Help with Creeping Red Bushy Algae

[kctango]

My tank over the last three months has been being taken over by a red bushy coarse algae (gelidium sp.) I think. Every week I try to pull it out and it keeps growing like wild, small pieces that small floated have taken root everywhere from my pumps to my everflow. Last week I removed a few of my rock and scrubed with a stiff brush, it looked good for a few day and now its back. This stuff is choking out the corals. Thats where I think it came from on a frag. My urchin doent do much with it, neither do the hermits. I put in a foxface but he just picks at it. I have order thru my LFS some mexican turbos and emeral crabs and a tuxedo urchin to see if that works. My next step will be to remove the rocks again and scrub then torch the surface area with a torch to see if that kills the root system. Any ideas short from just throwing out the LR and starting over as I have too many corals attached to the rock.

[seapug]

sure it's not red Dictyota?

[LukeGI]

Have you looked into what is causing the growth? Do you have a lot of phosphates in your system?
Are you running a refugium with chaeto to combat phosphates? Or GFO to remove them?

How often do you feed and do they eat it all or does some of it get lots in the rocks etc?

Typically algae exists because of an imbalance in the system that is creating an excess of nutrients...sometimes it can be a lack of nutrients as well....if you have lots of corals that need calcium and magnesium, but they aren't getting enough of it, then those corals will be suffering and not growing very well...algae is a simple organism that doesn't need much for nutrients and can thrive on the other nutrients that aren't in low supply...thereby choking out the good corals.

[brandon429]

This algae grows across a wide range of water params, from perfect to imperfect. It is a terrible hitchhiker thats all, nothing bad about your tank.

If you want to kill it off go look in the nanos forum under a thread I made called 'pico reef pest algae challenge' your tank can be free of it after some work. pm me if youd like some assistance or just research the thread and its linkages to see many people curing gelidium no problem. I consider it the worst algae possible in a captive reef. id take a forest of bryopsis any day. Gelidium killed my first reefbowl before I knew about peroxide dosing or else Id have a ten year old pico reef. the summation of the entire thread is to limit its contact to non target areas.

in a tank like yours the majority if not the totality of work should be done outside the tank, where you mentioned removing and treating rocks. one benefit of actually killing the biomass is less regenerative potential as compated to physical scrubbing which is fragmentory.

[brandon429]

this is how I removed some off the base of my isaurus frag, the base set in a capfull of 3% for a minute then rinsed and glued back in the tank.

this other growth of gelidium on some airline was removed by fire burning it works very well.