Have you tried rowaphos? Will at Ao told me about it. Stuff works wonders.
Kind of an amazing discovery today. I was using some hydrogen peroxide (3%, familiar item from the drugstore). The goal was to squirt it at the hair algae growths and they wither and die. Well I did that, with no impressive result, and I ended squirting in about half a pint of the stuff into the tank. Well the hair algae hasn't withered, but the red-brown slime that's been plaguing me really hates the stuff. Within a few minutes the tank was slightly cloudy-pink, and the skimmer went crazy, producing 5 gallons of watermelon-colored skimmate. I detuned the skimmer to get a stiffer foam and it's still producing like crazy. The foam is the color of cotton candy at the fair. I dumped the rest of the bottle in there, and all the brown crap has let go from the hair algae and is, I guess, getting skimmed out. The tank is slightly pink! And the fish seem fine.
How come no one mentioned peroxide when I complained (still am) of having HA ? All those sea-hares that could not handle the job !?
Hey Jim! It's been a long while. Maybe a year? (way too long for me) I got dislodged from access to the site for various reasons back then and got wrapped into may family projects like coaching baseball and soccer. I will post another note saying hello to the friends that I had not spoken with since then
Sorry to hear about the crisis and the losses. If there is anyone who can right the ship, it's you. I like the peroxide discovery. The mad scientist of Rockaway strikes again!
Bob
You want to be careful adding peroxide directly to the tank in small amounts it is really great. But there is too much of a good thing with peroxide.
I cooked my rock in Sodium Percarbonate which degrades to 8% hydrogen peroxide and it nuked a really bad case of bubble algea that survived a winter in brute barrels in my yard with no water! Bleached the rock nicely too!
I'm going to do another pint, to work on the hair algae and kill more red stuff, which is staging a tiny comeback. Hell, I may start gargling with the stuff!
Both times I ended up adding an entire pint bottle. Based on my (very rough) calculations, that works out to around 2.5ml/gallon. The results were similar during the second dosing. Less red in the tank and the skimmate. I guess that means it's destroyed a lot of the cyano or whatever. The peroxide causes foaming so it is a kind of skimming enhancer. I dumped about 10 gallons of light green skimmate over a couple of days, topping up with salt water. The hair algae is less in the areas I treated. Tank still looks like crap, only in a different way.Are you dosing at the recommended 1mL per 10 gallons?
Did you plug in that big azz skimmer yet?
It will suck out a ton of sludge!