Gave In

[Parker]

I finally decided I have lost my battle with bubble algae. Today I boiled 85% of my live rock.. I hope this works.. last thing I want to do is buy more..

I do have one question though, I have a 3 headed Candy Cane frag that is covered in red bubble algae, how do I rid it of algae without harming the coral, or is this possible?

[Chaloupa]

you "boiled" as in with hot water?

[Parker]

Yep, as a last ditch effort. I now have 85% base rock and 15% live. I should have tanken pictures of how bad it got. You couldn't see some of the rock at all for the algae. The next step was to cook it for months or boil it or buy completly new rock.

[Chaloupa]

WOW you must have been desperate! Oh well, at least you have a fresh start and with the live rock hopefully it won't take long to seed the base!

[DanG]

Many people have success with emerald crabs eating bubble algae. When I had one, he made quick work of all the bubbles in the tank and never touched anything else.

[Chad]

Too bad about boiling it, "cooking" it in the dark for a couple of months would have done the trick, but thats only good if you have the patience to wait it out. Boiling the rock, your tank is going to cycle for sure with all the now dead organisms in that rock.

[Quagmire]

So now I have a question.Why would cooking rock,as in putting it in the dark for a couple maybe 3 months be better than dropping 85% of the rock in boiling water,then letting the other 15% reseed the boiled rock.Granted boiled rock will be completely stripped of life.But in the time it takes to "cook" rock the boiled rock will be reseeded.To me they seem about the same provided the 15% isn't full of the nasty stuff you were trying to get rid of.I know some will say that "cooking " will save some of the good critters that are in the rock,that we never see,but I wonder if the rock is so far gone that it needs cooking.who's to say there is anything left alive larger than bacteria?

[Beverly]

I've pondered the question of "cooking" the rock as opposed to boiling the stuff on the stove to get rid of bubble algae. Here's my reasoning for boiling it instead of "cooking" it...

"Cooking" the rock kills the algae, but in the case of bubble algae, once the bubbles have been killed due to lack of light, there is every expectation that many, if not most, of the bubbles will have released spores into the "cooking" water. Of course, when you "cook" rock, you also do water changes, rock swishing, some scrubbing, and siphoning out all crud on a regular basis. However, no matter what you do during the "cooking" phase (that will last for months), you will never remove all the spores released by the dead bubble algae. Once the dormant bubble algae spores are again introduced to light, they will grow.

Boiled bubble algae will also release spores, but during the boiling process in untreated tapwater containing, in our case, chloramine, the spores will all be killed.

I don't know how sound this reasoning is. If you can find holes in it anywhere, please let me know.

On the other hand, we have been removing rock from our tank on a (too) regular basis to remove bubble algae. Our removal method is to chip away a bit of rock surrounding the bubble algae so that it does not break, thereby not releasing any spores. It's working okay, except I think often when we introduce a new frag or snails or something from a tank that has bubble algae in it, we get a fresh batch all over again. Very frustrating

[Dave C]

If/when an emerald crab eats bubble algae, are the spores released? If so then is this a good method for getting rid of it?

[Beverly]

Dave,

My educated guess is that spores would be released when bubble algae is eaten by an emerald crab. However, I have not had an emerald crab that actually ate bubble algae, so I can offer no real experience in this matter.