten by my emerald crabs and tang. They seem to love the stuff once it’s been weakened by peroxide. Today I took out my main structure and did the same. My tang is mowing it down now. I have also been dosing Dr Tims bacteria for algae to reset the bacteria. PO4 is finally manageable. Corals don’t seem too upset yet. We’ll see .
The bacteria seems to just keep the glass clean. I bought it to deal with dinos initially, but it seems to be a good tool to keep the water clean. The problem is I can’t get an urchin. I do believe hydrogen peroxide works though. For some reason it makes it more palatable to my other livestock. My tang seems to love it now. Even my conch is eating it.
Keeping white intensity reduced or hours of white light and monitoring phosphate and nitrate will assure you dont get a return quickly.
Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet?
Is tank at or near a window?
Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet?
Is tank at or near a window?
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