[Reginae]

We "inherited" a 55 gallon salt-water live-rock reef tank with the home we recently purchased, and found ourselves suddenly plunged headfirst into the world of reefkeeping.
The tank houses live rock (on some of which is a sparse array of purple coralline algae), some soft coral, a cleaner shrimp, two fish, snails, and crabs.

When we acquired the tank approx. 6 mos. ago, there were only half a dozen or so bubble algae, in sizes basically ranging from 1/4 inch to 1 and 1/2 inch in diameter (To me, it looked like the picture of Ventricaria ventricosa on the page http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-02/hcj/feature/ ) We were able to safely remove a couple of them, but left the others because we didn't want to risk breaking them and thus releasing the spores. However, the rest of them apparently matured, because they continued to grow in diameter and eventually, to our horror, burst.

Not long afterwards, small clusters of bubble algae – much smaller than the original half-dozen bubbles - began to cover the rocks, continuing to spread until now the majority of almost every rock is covered. Now the algae looks more like the picture of Valonia aegagropila on http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-02/hcj/feature/

We are at a loss at what to do – how can we remedy this problem?

[tendar]

I had the same problem with tank being taken over with bubble algea just recently. What I did was pull out as much as I could every time I did a water change but that wasnt really helping that much could barly keep up. Finally I went out and got a few Emerald Crabs (should have in the first place) and kept getting out what I could once a week and after a month between me and the emerald crabs it is under control with only few place with any left. One of the emerald crabs is about the size of a silver dollar now and is the greatest rock cleaner I have in the tank. Nothing does as much work as he does.

Any way just pull what you can and add say 3 emerald crabs and slowly it will go away just be a little presistent at first getting it out by hand.
You can pull out the rocks one at a time when you do a water change and clean the rocks in a bucket that you pull out of the tank for water change that way and bubbles that burst wont burst in the tank.

[reefhead]

had this in my old reef tank. got pretty out of hand.

if you pull them out, make sure you dont pop them. they release spors when popped and will eventually spread throughout your system.

[jsaltzgi]

Ditto what Tendar and Reefhead said- I like emerald crabs for this purpose.

James