How Do I Remove Bubble Algae?

[Reinhold]

Does anyone have any good ideas on how to remove individual Bubble Algae bubbles without popping them? They are stuck down on the LR, and I've been unable to remove them without popping them, probably releasing spores into the water and increasing their spread.

[watermama]

Get yourself a small pocket knife and use that to dig underneath the bubble and pry it up. Just make sure the knife is clean and that you get the bubble out of the tank. Worked for me. (Just don't tell my hubby I used his knife!)

[blane perun]

Reinhold:

Depending upon your plight with the Valonia you can do several things. If they have spread out of control your best advised to tank the rocks and specimens out and remove them manually with tweezers. For the future you need to tackle the source not the result, (water quality). First off what type of water are you putting into the tank city, well? Do you purify the water, RO, DI ? Secondly what are your means for removing organics? Water changes, Skimming, Mechanical Filtration? All of these will help you not encounter the problem again, at least not in epic proportion. We all will have a bit of Valonia in our systems but for the most part it’s kept under control via nutrient levels.

blane perun

[golfish]

If you can remove the rock that would be best. I have use a hollowed out ball point pen with some flex tubbing attached. Get a siphon going and scrape the algae with the pen sucking out everything (hopefully) it has worked for me in the past.


Hey, did those Montipora frags make it?

Mark

[ranaman]

Somebody on the seahorse board solved this problem by covering the growth with a clam shell once the algae died she just removed the shell.

[icemark]

IMO the best way to remove it is to remove the rock, from the tank, then remove all the bubble from the rock.

Rinse the rock with clean tank temp saltwater, several times to remove any spores left from the removal process, before returning the rock to the tank.

[golfish]

ranaman,
Great idea. Think I'll try it on a small patch of Green star polyps.