Algaefix Marine by API

I am aware that there are a large number of threads and posts on this product on various sites on the www.

but wanted to share my personal experience with this product with 3 reef members

background

I have been carbon dosing for aesthetic reasons for approximately 4 months or so

whilst I had a slight nutrient issue - my algaes and glass cleaning frequency told me this, when my test kits tried to deny it! LOL

I had very little GHA - most was located on power heads
I had none of the Bryopsis - hard to get rid of algae

what I did have was
a red type hair algae - unsure of ID
and dark green/ black turf algae which made the rockwork look bad and also prevented coraline colonisation

the various forms of carbon dosing utilised did have some effect
but the main effect was preventing development, rather than cleaning what was already there
the exception on this was GHA and carbon dosing did infact clear this out within a couple of months or so

so after some research here and other places ( credit to Highland Reefer for an excellent thread on another site which inspired me to try it out)

I decided to try out Algaefix Marine from API

this is an image of a typical rock with the turf algae on
this was taken about 3 weeks ago after Vodka dosing for a few months but before any algae fix marine was used



this is the same rockwork after 4 doses of algae fix marine ( dose is every 3 days at 5 mils per 50 gallons)



here is the same rock, taken just before the weekend and after 8 doses of algae fix marine



Im sure the images speak for themselves
this situation has repeated itself on every rock that was infected with the turf algae

no negatives have been experienced during this period
no invert deaths
no coral brown outs or STN or worse
no LPS corals showing adverse reaction to the chemical

I have continued to run GFO and in fact dose Vodka at 2 mils per day during this period

it has not been as effective against the red type hair algae
but I will continue with the product as it does at least seem to be helping control the spread of this species



Steve

 

Thanks for the write up.This can be very useful to anyone with the same problem.

 

great write up steve, very informative. if you ever figure out how to get rid of that red hair type algae let me know, that stuff is the devil. only thing that has been eating it is my little urchin but he cant get to all the crevices

 

Anotrichium spp algae is a bear because you will never be able to lower nutrients low enough to starve it out. I have found that zebra turbos (not regular turbos, not Mexican turbos) will keep it under control (if it is short).

As far as the Algaefix Marine is concerned, that's the only way we could keep algae at bay in the predator tank. Those pigs just ate too much food. LOL I can give you another example. There was a tank in a nursing home that looked horrible. Algae was everywhere and was even killing the corals. It's not exactly easy to do a 300 gallon waterchange when the tank is in the central lobby. I ordered this product in and gave it to the maintenance guy to dose. It took some time because the algae was so bad. However, this plus smaller waterchanges fixed their aquarium.

This product isn't a cure-all. If you don't fix the underlying issue, the algae will come right back.

 

The red algae looks like it's barely hanging on. Have you done any water changes out of the norm during the Algaefix dosing?

 

thanks doylef4i

will do - Sally Lightfoots occasionally will eat it , but as you know they could pose a risk to fish as they get larger

Thanks for the ID Curtis
CUC is sadly not something we get many options with out here
Hermits - occasionally
Astrea Tecta - a lot of the time
Sally Lightfoots - reasonably often
but other snail species - never seen them to be honest
hopefully once the Algae fix has done its job the carbon dosing will control any subsequent nutrients and the problem should be managed

no additional water changes barbianj - just the usual 5% weekly every week not missed a week for as long as I can recall

Steve

 

I had a thread on algaefix a while back with very good results and no bad side effects,it really helped with gha and film algae as well as some type of vining macro that was going wild,the only downside I noticed was it didn't have any effect on bryopsis,which i read in several reviews that it wouldn't kill bryopsis.So all in all I found it to be a very good product,it doesn't replace good husbandry,but I found sometimes even great husbandry doesn't prevent algae.It's a great weapon to have in the algae fighting arsenal.

 

Maybe I missed it, Steve, but what about macro algae. Did the system have any chaeto or caulerpa in it?

 

My system does not have barbianj
but from reading a lot about this product, it appears macros isolated in a fuge have not been affectedd by it, and Halimeda located in DT seems to survive the course of treatment also

Steve

 

How old is this set up Steve?

One thing I have found over the years- is that "glass" algae will disapate in time, on it's own accord- it takes patience but with a good CUC and regular small water changes it does go away on it's own eventually. Just an occational swipe with a mag float and your done.

What many people (most likey not yourself) forget is that natural sunlight will really cause algae to have explosive growth rates.

I am experimenting with this with the 45 gallon tank- in the sump (and small amount in the DT) I am using Green Grape Algae - Caulerpa uva. It is working but not at a rate I think will convince people to use it alone. So thanks to black Raven, he is sending me some Chaetomorpha algae, I am going to add this to the sump and see what happens.

One other thing, I am also using my old Fluval 304 as a three stage reactor, no filters, stage one is bio rings, stage two is Marineland carbon, stage three is phosban.

The tanks is super healthy, but due to the amount of natural sunlight - The glass algae is still present, but in far less quanities then when I first started this experiment. So if the above works out- perhaps it can solve other people's algae problems too.