Top 20 Algae Fighting Mistakes
- Mar 31, 2020
- Dennis Kiranya
- 1397 0 0
The top algae mistakes shared.
1: Not cleaning your flags. The frags come in and have algae all over their base. They could be Just like a dusty green algae, it could be bryopsis, it could be bubble algae, it could be all kinds of things. So all you need to is clean your frags. And how are you going to make this a success? All you have to do is scrub with a brush and a little hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is the best tool that you can easily get from a drugstore near you if you want.
When using hydrogen peroxide, you can paint it on with a paintbrush, you can just spray it on. A lot of corals are pretty tolerant of it. It will kill the algae. If you have some of those harder algaes or maybe even a coral that might have some algae on it, but you're not sure whether or not how it reacts to hydrogen peroxide, the best way to remove it is to applicate it on the brush and brush around it as much as possible. In fact, if you're interested in this, just go to YouTube and search for dipping my corals in hydrogen peroxide, you can see some really miraculous results. If you want, also just clean the frags off. Scrubbing is one thing and it really kills it. But you can actually break it off of the frag plug as well and just be free of it entirely. I would absolutely consider hydrogen peroxide or any other tool but clean the frags before they go in the tank so you don't get the algae that comes with them.
2. Becoming a plague: Lazy reefer syndrome and letting the algae become a plague and reaching catastrophic issues before actually doing something about it. This is pretty common that you see a little bit of algae in there, you don't do anything about it and for some reason, the alarm flags don't go up until the whole tank is just like a sea of algae. My advice to you is that you have to catch it way, way before that so that you will probably not know what to look for. This is your first rodeo. But if you just start to see patches of it grow, do something about it then instead of waiting for it to get out of control, because it can take a long time to get back out.
3. Looking for a quick fix: Trying to take a sledgehammer to solve the problem and trying to cure algae in days when it took you months to get to won’t do any good. If you've reached those plug-like proportions, you've gotten to that point where algae is just everywhere. It probably took you some time as this stuff didn't just wake up and then algae was plugged in your tank. Maybe two weeks and you saw a little bit but it wasn't plugged but then the mistake is going in there and attacking it, and hoping that you'll get it done in days. Because it took you months to get there.
4. Lights on day one: Turning your lights on day one the moment you filled it with water and drop the rock in. The algae feeds not only on excess nitrates and phosphates but even in the initial cycle. It feeds on ammonia and things like that too. Then most people probably like aquascape or like a white bone, white dry rock, which you just build the perfect storm for algae to grow because you just crank your lights on from day one. If you bought some super expensive live rock like the ocean and is filled with life, you may need to turn the lights on right away to keep some of that stuff alive. If you're using dry rock and you turn the lights on day one, you're probably going to grow some algae in many cases. So, it's way better to just let the tank run with the lights either off or just barely on, and allow them to build like a biofilm and a bacterial film on the surface of the rock to prevent all the algae from taking hold.
Meanwhile, in that first few months, just enjoy that you got a nice fish tank, fill it up with fish, watch the fish and enjoy this part of the progression of the tank. It's not that you can't turn the lights on day one, but if you do and you're running into algae, know why.
5. Not turning your lights off: If I turn my lights on in the beginning and I don't have corals yet I can just turn them off. So, I've got fish in the tank, hopefully, utilitarian fish that are eating away at the algae or helping keep into the bay. But if I just run into an algae problem, and I don't have photosynthetic organisms that are in the tank that require the light, just shut the light off and enjoy your fish tank, enjoy the fish that are in there, add the corals after the lights have been on for a little bit. Let the lights be on for a month or so before you add any corals. You can see if there's algae growth in your tank and if there is just turn the lights off, enjoy your fish tank and grow the fish in it, all the algae will go away because there's no light.
You can just allow that biofilm to build up and protect the tank from it. Meanwhile, the algae will die, water changes and stuff will take the nutrients out. So, don't be afraid to turn the lights off especially if you haven't put any corals in. In fact, maybe you don't want to add any corals in the beginning, just so you have that step available to you.
6. Too many snails: We see this done all the time. This is adding hundreds of snails and crabs as your cleanup crew on day one. I've made this mistake thinking because I read all of these forums and years ago forums were the only information we had and everywhere I sat, it was like add some hermits, add some red legs, blue legs, add some trochus snails and the Mexican turtle snails. All of these cleanup crew is going to help. Maybe a sea cucumber, maybe an urchin. When I'm setting up my tank for the first time, there's nothing for these things to eat on and so I thought I needed all of those. I threw them all in there and I was like, I got all the life things in my tank and then they turned into not life things. But when they die, they just add nutrients. That little snail, it's a very meaty thing. So it's adding all the nitrogen phosphorus from itself. And if it can't eat anything, it's actually consuming its own flesh and releasing those nutrients into the water. Essentially, when you go in there, and if you do it before you have any algae in the tank, you throw in 100 crabs and 100 snails, you're just putting little nutrient batteries into the tank and just overloading the tank with nutrients for no purpose. They're all going to die.
In the second part of that I already have algae problems. Some times I've seen people beat algae with an overwhelming amount of those things. Usually, When the algae is gone, they go back to starving again, and then rinse, repeat. So, make sure to use the right tool for the right job. If you thought 100 was going to get me to solve this problem for me in a week, maybe 25 will solve it in the two months that I'm looking for. Set the expectations for that, don't just overwhelm it. I'll say that this is again, for me, I've seen the advice when people ask these types of questions on the internet, but actually, it's a lot also on the cleanup crew packages you see on the internet that are like superduper packages. Keep in mind, those people are trying to sell snails for a living not actually necessary to solve your algae problem. So, just keep that in mind and use the right tool for the right job. Pick the right amount. You don't want to overload the tank because you can actually have the opposite problem.
7. Not considering fish as part of the cleanup crew: Other than snails, other than crabs, when I see in the forums, see on the group's like cleanup crew, my mind automatically goes to crabs, snails, trochus and all these other things, but actually it's the utilitarian fish, the fish with a purpose that goes and attacks the algae and that's their primary diet. They can serve as a better cleanup crew because they actually see the algae and seek it out and eat it off. I haven't seen many instances where utilitarian fish don't beat out snails and crabs. No, they actually work better together, but I haven't seen people beat an existing algae problem with snails and crabs all that many times. But fish I've seen it countless times. Dropping a couple of the right fish and boom, all the algae is gone. You can actually curb the algae problem before it starts or even before you flip the lights on in your tank by actually choosing fish with a purpose in the tank such that when you kick the lights on, they're already trained to attacking the algae before you even see it. You'll never even know there was an algae problem because they have handled it before there's even hints of it.
8. Replace the cleanup crew: This is just replacing the cleanup crew when they die. I mean, let's face it, you come across the snail that's upside down, you come across a crab that's been picked on or got taken over by another crab. These things die, there's empty shells in the tank. So if you had a cleanup crew, that is an overabundance in the tank so that they actually have a constant food source. They're staying alive. Well, when a few die back, put a couple more in. This is a lesson that I learned in the very first time I made the second year of reefing. Then one day the yellow tang dies and I didn't connect it at first. But the tang dies and then all of a sudden algae out of everywhere. Then it just dawned on me that day or actually weeks later that, that one fish all it did all day was eat algae and that's probably why I didn't have any algae. I dropped new yellow tang in and in a month no more algae. I don't want to treat the fish like they're replaceable because that's not the case but if you do happen to lose your cleanup crew and you're having a problem you should replace them. You should identify why did the fish die in the first place, but identify that and then go replace them so you can have a nice, clean tank.
9. Not trying Urchins: These are really cool critters. So pin cushions, pencil origins. There's a wide variety of them that look really awesome. Some of them carry your frags around the tank, which you can deal with, but a lot of them are really good lawnmowers for algae. I've seen them handle quite a bit of algae in the tank before. It's been my experience that urchins are way better than crabs and snails. They do tend to carry stuff around and bulldoze stuff over. But some of the bigger snails do the same thing. But if you got algae problems you are solving a different way, try a different tool and use the right tool again for the right job. Urchins are one but you should try them out.
10. Not trying bacteria: There are bacterial additives out there in most recent history here and we do have a full Vibrant test that shows. This is a bacteria that's designed to or that does heterotrophic bacteria. It eats some algae materials and you can watch it in the tank which actually works. I have never ever seen anybody beat bubble algae with any product. Once some of them get lucky and some eat it but it's like a perpetual thing. I have seen now numerous cases where it was vibrant, just wiped it out. It all just turns like silver and awesome bubble algae is gone. Bacteria is actually going after it aggressively and consuming, leaves surface areas clean that would have grown algae. Consider, Vibrant as an option. There's also the MicroBacter Clean from Brightwell and some other options out there for bacteria. Consider bacteria as an option for fighting or even preventing any algae issue.
11. Not trying Fluconazole: This is actually a really viable cure for bryopsis treatment. So I've seen people try to solve this by raising the magnesium up to 2,500, or some crazy number. I've seen all kinds of solutions to this that have various degrees of results and probably stress the hell out of the tank. Outside of all that stuff, I got to tell you, I think that the fluconazole actually is the easiest solution. I won't say that it has zero effect on the tank. I've never seen any tank that gets wiped out by it or anything. I've seen some corals look like they're a little bit stressed by it, but they definitely get stressed by overwhelming and taking bryopsis, which is like a fan type algae if you look really closely at it, and not something anybody wants to run into. So if you're running that, this is one of the best options out there.
When you run into this, and there is tissue loss on some of the basis of the corals and when you get that tissue loss, it gives a place for algae to take hold and then just irritates the coral even further. So deep within the insides of some of these Acropora colonies, we're getting a bryopsis in there and nothing is growing. You can't grow over the top of algae. And something that most of the time I've never seen a utilitarian fish go after bryopsis. But the two-week treatment of this, all will be back to normal and you can actually grow back over that dead skeleton. I would absolutely consider this as an option. And again, if you're losing corals and stuff, you can just stop that in its tracks all the way. So definitely consider fluconazole specifically for bryopsis.
12. Assuming dirty water is good: Dirty probably to some people means different things. When I think about it, dirty water to me means, I picture a softy tank or an LPS tank and I picture high nitrates, high phosphate something I'm not really taking into concern with of removing. For a lot of people, they think that's okay. It doesn't mean that you can't maintain reasonable levels of nitrate and phosphate but do it intelligently. Because if you just let them rise and you're like, well everything looks fine. Just wait and one day, all of a sudden it will be a tipping point and it happens fast because there's so much nutrient in the water for it to explode. So usually it happens when some other thing stresses out the tank, stresses out the corals and all of sudden it just gives way to this thing to explode. So if you think that nitrate and phosphate in your tank are having super high levels in there and its super good for the tank. I won't argue about whether it's good enough for the corals but it is absolutely good for algae. So, consider whether or not you want to maintain those levels intelligently. But I certainly wouldn't think that dirty water is good for the tank.
13. Feeding the fish too much: You walk into the tank, and you get the reaction from the fish because they know usually there's food coming, so they follow you, they look hungry, and sometimes they'll accept food too. But do they necessarily need the food is the question? So here's the story, are you feeding too much? There's one way you'll know, is if nitrate and phosphate levels just continually rise. So if nitrate, phosphate levels are continually rising in your tank, one or two problems are happening. You're just feeding too damn much or your filtration just isn't good enough for the amount that you want to feed. You can fix either one of those things, but I would absolutely at least track one of those things. Phosphates are probably the easiest one to track because of a little checker is so easy to do. Track one of them and understand that, if all those things are rising, the nutrients in my tank are rising. It's because I'm putting too much food into the tank, it's not too many fish, it's too much nutrient going into the tank to feed the fish. So fix your filtration or stop feeding too much.
14. Not recognizing the nutrients are in algae because it's up taking it. So there's really nothing left in the water column when you're testing for phosphates and nitrates. Because the algae have a hold of all of it and it's continually sucking it up as more as added to the tank. Essentially you have an in-tank refugium. All of the hair algae and stuff is sucking up all of the nutrients out of your tank. It looks like you have zero but you actually are adding all that nutrient every day. It's just getting sucked up by the algae so fast, you can't test for it.
15. Not removing the algae manually: If I have an overgrowth, or if I have anything that I can really just grab with a pair of tweezers or grab with my thumb and forefingers and just rip out manually. Better yet, if I'm manually removing it, so I'm in this cleanup mode and doing my weekly maintenance, scrubbing off the rocks, I'm just blowing off algae off of the rocks and it's floating all over the tank. It's a mistake to not get that out of there because as we just talked about in number 14, all of the nutrients that are bound up in that algae, if we just let it go, we're just starting to cycle over again and spreading it by the way. If you don't remove it from the tank it's just going to die and it's just going to add more nitrate and phosphates in the tank and that's feeding the new problem. So you don't have to actually remove it. One of the things I would suggest is not scrubbing it off in a manner where it just spreads all over the place. But if you can get a siphon and grab it with your thumb over the siphon, pull it off, let your thumb go, and then it just sucks right up into the siphon, and eliminate it from the tank. So you're not just taking the past organism out of the tank, you're also taking the nutrients that it used to feed on out of the tank with it, so it doesn't feed the next problem.
This is a really, really big one, manual removal. Don't expect the magic here. If I was even going to use fluconazole, the first thing I would do is manually remove as much of it as I humanly possibly could, and then solve the problem with some of the other tools. Don't just expect the tools to solve all the work for you, do the manual removal first and keep up with it. Once a week, pull all that stuff out manually.
16. Hydrogen Peroxide: The mistake here is missing the usefulness of hydrogen peroxide. A couple of ways that I've seen it done and we've talked about it is scrubbing some, spraying some, dipping in hydrogen peroxide your coral frag plugs. That way you just see the algae turn white and then it eventually just dissolve away. I've also seen it done by draining the tank super low as if you're changing the water and while the algae were exposed on the rock surfaces, take a bottle with a spray top and just spray hydrogen peroxide directly onto the algae and let it sit for a little while, fill the tank back up. Over the course of doing that for a few weeks, all of those algae tufts start to turn white, dissipate and disappear. This was pre-fluconazole days but we had bryopsis super bad in the tank. Think about hydrogen peroxide as a tool and how you could use it to your specific needs.
17. Water changes: Failing to keep up with your maintenance and failing to actually do your maintenance. We're talking water changes specifically. I can blow off the rocks and do my water changes but a combination of that piling up on each other, it's leading to the inevitable algae outbreak. Here's the thing. There's a lot of people out there that say, I never do my water changes. I don't do them all summer long and my tank is just fine. Yeah, there are tons of people that are willing to go out there and say that. A lot of the people that won't say that and you won't hear from because they just don't exist. That went well for a long time and then somewhere in the next two years, it totally went south for them, overrun with algae, and they just quit the hobby. So you don't actually hear from those people because they're gone. So, keep up with your water changes. There's one thing I've learned that it's absolutely if you do them, you're in a way higher percentage pool than if you don't and I think even the people that don't do water changes will agree that that's probably the case. Auto water changes have to be your hybrid of all. There are a few options and you can do it yourself auto water change. The Neptune dose is a good one, the Versa pumps now from Ecotec.
18. Not Considering a refugium, Scrubber or Reactor: Yes, I want to grow algae and I just don't want to grow it in the front and where my tank is, I want to grow it down in my sump or target somewhere in my system but not in the display. In which case the refugium, the algae scrubber are absolutely the tools that can do that. I want to grow algae and to prevent it from going in the display, suck up all those nutrients. Algae scrubber is essentially growing hair algae in a little box and you scrape it off, throw it in the trash. Refugium, typically like chaetomorpha you can grow it in a lot of different areas. So anyone of these options should be considered when growing algae. But you want to grow it in a controlled manner where you can harvest it instead of growing it in the tank.
19. If Your Skimmer Sucks Get a Better One: We're talking about skimmers that are either underpowered or underrated or maybe even don't have the controls that you want to match the nutrient input and the export. So you have that air-water mixture inside and this is a tool that I can dial in as my tank changes or as my need changes. So, whatever skimmer you're using, if it isn't doing what you want it to do, whatever brand it is, it doesn't matter. If it's not performing the way you want, you can suck out a lot of that fish poo or like rotten food and everything and all the nutrients related to it using the filter as its intended. So, get the right tool for the right job and if you're not happy with your skimmer performance, you don't have to live in that world. There's more information than ever out there and how to get the right tool for the right job.
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