BRYOPSIS: Learn what it is and how to kill it.

So this is where I will attempt to teach and educate the 3reef world on Bryopsis and how to fight it off!

So what is Bryopsis exactly?






It is a type of marine algae often mistaken for hair algae. It looks like a tiny fern which make it somewhat easy to identify. It can come in on frags, rock, and anything you can put into your tank. This stuff is close to impossible to rid yourself of, spreads fast, and can take over your tank!

I've read many, many threads on people coming into contact with this stuff and how horrible it can get! From turning their lights of for days at a time to boiling their rocks. This algae has come back and is extremely hard to get rid off.

After more researching and thanks to 3reef member 2n10, I have discovered that there is one way of ridding this algae and it works! Raising your magnesium levels to 1600ppm-1800ppm for 2-4 weeks.

Now some have tried and had no success which left me feeling very worried this may take hold in my tank forever! But then it was brought to my attention that you must use a certain type of magnesium additive known as Kent's Tech-M!

So again I hit the internet researching into this product and its success rate. It would appear this is the product to use and it works! Success! It is not fully understood why Tech-M works but it is believed that some unknown ingredient inside causes the Bryopsis to no longer be able to absorb nutrients.

While we do this we want to have our skimmers running wet, changing our GFO and carbon weekly, feeding a little less, and also picking out as much as we can.

So now that we know what Byropsis is and that we can defeat it here are the instructions and my daily diary into ridding Bryopsis from our tanks once and for all!

DAY 1

So it begins.

My Bryopsis algae was brought in secretly into my tank inside the skeleton of two favia frags. They did not show any sign of having the algae inside when I got them so I put them into my tank. Soon the stuff sprouted out and within a month or so started popping up in other places of my tank.













So I ordered some Kent's Tech-M and got to work.

You want to raise your magnesium around 90 ppm per day, not exceeding 100 ppm in 24 hours.

To calculate how much to use I would suggest using this calculator on this site. Put in your water volume, which is the total amount of water in your tank not your tank size, then put in your current magnesium levels and then add 90 to that number. It will give you the amount to add in ml.

With me having a about 35-40 gallons of total water volume I added 180 ml to raise my magnesium around 80-100 ppm.

My starting magnesium was 1390 ppm and after adding the amount above it was raised to 1510. Which means I added a little too much. I will have to watch everything now but I hope this will not hurt anything that bad.

I will update again tomorrow with more pictures and news.

 

two things: 1. high Mag might kill your snails and 2. Telgar and Amcarrig know quite a bit about this so if you want to dig up some of their threads that might be VERY helpful.

good luck!

 

good article. I agree 100 percent with the write up.

 

From what I've read they should pull through and I tried to search their threads but couldn't find any on Bryopsis...

 

we lost a lot of snails when we did a treatment in the PSU tank so I know its a possibility.

I made a mistake... its tangster, not Telgar lol!!! I knew that, just apparently wasnt thinking at the time
http://www.3reef.com/forums/algae/bryopsis-control-51891.html

and the good thread:
http://www.3reef.com/forums/show-of...up-running-downgraded-90-gallon-37609-15.html

 

I did the treatment and did not lose any snails, I was very aggressive with keeping my SG as close to 1.026 as possible.

 

Man we have alot more bryopsis survivors on this forum than i thought.

 

The key is to recognize it quickly, act quickly and aggressively. Remove as much manually as possible even while treating.

I read where one reefer decided to put a rock with a patch of Bryopsis in a biocube under total black out conditions. He would check every few weeks and would find the patch was gone but found another one somewhere else on the rock. Evil, Evil stuff.

 

So have you been forced to continue the dosing to make sure they don't come back?

How long before you saw results?

 

It took about 4 weeks, but I wasn't aggressive enough at first in removing as much as possible. I also had a skimmer that was only function not really great at removing DOC.

I have not had any more problems. I would take some of the Bryopsis and put it in your fuge if the fuge is a stand alone tank. This will allow the bryopsis to out compete any in your tank once you get it under control in the tank.