Gave In

[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.

[Ruth]

You have to be pretty lucky (or unlucky as the case may be) to have the released spores from a popped bubble algea be at the exact right stage "ripeness" to actually be viable to reproduce. It is not as if as a popped bubble will usually contain mature spores that are capable of reproduction. There have been numerous articles written on this (I didn't check but there are probably a few references in our reference library). I have picked bubble algea off my rocks - usually right in the aquarium - some popped and some didn't but irregardless I did not have an explosion of bubble algea in my tank. From time to time one or 2 appear and I pick it off.
IMO actually boiling the rock is extreme and you have basically turned your live rock into dead rock that is virtually worthless until it hopefully reseeds with beneficial bacteria etc. I would just be tempted to buy new live rock but would have first tried to remove all bubbles outside of the tank or tried a few emerald crabs. JMO

[Parker]

Here is a picture of one of the better rocks I had in the system. This is the reason I boiled, there was just too much to try and clean off. It covered just about every rock I had, except few burried at the bottom.

[marie]

My foxface would of thought he had died and gone to heaven if I had given him that rock . One mans weeds are another mans/womens fish food

[Chaloupa]

WOW~ yah, my rabbitfish would have been pretty happy too!