Bryopsis pennata

[Samper]

Hello everyone.

I'm seeing more and more of what I believe to be Bryopsis pennata in my main 75. I have noticed it for a while but it behaved until recently. I think that I may know why but wanted some opinions.

About two months ago I added a tunze osmolator to the system. It is setup to fill from a five gallon container that it on it's own seperate ato as well. I run it this way so that I can top off all of my top off water through the kalk reactor without risk of an over dose. The kalk reactor is an MRC that automatically stirs.

Before the osmolator came along I never really noticed that the pickling lime level in the bottom of the reactor really decreased. At that stage of the game I was running a peristaltic pump through the reactor for 12 hours every night. This resulted in a significantly lower volume of water passing through the reactor which was set to stir for 30 seconds every 4 hours.

Since Using the osmolator I am actually topping off every bit of my water as limewater. I have noticed that the pickling lime level inside the reactor chamber is dropping and that this Bryopsis pennata growth has really in the last few days taken off. The Caulerpa in the thirty gallon gravity fed refugium has taken off as well.

The system is 75 gallon bare bottom with a tremendous amount of flow, large Euro Reef skimmer and A dual stage MRC Ca reactor. My two 150w DE metal halides and 4 54w T5s are all under five months old. This system gets a 30 gallon wc with IO every 2-3 weeks. All rock work gets turkey basted twice weekly and everything gets basted before a water change. I keep 30 gallons aging all the time and take care to ensure that the temp, pH, SG, Ca, Mg and Alk all match that of my display. 4 stage RO/DI 0 TDS.

Parameters:
SG 1.026 - refractometer
Temp 77-79 F- maintained with a 250w Ebo Jager on a Ranco controller. It's been really cold here but system average is around 80 F.
PO4 - 0 ppm - Martini colorimeter but with the refugium and other algae now exploding I can't really rely on that. I have also today placed a bag of Oceans Blend PO4 remover in an overflow.
I also run carbon all the time.
Ca 430-450 ppm Salifert
dKH - 10 -LaMotte
Mg - 1400 ppm - Salifert
NO3 0 ppm - Salifert
pH - 8.3-8.4 - Milwaukee controller

I'm wondering if I'm somehow fueling this by dosing too much of the actual pickling lime media to the system because the reactor was stirring too much for the volume of water now passing through it.

This morning I set the reactor to stir every 8 hours for 30 seconds. This is the only thing I can think of to even try and cause of the Bryopsis problem. I don't believe I'm over feeding. I strictly feed a small finger nail sized piece of rods food soaked in selcon once daily. Every evening the powerheads go off for an hour and I feed 1/8 tsp of Oceans Blend Coral Feed and 1/8 tsp Cyclop-Eeze. I have only three small fish but am pretty well stocked with corals which I believe this algae can and will overgrow if I allow it.

After reading the description of the problem and my system setup how do you suggest I approach this?

Thanks
Chuck

[Ninong]

All of your water parameters are great, so I wouldn't change a thing. The alkalinity measurement is the only thing that would reflect a problem with the limewater additions and it's fine at 10 dKH. The only other potential problem with automated limewater additions arises when something malfunctions and too much is dumped into the system all at once. That's certainly not the case in your situation and I don't see how something like that could possibly benefit Bryopsis.

Your pH, calcium and alkalinity levels are all about exactly the same as mine used to be except that my calcium was usually around 450-475 ppm, just barely higher than your readings. I don't know if it was because I had a foxface rabbitfish in my aquarium or if it was due to some other factor, but I never developed any nuisance hair algae. I'm not recommending a foxface rabbitfish for your size tank because mine outgrew my 120-gal tank in about two years. If you did get a small one, you would have to be prepared to part with it after about two years because they go bonkers in tanks less than about 180 gallons no matter what you may read on the various vendors' websites.

My only method of maintaining calcium, alkalinity and pH was dripping Mrs. Wages every night for evaporation replacement and adding a little magnesium chloride every few weeks to keep the Mg in line.

I don't know what's causing your Bryopsis outbreak but I don't see anything wrong with your parameters. My nitrate was never zero. The lowest I was able to get was around 2-3 ppm but most of the time it was around 5 ppm and sometimes it would go as high as 10 ppm but no higher. That's because I fed my tank at least twice a day, usually three times a day. I wanted to keep everybody happy.

Good luck!

[Samper]

Thank you for the speedy reply. I attempted a small Siganus vulpinus a little while backto see if it would eat some of my bubble algae...which it did. I had planned on relocating it to the school once it got large enough but but sadly that won't happen. Anyway, I added this fish around the same time as the osmolator and had an overdose that dropped my salinity rather quickly down to 1.022 and swung the pH to 8.6. This overdose was caused because of my own stupidity since I didn't have the bucket, reactor and sump all at the exact right levels. A siphon started from the reactor and there ya have it. I've since fixed all that. I had this overdose problem corrected within 24 hours but the fox face was not able to handle it being so new to the system. Was the only loss I suffered.

It is time that I ordered a new NO3 kit and that those readings are off. Being a titration kit I'm sure they are never that on but this one probably needs replacing. Thank you for the speedy reply.

I'm nervous to manually try and remove this stuff bc if one piece floats off it sets up shop. What do you think?

[Ninong]

If you do nothing, it will certainly spread all on its own. I think it's better to do whatever you can, including removing it manually, rather than just sit back and watch it take over the tank. Either that or consider the addition of a small Siganus vulpinus, S. unimaculatus or S. doliatus.

My foxface ate Ventricaria, too. I never saw any in my tank in any places that he could reach. I did find a few small ones in spots that received just enough light for them to survive but in places that were inaccessible to any fish. One time I rearranged a piece of live rock to expose the rock beneath it and let my foxface take care of the three or four small bubble algae thalli that I found there. They were all gone before the lights went off that evening.

[Samper]

Thank you.

Of the three in that genus that you listed and knowing that I have a system I can move it up to which do you feel would be the most appropriate species for my system for the time being?

[Ninong]

My experience is with S. vulpinus and I loved it. Gene and Scott have kept S. unimaculatus, which is practically the same thing. Kevin says S. doliatus might be even better. Take your pick.

[Samper]

According to fishbase I'm looking at an average adult size of 20-25 cm or around 10" for any of these three species. Relocation to a larger system won't be a problem. I have that option and already had mine eating out of my fingers in a week. Just gotta watch the spines! I don't see anything about length of time from juvenile to adult or growth rates but I do feel comfortable enough that if I acquire a healthy specimen that I can care for it until it needs an upgrade. Do you feel that the two year mention of erratic behavior is possibly a sign to be wary of regardless of size? Possibly a maturity thing? Can you give me an idea how how much yours grew in that time frame?

[Ninong]

When I got my foxface, it was approximately 3" TL. Within another 12 months, it was about 4.5" TL (which is probably about 5x as much mass). After another 12 months -- 24 months after I first got it -- it was approximately 7" TL. I would estimate that at 7" TL it was more than 10x mass of 3" TL.

During the first 12-18 months after I got it, it swam around the tank in what I would describe as normal behavior -- just casually wandering all over the tank. After about 24-30 months, it began to act in a way that I would describe as spastic: swimming up and down (vertically) at one end of the tank for long periods of time. To me it looked like it needed a larger tank. It's now in a 300-gal tank in Baton Rouge.

My foxface was very timid in the beginning but it quickly learned to take food from my hand, as did one of my fairy wrasses. The foxface always hid whenever I stuck my arm into the tank to clean the glass, etc. The fairy wrasse that ate out of my hand would come up to my arm and rub against it. If I cupped my hand underwater, it would swim into my hand and rest there for a moment. That was the only fairy wrasse that did that. It happened to be the dominant fairy wrasse in the tank. None of the others actually swam up to my hand to take food or rubbed against my arm when I was working in the tank. In fact, that one wrasse could be a pain in the butt if I was trying to scrape the glass because it was constantly getting in the way and I had to be careful to not injure it.

[Samper]

A sincere thank you for your help.

I love hearing stories like that. I'll bet quite a few of us here have something interesting to tell about some fish antics. Marine fish just have something special about them....not that some fw fish species aren't extremely interesting.
S. doliatus is a magnificent looking fish and I'm a little excited Kevin mentioned it. This is an LPS/SPS system and I've read mention of sps polyp nipping in a few places. If I provide a proper diet which I ill and it doesn't just take a liking to something specific I believe my corals are healthy enough to handle a nip here and there from something. This vendor Scribbled Rabbitfish, Two Barred Rabbitfish - Siganus doliatus has a decent price one them and I've always had a good experience with them. It's really cold here and I'm hesitant to ship it but hopefully soon we'll get some warmer temps.

[Samper]

On a side note I had one of my clean up crew vendors throw in a Tridachia crispata for free on my last order. Before the Bryopsis really sprouts up and becomes "leafy" it looks more like hair algae. This nudibranch is eating...very slowly patch by patch of the stuff. I don't believe one is enough for a 75g at the rate it's going but it is atleast on the front lines for me.

[Ninong]

You would need a lot of lettuce sea slugs (Elysia crispata) to keep up with the new Bryopsis growth. One of the major problems with keeping those things is that they have a tendency to go over the overflow and down into the sump. Another problem is that they don't have a very long natural lifespan. I suspect that it's no more than 12 months.

BTW, Tridachia crispata is invalid. They were reclassified as Elysia crispata about 15 years ago in 1995 but some vendors haven't changed the name yet, just as some vendors insist on calling them lettuce nudibranchs. It's hilarious that they call them nudibranchs and then insist that these nudibranchs will eat nuisance algae. Talk about spreading misinformation. No nudibranchs eat algae. Since I know you're a stickler for details, you may want to go back and edit your post to change the word 'nudibranch' to sea slug, or, if you want to be even more precise: Sacoglossan sea slug.



P.S. -- You are confirming that you observed them eating Bryopsis, right? I did a google scholar search on these animals in 2003 and the only diet information I could find in the scientific literature referred to them feeding on certain species of Caulerpa by sticking a fine tube into the thallus and sucking the inner contents. (P.S. -- Rob Toonen, in that article I just found and linked below, says that most of the Elysia crispata sea slugs imported for the hobby appear to feed on Bryopsis.)

I purchased four of these sea slugs for my 120-gal tank just out of curiosity. I was expecting that I would have an outbreak of nuisance hair algae (Derbesia and/or Bryopsis) as part of the initial cycle but I didn't. Either that or my first fish, a foxface rabbitfish, ate it as soon as it appeared. I added him five weeks after setting up the tank.

All four of my lettuce sea slugs were history within two to four months. Two died accidental deaths and the other two just wasted away. They just continued to get smaller and smaller. They were 1.5"-1.75" long when I first got them and the last time I saw them they were down to about 0.75".

As you may have guessed by now, I did the online search after I had already purchased the four E. crispata. They were called "lettuce nudibranchs" when I purchased mine and their scientific name was given as Tridachia crispata. They're called Tridachia crispata in Delbeek & Sprung's volume one, too, but it was published in 1994 before they were reclassified.

P.P.S. -- I just googled around and came up with this excellent article by Dr. Rob Toonen in the October 2004 issue of Advanced Aquarist. He discusses this topic in detail. It's a great article.

[Ninong]

Check out this article in today's news. They're claiming that Elysia chlorotica now has the ability to produce its own chlorophyll, thanks to genes that it has apparently stolen from the algae it feeds on. It still can't produce its own chloroplasts, so it must feed on the algae in order to be able to conduct photosynthesis.

I really hate the way they sensationalized the title of that article. I wouldn't call these sacoglossans "half-plant, half-animal" like they did. That's ridiculous! What these slugs have apparently done somehow is acquired the genes necessary to produce chlorophyll. They still can't conduct photosynthesis unless they feed on the algae to get some chloroplasts, which they cannot make on their own.

The really significant point in the article is that the slugs are able to pass on the genes responsible for making chlorophyll to their progeny. Now all they have to do is steal the ability to produce their own chloroplasts and they will be in business. This whole process of photosynthesis was invented by unicellular cyanobacteria some 3.5 billion years ago. That's where the planet got its oxygen. Plants inherited the ability to produce chloroplasts from cyanobacteria, which we no longer refer to as blue-green algae.

By the way, in addition to sensationalizing the title of her article the author invented a new word, multicellar.

"This is the first time that multicellar animals have been able to produce chlorophyll," Pierce told LiveScience.

Besides misspelling multicellular, the author's caption for the photo of E. chlorotica is completely misleading.

This green slug, which is part animal and part plant, produces its own chlorophyll and so can carry out photosynthesis, turning sunlight into energy, scientists have found.

The claim "produces its own chlorophyll and so can carry out photosynthesis" is false. It cannot carry out photosynthesis on its own. It must eat algae to acquire the chloroplasts needed to carry out photosynthesis.

E. crispata carries out photosynthesis by eating algae, the same way that E. chlorotica does. The only difference is that they have discovered that E. chlorotica seems to have acquired the genes needed to produce chlorophyll. They should conduct the same tests on other species in the genus, such as E. crispata, to see if they have the same genes. You wouldn't be able to notice any difference based on observation alone. Both E. crispata and E. chlorotica will waste away if they don't have access to the appropriate algae to feed on.

[Samper]

Thank you for the very informative post as always and I must apologize for my mistakes. Taxonomy is so hard to keep up with and the vendors never help these matters at all. I am confirming that whatever this species of sea slug is does eat Bryopsis atleast in the early stages of its growth. Comparing pictures I believe it to be a true E. crispata. Size is about 3/4". I've watched three small patches of early growth Bryopsis disappear in as many days but have yet to see it venture anywhere near the Bryopsis that has been allowed to grow more than an inch or so in length. I desperately wish I had a better camera to capture a photo but mine simply won't give me enough detail to even bother posting a pic of this creature or the work it's doing.

[Ninong]

I ended up getting four Elysia crispata in an order with mostly snails from Reeftopia back when my tank was only about three weeks old. They were available, they looked nice in the photos and I thought maybe they would help with the expected nuisance hair algae, which didn't appear.

I got four because the price was cheaper if you took four of them instead of just one or two and I wanted to get the price of the total order high enough to qualify for free shipping. One of mine was about 1.75" long, two were about 1.5" long and one was a little smaller than that. They did not grow in size. On the contrary, they got smaller and smaller as time went by.

According to all the scientific literature, Sacoglossan sea slugs in the genus Elysia feed by piercing the algal thallus with a fine tube and sucking out the contents without actually eating the outer cell wall. You would need a pretty good magnifying lens to actually see them do it.

Here are a couple pics I took of three of mine about two weeks after I received them. The first pic shows one and the second pic shows two more. I couldn't find the fourth one at the time I took these pics.





My observation was that they would cruise the live rock for a certain period of time and then they would take a time-out to go sunbathe at the top of the tank somewhere, even on top of my magnetic glass cleaner or one of the Sea-swirls, or simply camp out on the back wall of the tank about an inch below the surface. The way they end up going over the overflow is that they climb up to the top of the corner overflow thinking they can sunbathe up there and instead the strong current carries them over the overflow. That was a regular occurence. I had two 250w 10,000K HQI DE lamps plus two 55w PC actinics over my tank. The light fixtures were 11" above the surface. IIRC, they climbed high up the walls of the tank late in the day.

[scottfaulkner11]

Not sure if you still have the bryopsis problem. I have a quick and easy fix that i promise you it will work, if it is indeed bryopsis. I had that stuff for about a year, bought all kinds of fish, inverts to eliminate it. They ate it, but wouldnt even put a dent in it. It grows way too fast for them to keep up. I have even heard of some people putting their LR in a bucket with a lid for months, only to put a bare and scrubbed rock back into the tank and the bryopsis was back in a week on the same spots. It is a very hardy algae, and many people assume you need to follow the three fold attack of reducing nitrate/ phosphate, etc.., manually pulling, and adding something to eat it. That will not work on bryopsis in almost every case. I cut my feeding way back, bought a chiller to maintain my tank at 77 instead of 83, did bi-weekly water changes (even though my parameters were perfect, I figured maybe they were living on something the everyday test doesnt read), bought a phosphate reactor, upgraded to a reef octopus, etc... Bryopsis requires very low light and nutrients, less than chaeto and mostly any other algae. Therefore, you have to hit it from a different approach, manually pulling it is not a good idea, because many of the loose filaments in the water will attach and re-grow somewhere else in the tank. If your nitrates are zero, phosphates are zero, you obviously can't lower them anymore. and livestock wont keep up. Add magnesium, it is a heavy metal that the bryopsis can not tolerate. When you buy magnesium it says to keep the levels around 1350ppm which is the concentration in natural sea water. If you raise the magnesium level to 1700 ppm and dose the crap out of the tank, the bryopsis will begin to melt away very rapidly. Maintain the magnesium at 1700ppm for about a month or longer if necessary and that will take care of it. There are no scientific records that this will harm anything in the tank. I have a full reef system and everything is doing very well, it looks better than before because it is not being smothered by the bryopsis. While it is dying, siphon out as much of the algae as you can, because it will pollute your tank otherwise. After all signs are gone, continue for a little bit to eliminate whats not visible to the human eye, and then allow the magnesium levels to naturally go down to 1350ppm and continue regular instructions. Some people say kent marine tech-m is the only stuff that works, i think its just advertisement though because those sites are sponsored by kent marine. I used brightwell aquatics magnesion.