Finally an easy solution to bryopsis!

[amcarrig]

It's quite possible that our mag got that high at some point as it took more than one syringe full of Salifert's test kit reagent to get a reading.

[HDFATB]

Has anyone had a perfectly clean tank and had put a frag with some hair algae on It In.

Did It spread?

[amcarrig]

Yup

Originally posted by amcarrig
I'm positive that it's bryopsis as I had it in my old 90 gallon. It made it into my current tank because I was stupid enough to transfer corals from the originally infected tank into the "new" one.

[Reefmack]

I'm about 99.9% bryopsis free now. The Foxface I got helped a lot, possibly because the Tech M had weakened it and made it more palatable to the fish, as someone above mentioned. In any case the fish had picked it all off off my zoa colonies. I had one big patch left - next to a Euphyllia, and the Foxface made no attemp to eat that patch (maybe fear of being stung by the Euphyllia). A week ago I was able to easily pull that big patch out. It came out very easily, and I have a feeling the Tech M weakened it enough to allow easy manual removal. It's never been easy to pull out in the past. This time all that remained were a few thin white strands which are now gone! I'm keeping the mg up and my fingers crossed!

[melev]

Originally posted by amcarrig
I'm positive that it's bryopsis as I had it in my old 90 gallon. It made it into my current tank because I was stupid enough to transfer corals from the originally infected tank into the "new" one. We raised our mag to 1600-1700+ using all of the mag. supplements that I mentioned earlier. We've tried for weeks upon weeks (much to the chagrin of our LPS corals which shrivelled up). The treatement(s) stalled the growth of the algae but did not stop it. We also kept our ph very high which supposedly worked for some people as well. I've been pulling the longer stuff out manually on a weekly basis. The RTN is possibly a result of the high magnesium levels and high ph combined with the fact that the algae is constantly rubbing against the corals. We run a phosphate reactor with Rowa-Phos, a calcium reactor AND a kalkwasser reactor. We also have a refugium and run tons of carbon that we change frequently. We have no nitrates and no phosphates and this stuff is still kicking our butts

Then I would suggest getting a Foxface. Those fish love bryopsis. Just remember that that fish has poisonous spines, so you need to be aware of its location when reaching in the tank.

[frezel]

ummm thank you jesus for letting me stumble across this page, after 2 hoursof reading 23 pages of threads, i hav hit the end, i will be using epsom salt to get to 1600 and tech m to maintain it, i have a 150 gallon system and this seems to be the best way to get to taht mark. I will post pics of my progress as this is a terible infestation. Only thing is no one ever answered the question of how my epsom to rodi water? Like 4 cup to 1 gallon rodi?etc and how much will the concentration yied per cup? i was planning on doing 4 cups in a 1gallon container and i will test mg before and after to get a basline of how much say 1 cup of this mixture will raisemg...keep up the great work reefers..

[amcarrig]

Originally posted by melev
Then I would suggest getting a Foxface. Those fish love bryopsis. Just remember that that fish has poisonous spines, so you need to be aware of its location when reaching in the tank.

I just might do that but I'm afraid that my powder blue will beat the living tar out of it. I suppose I can take my chances.

[flyyyguy]

well I posted earlier in this thread about ths stuff rearing its ugly head in my tank after a overheating crash this summer.( i have had the crap before)

I run very clean systems and along with that being very anal about blowing my rocks off every water change with a MJ1200, I was fortunate that this time it only really grew on and behind my spraybars that are hard to reach and some crap does settle there....

I had enough of it that i couldnt see most of my spraybars and it was grwoing onto the pvc deep enough that it oucnt be scraped of without taking a bunch of plastic with your scraper... this might have had soemthing to do with the fact that I coatd the spraybars with purple primer when i set the tank up....i dont know

anyway...long story short I did erradicate the stuff and i did it with homemade. I couldnt bring myself to pay for tech M so even against what some people recommended I went at with my RHF recipe. I ended up takintg ti to over 2000 before it really worked although i started noticing it working slightly starting about 1900. I raised it VERY slowly.......it took me nearly a month to get it to that over 2000 level and i kept it there for 3 weeks. I had no problems in doing this except for my calcium became really hard to maintain, and my coral growth slowed down considerably and my coralline growth absolutely stopped which I didnt quite understand to be honest........now that it has dropped some all is well.

Just thought Id report my experience and that it certainly CAN be done without buying overpriced Ro/DI water with some mag thrown in.

I will also say that if you keep yoru reef clean the stuff has a lot harder time taking hold in every nook and cranny. The first time I had the stuff I now know that my poor tank set up was the largest contributor to the stuff taking over. My system simply wasnt set up well enough and it gave it the conditions it needs to take foot everywhere



edit...just one other thing to add to throw some light on my tank and circumstances in case it helps anyone. I am a two part junkie, the tank in qeustion is a high flow DSB sps dominated system, I dont use a refugium nor do i run carbon or GFO.

[Mr31415]

Just be careful people. Obviously I am subjective here, but what happened with me when I used Tech-M to raise my Mg from 1400 to 1720, I managed to kill of ALL the bryopsis, and now hair algae is growing slowly in its place.

However, my Colt coral is still bleached, so too another soft coral, my galaxy only recently started getting back colour, some zoanthids are still bleached, one of my Euphyllias died as it was bleached so much that it could not photosynthesize...

And it seems as if the Tech-M fueled the growth of pink hair algae - it has taken over everything. My opinion - think carefully before dosing chemicals.

[dendro982]

Pink hair algae:
I bought green porites with this algae on it, but while I was raising Mg levels to 1600 ppm by Seachem Reef Advantage Magnesium (sulphate), this pink algae faded to pale and stopped grow.

Now dosing Tech M. Several days - no effect on either - pink hair algae or bryopsis.

Tried way, posted in thread "Fast solution for bryopsis" - local application of higher concentration - no effect either, at all. Bryosis still nice and green. Mismanaged one squirt - and killed this place on green porites, just like Kalkwasser paste did this on beige porites.

Or there are different kinds of bryopsis, or something else is contributing in bryopsis eradication.
Let brainstorm: what else was done in the tanks with bryopsis during treatment?

P.S. My PO4 is 0, NO3 - 0, new MH 14,000K light + sun, filter feeders tank, heavily fed. Micron sock, changed daily, skimmer, refugium.

[Mr31415]

hmmm I did see the stronger lit areas died much quicker than the darker areas. Also, manual pruning before dosing seems to help a lot. Tropic Marine BioMagnesium killed only my pink algae, not bryopsis. Only Tech-M killed the bryopsis, but not the pink algae.

[montrealreef]

dendro982,

for what its worth, I'm running a UV sterilizer (which supposedly decreases sexual reproduction)
and activated carbon through a media reactor 24/7. I'm keeping my pH at the higher end of normal (8.4 -8.6) through addition of Kalkwasser by slurry method. Alk is 15-16.

Mr31415,

I also noticed that the areas with more intense illumination responded to Mg earlier..

[melev]

Originally posted by dendro982
Pink hair algae:
I bought green porites with this algae on it, but while I was raising Mg levels to 1600 ppm by Seachem Reef Advantage Magnesium (sulphate), this pink algae faded to pale and stopped grow.

Now dosing Tech M. Several days - no effect on either - pink hair algae or bryopsis.

Tried way, posted in thread "Fast solution for bryopsis" - local application of higher concentration - no effect either, at all. Bryosis still nice and green. Mismanaged one squirt - and killed this place on green porites, just like Kalkwasser paste did this on beige porites.

Or there are different kinds of bryopsis, or something else is contributing in bryopsis eradication.
Let brainstorm: what else was done in the tanks with bryopsis during treatment?

P.S. My PO4 is 0, NO3 - 0, new MH 14,000K light + sun, filter feeders tank, heavily fed. Micron sock, changed daily, skimmer, refugium.

It sounds like you have Pink Cotton Candy algae:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...nftt/index.php

[znut Reefer]

I tried raising my mag and got it up to 1600. The bryosis still kept growing. I lost both of my nice desawali acros. So stopped adding the Tech M. I think I lost the Desawali because of raising the mag. They are pretty sensitive to water quality. I have too much invested to try it again.

And a foxface is not an option here. I just pulled a 6" one out about 2 months ago. He had been in there for 5 yrs but developed a taste for acros. ):

I vowed never to add another to my sps tank.

[frezel]

well im getting worried here!!! All these latest threads ae saying bad results from rasing mg levels as u can see i have mg and recently stated uping my mg via epsom salt...





im hoping that these people went to fast or something else was the cause of there problems, as i have a 12 year old tank that just got this and pulling rock is not an option, please someone please advise, stop or keep trying?

[airinhere]

I would say skip the epsom salt and just go straight to the Tech-M. I spent almost two months trying the epsom salt and got mediocre results. I switched to the Tech-M and the bryopsis just disintergrated and has been gone for months now.

Most of the people reporting issues with coral losses are talking about fairly exotic types. The pictures you posted show you have lots of mushrooms and some zoanthids. Unless you have something known to be highly sensitive to water quality issues, I would say you have little to fear by slowly raising your mag levels.

I raiised mine as high as 1700ppm (Seachem Test Kit) and have lots of chalices, duncans, zoanthids, acros, acans, and montiporas (digi and caps). Only a single colony of my acans reacted strongly to the treatment and it was jacked-up anyways. In fact, my coral growth has increased since I keep my mag higher than normal now.

And MR31415 has a good point as well. Something spured the growth of the bryopsis. When you kill the bryopsis, something else is going to capitalize on the available nutrients in your tank.

That something else is probably going to be hair algae.

So you need to implement an improved method of nutrient export before you kill off the bryopsis. Chaeto in a lighted sump/refugium, carbon reactor, increased skimming, more/ larger water changes.

Otherwise you are just going to trade one algae mess for another.

[frezel]

thanksfor the advise on the tech m, oh and thhe shrrosm and stuff are in the lower left corner of my tank...



just watned to be careful raising my levels as i have lots of variety, and dont want to crash anything...But i wll try tech m

thanks

[amcarrig]

OK, we're going to give this tank one more chance. Our mag is up to about 2,000 but we're using Epsom salts until a bottle of Tech M that we ordered arrives. I removed as much of the long stuff as possible (again) and also removed a few rocks and corals that were heavily infested. I snapped a few frags off of the corals that were removed and I hope that they make it. I added a foxface and 2 sea hares. If this doesn't do the trick, the tank will come down.

[IReefer madness]

Bryopsis corticulans
Bryopsis corymbosa
Bryopsis halliae
Bryopsis hypnoides
Bryopsis indica
Bryopsis pennata
(Bryopsis pennata var. leprieurii )
(Bryopsis pennata var. secundata)
(Bryopsis pennata var. secunda)
Bryopsis plumosa
Bryopsis ramulosa
Where could one find a pic of the above to determine which species of bryopsis we are dealing with. It seems after reading this entire thread for over 3 hours that most are dealing with a single variety of bryopsis. Not sure which it is from above but the one with some sort of feather appearance as shown multiple times in the reading. It seems that most are probably having success with a single species. Just a thought...

[dendro982]

This bryopsis:

is persistent, loses feathers during treatment:

by Seachem Reef Advantage Magnesium, ESV liquid magnesium, Kent Tech M, only stalks left, then returns back.
Some external layer becomes slime-like (desintegrates, maybe), but not disappears.

Same happens with some kind of short and wiry red turf algae - becomes bleached and softer, easier to tear off:


Side effects:
some corals are bleaching and declining, most - not. Die-off on the beige porites (all are Christmas tree rocks, including green pavona):

Green pavona from this shot started to bleach recently, after switching to TechM.
Green porites on the photo above - too, reddening, closing, some even dying, but in less extent, then beige porites.

Unaffected are:
Small Tridacnas, commom brown porites (Xmas tree rocks too), brown with green center porites (Xmas tree rock too ), montipora, birds nest (covered by bryopsis, but well alive), stylopora, pocillopora, scleronephthya, toadstool and cabbage leathers, baby sun, turbinaria, blasto merletti, red kelp and blue ochtodes.
Condy anemone unhappy, but alive (still worse after switching to Tech M).

What is interesting, that in a high flow bryopsis continue to grow - nice green and healthy - on the glass, while declining on porous surfaces.

Really would like the more safe and efficient treatment

[boobookitty]

So, would the method work on this stuff? I've been fighting this stuff for over a year. Finally took down the tank 2 months ago, took out the DSB, replaced 80% of the LR, and restarted...and now it's starting to show up again. Aargh!

Thinking of trying the magnesium method...would it work on this stuff? It's not feathery like caulerpa...just grows long and straight, and in clumps...I would suspect derbesia/GHA, but my 4 tangs won't touch this stuff...


Original incarnation (pre-breakdown of tank):



New pics of the new growth:

[poopsko24]

looks like the same crap i have, think I'm going to add a U.V. and a sea hare..............http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...readid=1266713

[Abso]

Are these bryopsis?

[neelix]

Hard to tell, looks like cyano and maybe hair algae???

[TWallace]

Top one looks like it may be bryopsis, bottom one not so much. Can't give a definite yes or no on either one, though.