Valonia vs Bleach - Round 1 - Ding! Ding!

[Myka]

Originally Posted by marie

If you think that is a bad outbreak of valonia I'm glad I have no pics of my old tank
Hopefully something you've thought of... if you bleach the rocks your could have a massive die off of critters inside the rock which will release nutrients into the tank and make a whole bunch more valonia grow.
Wouldn't it be easier (seeing as how your taking the rock out of the tank anyway) to just manually remove it all? You might have to do that every couple of months for a while but eventually it would be all gone

Haha! Got pics of your old tank?

I manually removed the Valonia during weekly waterchanges RELIGIOUSLY for 6 months, but there are nooks and crannies my leetle fingers just couldn't get into. I suppose if I removed the rocks on every waterchange and manually removed it may have worked...but seriously??

Oh yes, after I bleach the rocks they are going through a dark cook in Rubbermaids again. When I removed the rocks and just did a dark cook a year ago I manually removed all traces of ALL nuisance algaes before the cook, then cooked for 12 weeks, and lo and behold the Valonia came back.

So, I did the manual removal. I did the manual removal and dark cook. Now, I'm going to do a manual removal, bleach, dark cook!!! It better work...

[WhoPoopWrasse]

Wouldn't that make your rock dead live rock??? Lots of $$$ down the drain!
Wouldn't it be easier to add a tang or foxface and treat is as if it's a QT, then when you are sure it's gone for good you could bring the fish back to lfs for exchange or something. I know you're not supposed to put tangs or rabbitfish in small tanks but don't we all do that when they are in quarantine for a couple of months?

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by Myka

Now, I'm going to do a manual removal, bleach, dark cook!!! It better work...

It won't.... you could boil, cook, microwave the rock till it is as devoid as life as a lunar rock, but once you start to introduce live stock it will come back. All you need is a coral that carries a spore of Valonia an you are back to square one. Just a matter of time.

[sphelps]

An urchin and a few emerald crabs should handle that problem. I had a waay worse case in my lower tank and small two tuxedos and about 5 crabs now keeps it under control, looking right now the only bubble algae I see is on one of the urchins.

You can kill it all now and but you'll probably get it again with a new coral.

Also bleach?? I think fresh water will kill it.

[sharuq1]

I had some type of valonia or relative to in my first tank. (looked like sausages but was quite hard to get off the rocks and any bit left turned into more.) Horrible invasive stuff, along with caulerpa, bryopsis.

I have to say +1 on the blowtorch! I got sooo sick of this infested rock I torched every outside area and fried every bit of it off. Then I left the rock in a circulating tub in the dark for months and did several WC's (lots of die off). Later there was still some life to the rocks, just nothing that had been on the outside of it. (as in I found some pods in there, dusters etc.) The coralline died of course but I think the "inner" rock lived as it did not get hot, just the surface did. I understand the whole problem of "1 spore" getting in, however if your problem is this bad and you're already considering it.... You've been in sw long enough to know the bio-ramifications of doing extreme things with LR (cooking, etc) as well as adding critters, so I won't bother even talking about that. Granted this doesn't guarantee the rock will be free of it forever. All I can say is that on that particular bunch of rocks, it killed it, it has not come back and I got to burn something.

(Oh and +10000 on personal satisfaction of burning. Die algae die!!!)

[OCDP]

Something about Bleach also doesn't sound right to me... it seems risky.

[Zoaelite]

Originally Posted by OCDP

Something about Bleach also doesn't sound right to me... it seems risky.

Agreed, bleach is powerfull stuff! No point in nuking the rock when you can go with a much more natural way like sphelps has suggested.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by i2as kass

No point in nuking the rock when you can go with a much more natural way like sphelps has suggested.

We're talking about 25-30lbs of rock here, so it's not much pocket damage risk. Buying critters to eat Valonia is VERY hit or miss. My tank is as stocked as I ever want it to be. There isn't room for any more critters.

I did think of adding an Emerald crab recently, so I made up a poll on CanReef, and it seems like the chances of an Emerald crab eating Valonia is rather slim!

Anyone have a Valonia eating Emerald crab they want to lend me???