AND TOTAL ANNIHILATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, after many MANY months, the bryopsis is ........... GONE, almost.
And, before you say it, NO i did not use Tech M, or hydrate MG, or any other sort of hydrated magnesium product.
I have lately been finding it much easy to maintain a much higher pH than usual. And that is because i finally have an exhaust system installed. Now, natural pH levels are around 8.3, constantly, and with the addition of Kalk, easily 8.4-8.5, the best thing is however, is that i am no longer needing to do Kalk Shots, only Kalk top up via saturated solution, which is great.
I'm going to outline this in steps, explain why each is important, and, mostly it will be order of most important (or beneficial) to least, (or not least but do the other first) important.
1. 8.6 is the magic mark
Get the pH up there and keep it there. At least get it above 8.3 at night and during the day.
Identify the problem of the depressed pH, if you have good alkalinity reserves and your pH is still low, then its CO2, plain and simple. CO2 moves into water by diffusion very easily, it doesn't even need to be pumped in by the protein skimmer (although this definitely does not help), it will move into water from the atmosphere as it sees fit all by itself.
This will at least get the bryopsis starting to fight to maintain its internal pH and cell structure as the pH gradient has increased, stressing it badly and getting it to begin to break down. The CO2 being stripped from the water by Kalk, or the removal of CO2 by eliminating it by other means (more ventilation etc) will also not allow the bryopsis to access low levels of nutrient, all plants need CO2, limit it, and you limit its food source (more on this later)
2. N & P - Get em out buddy
And suspended solids!!! a good form of nutrient export is skimming and you have to have a good skimmer, and NO, the skimmer you bought on ebay that has no brand name that cost you $50 and is rated for a 500 liter tank is not a good skimmer, throw it away, fill it with concrete and use it for an anchor, or lay it on its side on the floor and use it for putting practice.
Go and research skimmers, get the best one you can afford and get one that is bigger than you need. You want to pump AT LEAST 2 times the tank volume through the skimmer per hour (without exceeding the flow rate recommendations of the skimmer) to make sure you are really polishing up that water.
With a good skimmer comes the ability to reduce nutrient chemically, biologically or through the use of resins and filtration media, whatever you do, get them down there and keep it down, as low a possible, zero if you can get there. Although its not good for coral long term, short term 0.00 readings on N & P will not hurt your corals and help starve out the bryopsis, stressing it further.
3. MORE FLOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get more flow in your tank, and better random flow patterns, get the waste up off and from in the rock and get it out of the system, i.e. into your skimmer and filter for removal.
This not only increases nutrient removal, it decreases nutrient cycling. Bryopsis also captures micro particles and uses it for food, yes, it filter feeds (just when you thought it couldn't get any worse) so get more flow in there.
And when your siphoning and water changing, siphon as much crap off the rocks and from the substrate as possible (if you dont have a deep sand bed that is) and remove, very carefully, and making sure to siphon out all the particles, any bryopsis that you can get to.
All the nutrient removal your doing manually will only help the overall process of nutrient removal to starve and further stress the bryopsis.
4. Get your tank working for you biologically
There are plenty of great bacterial products out there, and there are also some great enzymatic products out there too, that are designed to help further break down waste and clean detritus, if possible, adding an organic carbon source, whilst dosing bacteria will serve to not only introduce efficient strains of beneficial bacteria to your tank, but also help fuel nutrient uptake for removal (by bacterial biomass) by your skimmer, and help to clean up your tank. Win - Win......... Win.
5. Stability
If you have problem algae, you either have some of the issues (like excess CO2/depressed pH) or you might also have tank instability.
This includes, but is not limited to:
- foundation elements stability (are you monitoring and adjusting your kH/calcium/magnesium levels regularly and are the swings small)
- under or over feeding (under feeding can result in poor growth and colour of corals and therefore poor uptake of N & P by corals at low levels which can help to stabilize nutrient concentrations and out complete bryopsis, however small the effect, over feeding, well this is a no brainer and an obvious problem)
- not enough water changes - ever noticed how your tank looks frakkin fantastic 2-3 days after a water change and then looks kinda dull? a decent sized water change (minimum 20% a month) will ensure healthy inhabitants and re-balance's and "reset's" the chemical balance in your tank so to speak that you may have thrown out from dosing, feeding etc. Small water changes more frequently are better, i work off the following rules:
<80 litres - 50% water change a week (especially if running a skimmer-less tank)
80-150 liters - 30% water change weekly-fortnightly (depending on nutrient control and dosing regime)
150-300 litres - 30% water change fortnightly-monthly (again depending on nutrient control and dosing regime)
300 litre and more - 25% a month (again depending on nutrient control and dosing regime)
This is going to be determined entirely by you, obviously more water changes, of a higher volume more frequently will be more beneficial, but this will depend on budget, time constraints and what works best in your tank. But as a rule, this is what I run and recommend before i take everything into account like systems design, dosing etc.
So continuing on:
- No consistent nutrient control method (nutrient levels fluctuate up and down constantly with attention paid to keeping them low consistently)
-Not using a good quality salt, salts are either hydrous, or anhydrous, as a general rule, if it is using more than 37-39 grams or so to mix up water to 35ppt, then its a hydrated salt, this means it has water in it. Anhydrous mixes (Aquavitro salinity, Brightwell Aquatics Neomarine)only use about 36gms of salt per liter to get to 35ppt. I hear you saying 2 grams difference, big deal, well, it kinda is.
If you have 2 grams of water in a salt mix, that is 2000 milligrams of water. Water that can (depending on how the salt and components are harvested) have organics and more importantly phosphate in it.
Now, if even 1% of that water has organics that can break down into phosphate, or phosphate specifically in it, that is 20ppm of possible organics and phosphate PER LITER of water you mix up that you are introducing into the aquarium.
If you do a 20 liter water change, well, that's a value of 400ppm. Now its not likely to ever be that high, BUT, who is to say that a good portion of the organics don't break down straight away, which they don't or some of the phosphate isn't assimilated by coral straight away or locked up by calcium carbonate, which it would be. As i said, its not likely to be this high, but anhydrous salt mixes are more expensive for a reason, because they are better quality salt mixes. Try them and see the results for yourself.
The more pure the salt mix, the better results you will get.
6. RO Water
It seems to be a no brainer but it really does make a difference. Starting with pure water makes a lot of sense for reasons im not going to go into as its been done to death. I firmly believe that had i been using RO water this whole time, the result would have happened much quicker.
No particles or organics, salt mixes up to where it should, all the crap, nutrient, heavy metals etc removed.
Go get a bloody RO filter, its a small cost in comparison to the amount of filtration media you will need to use to correct issues from using de-chlorinated tap water.
7. Vigilance
Keep this up for 4-6 weeks and it should be done and dusted (assuming that your nutrient levels are low), it could take a little longer, but don't get all half arsed about it, as soon as you slack off, everything starts going south.
As with everything, Bryopsis is a symptom of a bigger problem, through my fairly intensive research into this frustrating algae and my successful eradication in 4 tanks to date using the same methods, i know this works.
Its not one silver bullet (again, Tech-M), there needs to be many things addressed if you really have a huge problem with bryopsis.
Tech-M works yeah, but really, if you have depressed pH, high nutrient levels, not enough flow, a skimmer that isnt performing, detritus build up in your rocks and an unbalanced and unstable marine aquarium, then adding Tech-M might kill the bryopsis, but shouldn't you be looking at the cause and the bigger picture?
With all problems that I diagnose and attempt to rectify on a daily basis, I start from the bottom, fix the biggest problems first, then work up from there. If everything isn't working and in range as it should be, then no matter what course of action you take, you are always going to have problems, and possibly never be able to solve the issue or achieve the tank you want to.
I hope this might at least help some people with their bryopsis problems.
Words of Wisdom - Blokes, as soon as the missus sees you cleaning the tank all the time, shell expect it to overflow into cleaning the windows and the bathroom, etc. My advice, get up early in the morning and do it, on a regular basis, so it always stays clean, That way you can say, no its just stays clean, remember the 3 grand I spent on that Deltec skimmer, that how good a job it does.
Either that or get her to help out and give her the worst job possible, like cleaning the skimmer, she'll never want to come near the tank again and subconsciously ignore you whenever your near it.
