Killing red felt algae

[MJAnderson]

I've posted before about my battle with the evil red felt algae and I'm sad to say I'm losing the war. I was hoping that my corraline algae would out compete it but it doesn't seem like that works. Nothing eats it except my urchin but he doesn't get into the nooks and crannies and eats the corraline, giving this stuff fresh rock to take over.

I have 2 options:

Take out my corals (mostly frags) and turn off the lights for as long as it takes to kill it. I'm wondering if it would just come back though. I have a frag tank that I could hold them safely. Does algae die or will it just go into stasis? Or,

Rip out all the LR and buy new stuff. Problem is that the LR is buried in my DSB, which would mean disturbing the DSB. My tank is only 6 months old though, so I'm hoping the crash would be minor.

Anyone know if plan #1 will work? It seems the safest and easiest so far (except for my poor RBTA).

[Sullivmw]

I assume you are talking about the very low growing, red algae, that seems to prefer intense lighting?

If so, there has been many threads about this and the struggles to reduce the outbreak. If I remember correctly it is a type that prefers nutrient poor tanks, which is much different than the common types we deal with.

I battled this for a couple years, and tried many things along the way. The most positive results I had was to put this into my trigger tank that has not so good water parameters.... The stuff died off in almost 2 weeks, even though I have similar lighting to my reef tank. I slowly started to transfer my rocks into the other tank and was winning the battle. Unfortunately I had a couple rocks that I did not pull, and within weeks it started to cover the other rocks again.

To be honest I gave up battling this, and since it did not affect the SPS's I have I just live with it, and let the blue-legs keep it very, very short. The corals will encrust right over it, and as more areas become shaded the algae has diminished.

I know the first reaction to any algae is the tank must have nutrient problems, but I can assure you this is not the case with this type. But I can say that it always died when I put it into a more polluted tank, or a friend tank that was off the chart with PO4 and nitrates.

[Randall_James]

can you post pics of your problem? I am guessing this is that filamentous looking red stuff that hugs the rock and is deep red to maroon?

[MJAnderson]

I can't get a good pic of it. It's so short (1-2 mm) that whenever I take a pic it just looks like red rock. But yes, it hugs the rock and is maroon.

Interesting observation Sulli. Was hoping there was a way I could save the rock. I have about 60lbs of nice Marshall Islands that is getting overtaken by this stuff that was on the 40lbs of fiji rock I used as a base. Guy who sold it to me promised me it would go away and was only there because he let his tank go to pot before tearing it down.