Go away for a week and come home to this!

[Niven]

Well, I went to visit my parents last week in Ohio and came home on Sunday night to a tank FILLED with Dictyota. I'm sort of out on a limb with my feelings of this stuff. It doesn't seem to effect corals, it might try to shade them out, but it doesn't sting, as of yet. It will grow on exposed acro skeletons though:( Just wanted to show people what Dictyota can do. If you see it....GET IT OUT NOW!!!!
Gareth

[dsb1829]

Now that is an algae problem. Time to get out the pruning sheers:D . Wow, that looks like months of pruning hiatus. Is that really only a week, be honest :eek2: :eek1:

[3_high_low]

Holy smokes!!! That happened in just one week:eek1: :eek2:

[gas4544]

D@mn, that's ugly! Do any fish or critters eat it?

[kevinpo]

Gareth,
Could you post a close-up of the leaf structure for some who may not have had the privilege to see it up close :) . I feel for you man! I had a 5 year old 90 gal that developed the same condition. I was pulling corals out every week and picking the stuff off with tweezers. I bought a fox face and naso that really started to make a dent in it but I don't think they were the cause for it's sudden decline (it completely disappeared over about 30 days time). Yes I had as much as in your tank. I'm not certain but I think cleaning the rock may have done it. I started removing the rock and brushing and shaking it vigorously in a bucket of fresh salt water and then putting it back in the tank. I had to do this a couple of times but it worked for me. It's something to try anyway. Let us know if you try it and it works. All those rocks are in my 550 now but I've never seen it again (knock on wood).

HTH,
Kevin

[saltshop]

Holy Cow!!!! I hate to laugh at other peoples misfortunes but....Holy Cow! :D I feel for ya man, that just sucks.

[Aquaman]

Yep, that stuff grows like a plague, You've got to use tweazers to get every last bit! when I had it growing I never found a fish that would eat it though.

[Frick-n-Frags]

Hey Gareth, glad to hear you made it home in one piece. Question: Did my macros look like Dictyota to you? I'm just trying to ID them. What I have definitely possesses the ability to overgrow a piece of coral in a week. They range in color from purplish red to dark green to whitish yellow. But I like 'em. They are my filter floss.

[Agu]

Niven,

Condolences, I've had/have the dictyota plague. Lucy, my naso tang wiped it out in about a week, after months of usless hand pruning. It's still in there, but only in inaccessible areas, and if I move a coral she's there cleaning any stray pieces.

Agu

[Allyson]

We're wondering if we have it or whether we have bryopsis. How can one discriminate them? Just learned about this new variety of misery after getting Sprung and Delbeek last night. Up until then we thought it was bryopsis. Ours looks like a grass and there's a little fraying at the end which HINTS at bryopsis. A leaf close up of your algae would help us too. Our naso won't touch it but ours is pretty finicky. Any other creatures that might eat it? Perhaps a foxface? Urchin? Conch? Or maybe a little nepalm (just kidding)?

Thanks,

Allyson

[Niven]

Here is a really good picture of it..... http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/reefalgae/What%20plants%20look%20like/Plants%20Dictyota%20acutiloba.htm
Frick, I didn't remember seeing anything like it in your tank. But like I said, I'm still debating how bad it really is :p The weekend before I left, I managed to over dose my tank with RO/DI, my salinity was down to 1.019. I slowly raised it over three days. Also, the Wed before I left my CO2 ran out:rolleyes: so when I replaced the CO2, it wasn't exactly dialed in, I went low, figuring I didn't want too much, I'd rather go with a little lower. That combination most likely killed off some micro infauna and other things. I've had this dictyota for a while now, it didn't pop up overnight, it's been about 10 days of growth since the last pruning.
Seriously though, some of the corals that are amongst the thickets do look really nice once I prune back the dictyota. Therman has said in the past that dictyota is a great breeding ground for fauna/infaua. Yeah it looks horrible, but if I didn't have it, what would have happened to my tank last week. Trates sky rocket, everything dies, who knows. It's kind of like caulerpa, but I don't know about and toxins it may or may not produce.
Some people have given me advice in the past to try a Naso Tang (not ready to add another tang to my 120), sailfin lawnmower blenny (don't want to press my luck with the bicolor I already have), I have one urchin (came in on LR from the gulf) that I don't think touches it, and I just got a foxface wabbitfish last night (I'll tell you about his progress in time) and I've been told about freshwater injections for it(that hasn't helped in my case) I did notice when cleaning my power heads, that vineger seems to kill it pretty well:p I think my main problem might be my water, I need to replace my DI. I'm also going to start dosing Kalk in hopes to precipitate some phosphates, if there are any. Last night I took out a gallon of dictyota, I think it looks alright now......
That's my plan right now:)
Gareth

[hiddendragonet]

Tough, Gareth! Good luck with that.

Hey, is that my xenia at the bottom? That stuff's starting to make its way across the state!

[fishpoo]

wow, how did that happen in a weeks time? did you let the co2 from the reactor go off wack?

[Lutefisk]

WOW! That's some blossom!

I have a naso that would think that you just placed it in the world's largest tang buffet!

I had some that came with a coral :( I tried the pruing, nutrient, refugium, etc. routes but I was still losing the battle.

I did some research and found that naso's eat it. I took the risk and it sure paid off. I have a dictyota eating machine:D

I've got some that continues to grow in cracks etc. but "Oppie" mows it as close as he can.

Best wishes!
Paul

[DresdenKali]

OMIGOD...Thanks for posting this. I have never seen or heard of anything like it.

[tlc]

YOU NEED AN UNDERWATER WEED WACKER FOR THAT. I FEEL FOR YOU. GOOD LUCK RIDDING IT...

[BradJohnson]

I have a lot of that too, at least it's easy to pull out in big handfuls - except it's really brittle and comes apart.

My refugium is full of it, it works great because it floats to the top and acts as mechanical filtration providing food for the pods.

http://www.iemg.com/reef/ID2.jpg

Good luck

[NHreefer]

Maybe if everyone thinks a naso, see if someone in your club wants one also, see if it will eat the algae and then sell it to the other person either way sans $10 or so. Otherwise it looks like alot of constant disturbance to prune. My $.02
Good Luck
Chris

[ocelot]

I recommend John Deere or Toro.... - john.

[Turtlesteve]

i have some of this stuff in my tank, how do i get rid of it? i can prune it all i want but it still comes back within a day or two, and any surface it touches is permanently colonized.

Also, i've got this plague algae that covers the surface of the rock/sand like cyano, except it's leathery and hard, and impossible to remove.

[kevinpo]

Turtlesteve,
Check out this site. Does it look like the stuff there? A naso tang will make very short work of it.
http://www.globaldialog.com/~jrice/algae_page/lobophora.htm

HTH,
Kevin

[Crawdad1]

It amazing how useful John Rice's web page is!

[Rock Anemone]

I went away for a weekend and came home to a clean cystal clear tank, I also found several more bistles snails, copepods beyond belief and some ncie macro growing.

Sorry to hear what happened I had soem of that algae and got rid of it by syphoning it off. May try scraping it off to.

Rock Anemone

[acrophoria]

Kevinpo,thanks I have that macro in my tank and wanted to know what it was...now I do.It look like a mold that grows on trees.:)

[cweder]

Just wanted to chime in. I have brown Sargassum and Dictyota growing in my tank. The Sargassum did'nt bother me, but when the Dictyota poped up a couple weeks ago I was'nt amused. Several sources said that Naso Tangs primary diet are these two brown algaes so I thought I should try, instead of trying to take it out by hand. I have had a blonde Naso now for 7 days and both brown algaes are wiped out. The Naso was'nt my first pick, because of his grown up size potential, but now I think he is my favorite, gorgeous and useful to boot. Now if I can get him to eat something else before my blue throat trigger eats it all.

[thereefmaster]

Ouch. Sorry about that. Your snails suck! lol. j/k. Pehaps a kole tang? or a foxface... maybe.

-Nate

[trmiv]

Holy old thread, Batman!!

[tbettis]

that scares me and i havent even set my tank up yet. feel for ya brotha. maybe you need a tank sitter.

[phatstanley02]

he might have FOUR years ago lol

[physicslord]

Okay, we need a "where are they now?" for this guy. Did his tank make it?

[Niven]

Yes

[widmer]

Hmm I wasn't born yet when this thread was started. Care to post the pic again?

[smoovie]

Wow. Zombie thread. Just when you think it's dead ...