Bubble algae... Grrr!!!

[fidojoe]

Hiya folks!

My tank is doing pretty well, and everything is growing well, but unfortunately I have a pretty nasty valonia problem. Its not like the couple large bubbles that I used to have here and there, its large clusters of small teardrop shaped bubbles everywhere. I've done my best to try not to pop them, as I know that makes the problem much worse. Its to the point now where they are spreading up the overflow and back wall.

I don't know what to do! I don't want to add another fish, especially one that may eat it, and emerald crabs creep me out! My skimmer only works when it wants to, so the MJ1200 stream mod that I just put on my wavemaker is only partially beneficial, since the skimmer won't take any of the stuff out. I can throw my remora on to see if that helps, but is there anything else I can do?

Thanks

[reefmonster]

Fido...

Probably the best...and most controversial, (no flamers please), method for reducing the amount of Valonia is to introduce a mated pair of Tongan emerald crabs. These eat almost exclusivly valonia, and are not your typical crab. They seldomly scavenge, and are not aggressive toward fish or other tankmates, even your cukes. I know what you're thinking....but do some research, citing Charles Delbeek & Julian Sprung IE The Reef Aquarium Handbook and see if it makes sense in your case to add them..

I like them because they rely almost soley on the valonia, also picking tidbits of algae from the sand bed, and are good at leaving stuff alone. I have 4 pairs of them in my 125gal, and they leave everything but the valonia alone. The variety, sorry for not knowing the sp, are the smallest of the emerald crabs. I have had one pair for over 4 years and they are still no larger than a dime. I have only seen them from places that carry Tongan livestock. Jeff's Exotic Fish is who I got them from...He is in Los Angeles.

Hope this helps.

Matt

[lcstorc]

If they only eat valonia then what do you do once the problem is gone?

[mps9506]

I'm still a fan of emerald crabs, despite what most folks here say

[Dragon Wrasse]

Originally Posted by mps9506

I'm still a fan of emerald crabs, despite what most folks here say

I have had good emerald crabs and I have had Evil emerald crabs...its a toss up on what you get.....have the butter and boiling water ready.....P.S. the good and evil emeralds both tast the same......

[BoomerD]

I never had any good luck with emerald crabs. MIGHT be OK while they're very small, but once they get larger than about 1" across, they seem to get pretty opportunistic in what they eat...Watched one try to take apart a serpent star one day...that was enough for me. "OFF TO THE SUMP!"
Joe, I also had some of the kind you're fighting. Real PITA to deal with. Only thing I found that helped at all, was to remove the rock, and manually pick it off with toothpicks and tweezers, then rinse well with saltwater before putting them back in the tank...

[corallimorph]

I've had good luck with SMALL Mithrax sculptus(emeralds)ONLY WHEN THEY ARE SMALL....just as Boomer D points out...once they get large(1" or more)
They become the monsters witty so hates.

[fidojoe]

I just can't bring myself to buy emeralds. They creep me out for one, and I'm also afraid that they'll go after my other inhabitants, like the many, many stories I've heard in the last 4 years that I've been in this hobby.

I'm going to try and beat the algae by starving it, using the remora along with my CSS220, and increase my water changes. If that doesn't give me any improvement by the beggining of January, I think I'll start cooking the rock.

[fidojoe]

Well, I did some water changes, re-scaped and cleaned shortly after my last post on this thread, and the problem re-appeared. Today I pulled all of the rock out of the tank and scrubbed the crap out of it. I rinsed it well in my pull water from the 20g WC that I was doing at the same time. I also pulled a 5g bucket full of LR out, which is now cooking. That rock was either too bad to use, or just didn't fit into the new scape (I've wanted to pull some of it out anyways).

I'm getting two phosban reactors to run daisy chained (one carbon, one phosban), and I've modded my CSS220 with a meshmod, which is allowing it to pull quite a bit of crud out. I'm crossing my fingers that this will rid me of my problem.

[SubRosa]

Desjardin's Tang often eats valonia,but you would need to make sure that the one you are looking has a taste for them.A friend who ran a small wholesale operation kept one for the purpose of eating any bubbles on incoming corals or ones that just popped up.We still have the fish in our reef at the lfs I manage,but we wouldn't sell it even if we could catch him without
breaking down the tank!

[saltyfishtanks]

I had a similar situation wich the end result and cure took two people 11hrs start to finish!!!! WOW you say well this worked for me

We started by moving all the corals into the sump there were dangers of stinging each other because we literally stacked them!!

now with a full sump of corals i started to get nervous

my friend brought his vortech over and set it up and we got to work

he picked over each piece of LR like a freak for anything he did not like and removed it (Macros, bubble alge, GSP ETC.) i netted the large floating debris and collected it in a bucket

after that he then took turned every piece right in front of the vortech and blew all debris off and out of the rock then set it in a bucket

we did this to every piece till they were bubble alge free
then reaquascaped and placed every coral.

This process was truely a miracle and the bubble alge has returned but only in low flow areas where debris settles

IMO the best preventive maintaince to avoid bubble alge is to stir up debris on the rocks this will keep the Nitrates from accumulating in and on the rock fueling the alge

HOLY CRAP Thats a long reply but if your willing to put the work in im willing to type all day!!!

[BigAl07]

Holy Crap! I gotta research this thing right now. I noticed some tiny bubbles over the last coupe of days on some of my rocks and didn't really give it a second guess. Uh oh!!

Al

[Witfull]

oh the pretty green pearl...i like it~

[burning2nd]

u guys should see the crap im growing here....

he's almost up to eating a single silver side...

[fidojoe]

Originally Posted by burning2nd

u guys should see the crap im growing here....

he's almost up to eating a single silver side...

LOL. Nice.

There was one particular rock that I just had to throw into the cook bucket. I unfortunately had to butcher half of my football sized green nepthia to get it off, but it was worth it. This rock had, no joke, a 3" deep clump of those tiny bubbles. The rock looked about 2x its size with the algae on it.

My advice, KILL the PO4 BEFORE you get the algae everywhere. It will save you all kinds of trouble. Fortunately, my new tang seems to like the free-floating bubbles more than his nori clip.