A few months ago I picked up a
Purple Montipora Digita frag with a little bryopsis on it. I did my best to
clean it up and frag it off but as you might have already guessed before I knew
it my entire tank was plagued. This algae has proved to be the most difficult
algae I’ve ever had to deal with.
There are a number of articles on Reef Central
on the subject of how to eradicate Bryopsis but no one theory has worked for me
so here’s what I’ve done.
- I elevated the Magnesium in my tank to 1700 to
1750ppm(most of the articles suggest 1600ppm but that wasn’t doing it for
me. The only down side to this is that it drives
my Alkalinity levels down so I end up dosing both Mag and ALK. I’ve found
that DT’s new 3 part solution works very well for this. It seems to be
more concentrated than a lot of other products on the market.
- I’ve been very diligent as far as my husbandry routine
has been concerned. I’ve been running my skimmer wet and been doing larger
water changes more often. While I do my water changes I scrape and pull as
much of the bryopsis off of the rocks and siphon it out. It’s very
important to get as much of it out as you can, try not to let any float
around the tank if you can.
- I’ve found some critters seem to help a bit but not
nearly as much as I’d like. I have some trouble keeping them alive
because I use power heads in my tank for flow and they seem to love
getting themselves sucked in…
- I’ve used:
- sea hares, lettuce nudibranch’s, a lawnmower blenny
and various tangs and rabbit fish.
Most of these seem to help but the
tangs and my spotted rabbit fish won’t touch the stuff…
I honestly think the biggest key to
my success has been the magnesium, no one really seems to know why but it
really works. It has also made my corals color up nicely so that’s an added
bonus.
One thing to remember is that nothing good happens fast in
this hobby, it’s taken months to eradicate
this nuisance algae from my tank but with some patients it can be done.
I hope you’ve found this helpful, I
wish you the best of luck.
Reef On!
Here are some pics... Yuck!
