AlgaeFix Marine to control Hair Algae

[terri_ann]

Originally Posted by HighlandReefer

I saw your post and hoped someone with experience would chime in.

Hobbyists including myself have kept using carbon sources while dosing AF without problems. I noted good bacteria numbers in my skimmate during this time. Obviously bacteria will reproduce during use of AF. However, AF can act on bacterial. With the low numbers of bacteria in these additives (relative to those in your tank), perhaps adding bacterial sources would not be a good idea during AF dosing. I don't think it would hurt anything, but may kill these suspended bacterial you try to introduce.

Using carbon sources may be a good thing during AF use.

Thanks Cliff for responding I wondered where you went

I've been tagging along for several weeks now. I had used AF several years ago when my tank was FOWLR and it worked well, even no reoccurance of HA. I tore the tank down about 2 years ago and since setting it back up, I've had nothing but problems with high nitrates. I finally resorted to vodka dosing but the trates wouldn't go below 20ppm. When I started to get cyano, I decided to stop dosing. Moved all corals into my frag tank and decided to go Prodibio. After 1 dose, the lightbulb went off...AF

I'll do the 5th dose of AF tomorrow. So far, no sign of dieoff but all the algae is in the hidey-holes of the rock. I had manually removed what I could some time back. I plan to start dosing vodka, vodka-vinegar or just vinegar again once I find the formula. The nitrates will skyrocket when the die-off begins so hopefully the carbon dosing will keep the trates around 20ppm, then I'll start the Prodibio.

My plan will be to dose the BioDigest at least 24 hours after dosing AF. Then 24 hours after dosing BioDigest, I'll dose either BioPTim or vodka/vinegar. I hope that will give the bacteria in the BioDigest a fighting chance and the fuel they'll need to consume the trates.

[HighlandReefer]

Sounds like a reasonable approach.

FWIW, I saw less cyano problems when dosing vinegar alone vs vodka and some other hobbyists have report the same, like Randy.

[terri_ann]

I may just dose vinegar then as cyano is such a pain....

Have a nice weekend Cliff!

[HighlandReefer]

[RiddleEagle18]

Im going to start using this. I have some chaeto I want to keep alive. Reading through this thread I gather it is safe after 24 hours. Can I keep the chaeto in a bucket of old water for 24 hours then reinsert it for 2 days. Then before I dose again do another water change keeping the old water for the chaeto for another 24 hours then reinsert for 2 days. Rinse repeat? Has anyone had any luck doing something similar?

[HighlandReefer]

Most hobbyists don't have problems with their chaeto until after 10 doses from what I have gathered in this thread. My concern would be that your chaeto is infested with the algae as well and would re-inoculate the tank after treating with AF.

[RiddleEagle18]

Alright ill give it a shot in tank. Im also going to treat with the lights cycle reduced for several days.

[RiddleEagle18]

I dont remember if anyone else has experienced this or not but less than and hour after I dosed the snails all came out and began attacking the rocks. Something they havent really done much in the past. Hopefully a sign that the algae now taste better :-)

[HighlandReefer]

Originally Posted by RiddleEagle18

Alright ill give it a shot in tank. Im also going to treat with the lights cycle reduced for several days.

Lights out wil reduce growth of any orgnanism that uses light. This can help by reducing alge growth as well as many cyano oranramisms growth rate. Keep us posted.

[HighlandReefer]

Originally Posted by RiddleEagle18

I dont remember if anyone else has experienced this or not but less than and hour after I dosed the snails all came out and began attacking the rocks. Something they havent really done much in the past. Hopefully a sign that the algae now taste better :-)

AlgaeFix breaking down algae may make it more palatable to snails.

[RiddleEagle18]

Well it worked! After about 5 treatments the HA is gone. Problem is it killed my chaeto. The chaeto became white on the ends and then slowly broke apart and died. Now that its gone, im fighting a bit of a cyano problem but Im thrilled the HA is gone.

Probably just going to go buy a nice big ball of chaeto and chalk up the $10 loss to beating the HA.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hopefully it stays gone once the Algaefix is gone.

[GeoJ]

First, thanks to all of those that have contributed to this thread...
After reading this thread I put my new found knowledge to work. It has been 11 doses and I have to say that things are better now. What do you think?


Before


After


Before


After


My phosphate was keep low about 0.10ppm or less for the last month. Algae that the fish and snails would only nibble on became favorite food when Algaefix was dosed.

[GeoJ]

I received a PM but I don't have enough posts to reply so I will do it here.

I keep LPS mostly and about two weeks ago I added a Montipora. The Monti has done well with the treatment with no noticeable effects. Favites, Favia, and Echinophyllia will contract within minutes of dosing and then not extend their feeding tentacles fully for a night or two. So for the corals I have I would say after 11 doses there has been no lasting effect that I can see.

[terri_ann]

Update:

I have dosed AF 18 times with no problems that I know of. Snails, 3 BTA's and 2 clowns, 2 tangs, filefish, mandarin & lawnmower goby, coral beauty, 5 chromis and a hawkfish. I recently lost the Valentini puffer but I do NOT attribute it to the AF. I am dosing vinegar and using kalk at 2 teaspoons/gallon topoff water. There are shrooms, ricordia's, a few zoa's, 2 leathers and a hammer in the tank. I recently began dosing Bioptim.

The HA was on all my rock. The difficult parts are: impossible to remove it within the rocks' cracks and crevices, nitrates are at or above 50ppm and there's cyano. I believe the die off of the HA increases the nitrates which just refuels the remaining, live HA and the cyano. I purchased more snails and crabs but haven't been able to add them to the tank with the nitrates so high. It took a long time for the HA to grow so it's going to take alot longer time to get rid of all of it.

Today I am going to remove all the rock and sand. I bought a small wire brush and am going to brush the heck out of the rock to remove as much algae and cyano as possible. I will do a 60-70g water change too. I will use the old tank water to brush the rocks in and then will rinse them in new SW before putting them back in the DT. I am going to go barebottom at least until the cyano, HA and nitrates are gone. I think this is the only way that I will see improvement, unfortunately

[HighlandReefer]

terri_ann,

Glad the AF is working for you.

No sure what size your system is, but I wouldn't change more water than 30% at one time. If you need to change more, than use smaller multiple water changes to be on the safe side & give any heavy metal build-up time to allow the organics to tie up the heavy metals into a safer form.

[terri_ann]

Originally Posted by HighlandReefer

terri_ann,

Glad the AF is working for you.

No sure what size your system is, but I wouldn't change more water than 30% at one time. If you need to change more, than use smaller multiple water changes to be on the safe side & give any heavy metal build-up time to allow the organics to tie up the heavy metals into a safer form.

Hi Cliff
Yes, I believe it's safe to say that AF works. I shouldn't have let the HA get so bad to where I now have to dose for so long At least I bought the largest bottle

I have a 135g and sump so with rock displacement, I figure it's about 145g total. I took the rock out and scrubbed as much of the dead and living HA off the rock as I could. I removed the sandbed also. The WC was about 20%...30g. I will test later today and depending on the results, I may do 2 more 20% WC's this week. Thanks for the guidance on smaller WC's

[HighlandReefer]

Your'e welcome.

[terri_ann]

Did another WC yesterday and dosed AF today. Rock looks much better now Wish the nitrates would go down so I could add the snails to work on the dead algae..... I may just put a few snails in this weekend to see if they will live. Somehow I need to get the dead algae out of the cracks and crevices...I added a pencil urchin a few days ago and he found a nice hole with algae in it. Took him 2 days to empty it Can't find him today lol

[ReefDetective]

Well, where do I start. I had a beautiful 120 gallon reef tank with lots of sps, zoas,and other corals after upgrading from a 57 gallon. Everything was going great, but a few things went wrong. My number 1 problem....Lack of water changes. I am now a believer. Too bad that it took my tank going to hell and me almost quitting the hobby to realize the importance of what water changes does. Even heavy skimming, a gfo and carbon reactor, and dosing does not replace what a good water change can do to export unwanted nutrients, and replace used minerals. My 2nd problem....I started using kalk in my auto top off, but I used it poorly, and by not mixing it thoroughly it crashed my tank and lead to my skimmer not functioning properly and clogging my GFO and carbon reactors. Last problem....Do not ignore algae! If you get a frag from someone and the rock has any algae on it at all, don't put it in your tank! If you see any algae crop up in your tank, spot remove it immediately, don't wait. So, after doing some soul searching and my wife becoming interested in starting a pico tank, I remembered how much I loved the saltwater hobby and vowed to myself to practice much better tank maintenance from now on.

All that being said... My tank used to look like this:


Then because of my failures it ended up like this:






So, I decided it was time to change it, or break it down. I started by cleaning my skimmer thoroughly, scraping the glass, and started siphoning off any hair algae I could. I ordered a large clean up crew and also got some Mexican Turbo snails. I dosed my first dose of Marine Alagefix. Since my tank is 120 gallons with a 30 gallon sump, I figured the water volume to be approximately 135 gallons and dosed according to directions.

Next, I changed about 15 gallons of water by siphoning off more algae at the same time. The hair algae began to weaken.


After the second dose, I noticed the hair algae turned from green to grayish. A much lighter color.


I then did a 40 gallon water change, and removed a few of the rocks on the left island and suctioned the hair algae off completely with a wet/dry vac. It almost came right off! Also I noticed the algae started to turn loose more from the rocks, and my skimmer started skimming copious amounts of it.

I just did my third dose yesterday and I am now about 95% algae free! The bright greenish yellow patches are sponges.


I added a filter pad in my sump in the baffle right before the return. It has worked great in catching any remaining detrius and the water is starting to clear up beautifully. I am wet skimming, running heavy GFO and Carbon, changed my lights from old 14k bulbs to new 20k radium blues. I will probably do another massive 40 gallon water change this week, and after that I will start a weekly maintenance dose of Algaefix. I saw no negative effects on my cleaner shrimp, fish, or inverts. This product is great and in conjunction with manual removal methods works great!

[ReefDetective]

Now, if I can get rid of these pesky mojanos, my tank will be in good shape. I will never let it go again!

[HighlandReefer]

ReefDetective,

Thanks for sharing your experience using AF.

Great advice regarding jumping on any algae pest.

[ReefDetective]

Tank update: After dosing my 5th dose I am about 99% algae free! I highly recommend it and it helped me to turn my tank around. Now they need to make a product called Aptasia Fix! I bought an aptasia eating filefish to take care of them. Hopefully he eats them all!

[MHG]

I wonder if this works on byprosis

[HighlandReefer]

AF does not work on bryopsis or other siphoning algae. Siphoning algae heal their exterior cell walls to quickly for AF to work. AF makes holes in the outer cell wall causing the contents to spill out and also enters the cell causing damage inside.

If you look at a siphonous algae under a microscope you can see that the algae has extremely large cells which can actually branch out. So their cells are very large. When a siphonous algae is broken the cells heal themselves very quickly.


Siphonous algae cell



MORPHOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
WITHIN THE ALGAE
http://scitec.uwichill.edu.bb/bcs/bl14apl/algae2.htm