Peroxide application video using the reefbowl

I could probably drain down to nearly half full. Should I drain it down and keep track of how much I am dripping onto the rock then refill and do a water change? Is that the ideal method other than actually removing rock and doing it in like a bucket, rinsing and replacing?

PS: I have really let the tank go as this macro is driving me crazy and I am about to give up and start over...

 

that helps tremendously for a diagnosis. definately worth saving you wont need to start over but if you'll use about that much work in removing the rocks one at a time like you said, even if its a pain to re stack them, this will save that whole tank and stress nothing. consider the tank saved, easy job for peroxide. its the dang dinoflagellate tanks I have a hard time with.


Truthfully you probably can get away with the 1:10 dosing but I really really never recommend that when this other alternative is there. the external treatment one rock at a time has never caused a loss using peroxide because we control where it goes. you don't even have to scrape it off your rock, stuff is so thorough it will simply fall off in about a week, any spot you treated externally using a new bottle of 3%.

that amount of algae you have is not a big deal to let it break down in the tank, the amounts of N and P re liberated don't even compare to the daily food we add to these tanks. thats not a hideous infestation, just an annoying one I can tell for you. its not much in actual biomass if you measured the dry weight of all that invader as a dry sample. we can document the death of it better for others if you let it die off naturally after a treatment.

All you have is a hitchhiking problem, its not a water nutrient problem even without knowing params your tank doesn't have algae in places other than the live rock/substrate I can see. to me if you had terrible phosphates and nitrates Id see more green pigmentation and physicality in the cracks and crevices of the tank like the corners etc

since this algae of X? genus got into the tank, it was able to exploit the same dissolved nutrients that sustain your corals, it didn't need excess to take over. all it needed was non-predation, light, decent water and bam! its on. you even have a tang that doesnt eat salad lol.

the fact you don't have a dsb is really nice, before you get started bigtime Id feel really good for you if you would just take out a rock or two as a test run, treat them externally, rinse and place back in tank. No need to add any to the tank even if you are willing to drain it in my opinion

take an after pic of those test rocks in 48 hours and see what it does, it will really motivate you to do the rest.

The soft corals wont mind brief emersion during this spot treatment where the peroxide won't actually touch them. drip clean seawater across them and the anemone while you are treating to keep them moist. who cares if its a minor stress, this will save your tank overall.

You won't have to buy new rock
you wont have to recycle
the fish can stay in
you can siphon out/water change with each batch of rocks you are removing (cleaning up under them) which is great for the tank

this will also kill any bristleworms in the live rock, they hate peroxide.

so it might feel like starting over having to remove each rock by hand but I can personally guarantee you it will work and be safe and worth it in the end. thanks for posting such clear pics, you are going to really enjoy next week's follow up pics. \

what a nice start to a new peroxide thread.
B

 

lastly, my vision for your particular tank is to get all the rock surfaces first so they are free of the pest. Some might still be left on the back walls/floor but it will be 2% of the original biomass and we can worry about that after the 98% obvious stuff is gone via external treatment. taking it in stages...

we are seeing some interesting effects in treated tanks where this last 2% hangers-on still die off because miniscule amounts of peroxide perhaps from an imperfect rinsing are acting as a residual killer to finish off cleaning the tank. even if they are still there after the rocks are totally clean, we can zap them with a mild .5mils/10 if really needed in a week or two.

any good prognosticator worth his/her weight in live rock would tell you worst possible outcomes and here's the ones for this tank. losing the anemone due to contact with peroxide or emersion stress is possible but unlikely. Fish are not a concern at all with peroxide, ive never had one feedback on any forum even when dosed at the ridiculous ratio of *+50mls per ten gallons* which is what mysterybox on RC was testing on page 16 or 17, thats an outlandish test run lol but neat to see fish still didn't care. we are no where near that stress in this kind of guided test.

some of your soft corals may show some stress of being emersed but its still worth it in my opinion, we'd be preserving ~$300 worth of live rock it appears in using this method and no tank startover. you will not find any kind of tank cycling or mass coral loss with the method, just these two possible issues above. the vast majority of the tank will live on.

 

Lol I bought the yellow tang in hopes that he would eat it but no luck. It did start as a small hitch hiker and didn't grow to out of control in my 90 gallon and left it thinking it would serve as a good food source for future tang but none ate it. The two I have now or the naso I did have. I am on my way to get peroxide now but I need salt which will be tomorrow. A few of the rocks are small and will be easy to pull out and do I and not sure about the big one with the nem on it though. Some of the macro is growing so thick its choking out some of my coral especially the big yellow acro. There is some green patches here and there but nothing major. I do have a sand bed in my fudge will that make any difference because I read you say something about a dsb.

 

no probs with the dsb, its just nice to not have it in main tank so when you are pouring in water/setting in rocks/moving around theres no dust cloud. this looks like a great candidate. making predictions like this is still rather shocking, before peroxide we didn't have anything with established timelines and such I find it all still really amazing how it works.

 

hey I dont know if you have an iphone or droid or something but it would be really neat if you'd film the external spot treatments as a few different files, then get a quick free splicer app to meld them together and upload it all as a before and after video. thats just what I did with my dorky 35% video its all just shot and spliced on a droid.

I was lucky enough to get your before and after jpegs but it ran through my mind if you are going to do this tonite it couldn't hurt to make a quick video either, I just taped my phone to a mic stand lol and used it as a holder while I was piddling around in the vase.

 

I'll give this a try on a rock I will remove from the aquarium. I'm excited to give this a shot. I'll post some pictures next week.

 

What an awesome thread.

Anyways, you're saying that if I dose 1ml per 10g water, it will help rid me of some cyano? And all my livestock and corals will be fine?

 

That's what some people wind up doing but only after other actions are ruled out and we are left with that method. Some corals don't like it...be sure and read the whole reefcentral thread and post a fts here first so we have the safest starting point, able to see what's in the tank etc

Drain methods are still recommended first for cyano, need pics!

 

Within the linked threads we've recommended repeated physical removal before peroxide for cyano. That too is an organism not always associated with poor params, I quit seeing every tank invader as a water quality issue when we are able to see very clean tanks having a problem

algae can dominate real reefs when grazers cease to function whether through overfishing etc and those waters are cleaner than we'll ever get. I prefer using peroxide in place of boyds chemiclean or red slime remover because peroxide is more thorough at killing the target organism without a bounce-back due to different operational methods on the cell. we need to see where the concentration of your cyano is, on the substrate, rocks up top, etc

feel free to lift out any rock though and do a spot treatment outside the tank, rinse, and put back in watching in the next day or two for how that area responds. these simple initial tests are easy and will harm nothing in the tank while we check for susceptibility of the target.