Peroxide - you guys will think I'm nuts

[asylumdown]

Considering my recent tank drama y'all are going to think I'm nuts for doing this, but cyano has been getting crazy AGAIN. I'm doing daily water changes and I *think* things are starting to turn around (I'm seeing hints of new growth plates at the edges of where things have died), but just like last time, the cyano is threatening to de-rail any recovery by directly killing corals.

I'm officially off the chemiclean train, so I've been looking for other ways to control cyano. I came across thread after thread of people dosing their tanks with hydrogen peroxide. I did a whoooooooooooole bunch of research, and there's actually a whole bunch of scientific research supporting peroxide as a good agent of cyano control with relatively few side effects on other plants and critters.

I'm not gonna do anything drastic until my tank is WELL more along in it's recovery, nor am I ever gonna dump an oxidizer in my tank every day, but just to test if I could use it as a spot treatment for cyano at some future date, I whipped out a 1ml syringe with a needle point tip from an old red sea calcium titration kit and the bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide I had to buy to clean the stitches I got after impaling myself with scissors the night HWYman came over (dude, once again, that was the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me. Right up there with gluing my lips shut when LastLight was here). I picked a little prominence of rock and the remaining nub of dead skeleton of a coral that died in the first wave that I couldn't get off the rocks (that is the first place cyano shows up it seems). Total area of about 20cm square total.

I turned off all pumps, waited until the water was perfectly still, and squirted the peroxide very, very slowly over the cyano patch. I used a total of 6mL of hydrogen peroxide (0.016mL/gallon), and waited half an hour before turning the pumps back on. The cyano bubbled like mad the whole time the pumps were off. During this time, a turbo snail motored by with no ill effect, though a bristle worm that was in a crevice I injected directly crawled out and did a death dance.

I turned the pumps on around 4pm. As soon as the current hit the rock, a cloud of red pigment was blown in to the water. 3.5 hours later, 99% of the cyano in the places I treated is gone. I'm not going any further until I'm sure my tank is getting better, but it's nice to know this option is available and appears fool proof

If someone is looking at the early stages of a cyano problem and is considering chemiclean, I might suggest trying spot treatments with very small amounts of hydrogen peroxide first. Chemiclean is a system wide anti-biotic with unknown ingredients, while hydrogen peroxide, if dosed in small enough quantities relative to the system, will have little to no system wide effect impact and rapidly breaks down in to oxygen and water. It also has a small mountain of published scientific research behind it showing that is both effective against cyano, and relatively harmless (at concentrations hobbyists would achieve) to eukaryotic cells.

[SteveConn]

Peroxide is a great tool if used right! Up to 1 ml per gallon

[Seriak]

I used to dose my tank with Hydrogen Peroxide on a daily basis. No ill effects ever noticed. It will burn your fish's gills if you add too much, but not enough to kill anything.

[gregzz4]

Thanks for the info Adam - I may use it sometime soon, and good luck with your frustrating/ongoing battle
Chin up Dude :smile:

[SteveConn]

Hey Adam, text me about the nudis... Ive been through minor hell with my tank since last fal, maybe my experience can help you out

[Dez]

I've been dosing H202 almost daily in my aquarium for over a year now. It is almost a full sps tank. I did it mainly to get rid of parasites on my fish at first, then I noticed that the glass stayed clean for a long time during the dosing period, so then I kept dosing it regularly. I have experienced no ill effects.

[asylumdown]

I've been dosing H202 almost daily in my aquarium for over a year now. It is almost a full sps tank. I did it mainly to get rid of parasites on my fish at first, then I noticed that the glass stayed clean for a long time during the dosing period, so then I kept dosing it regularly. I have experienced no ill effects.

Did yo ever have cyano issues/did it help?

[Dez]

I did have cyano on and off, here and there. Since dosing, I haven't had any cyano issues to write home about. Here is my tank. Picture taken now
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/05/14/e7u7apyj.jpg

[asylumdown]

drool.... I would love to get back to a point where that seems like a possibility.

[trilinearmipmap]

You could look at cyano as a symptom of the problem rather than as the problem itself. And if the cyano lives on nutrients (waste) such as ammonia/nitrites/nitrates etc, killing off the cyano could release these wastes into your tank. I have some cyano in my tank, typically in low flow areas. The only time it ever harmed a coral was when a pocillipora was not given enough flow, and the centre of the pocillipora got covered by cyano which choked it off. Anyway my view is that the cyano is an aesthetic issue and killing it off may cause more harm than good.

[gregzz4]

I wanna hear more about Dez's peroxide dosing method ... Plz :smile:

[FishyFishy!]

I wanna hear more about Dez's peroxide dosing method ... Plz :smile:

TOTES!

[pinkreef]

I want Dez's clam

[Slick Fork]

I wanna hear more about Dez's peroxide dosing method ... Plz :smile:

+1 - Sorry for the hijack

[asylumdown]

I wanna hear more about Dez's peroxide dosing method ... Plz :smile:

Ditto!

How many mL/Gallon?
Dosed at any particular time of day?
With a doser?
Regular ol' 3% drug store peroxide?
All at once or multiple do sings/day?

[KPG007]

I get cyno in one of my tanks as it heats up during the summer. Normally 78 degrees - no cyano. 80 degrees - cyano starts creeping in. What I found was that even when it cools back down to 78, the cyano will still hang around. So I dropped the temperature down to 76 (even as low as 74) and the cyano disappeared! No negative effects on coral or fish. Give that a try before adding chemicals of any kind.

[Proteus]

I just wonder how much the or fluctuates when dosing peroxide

[Dez]

Ok. Here's my dosing schedule. First I mix up a batch of hydrogen peroxide. I buy 30% stuff by the barrel for my pond, I dilute it 50ml to 450 ml ro/di water. This makes it to approximately 3% I think. Then whenever I'm doing my daily "check the sump room to make sure nothing is leaking", I'll stick 5 - 6 tablespoons of my mixed H2O2 straight into the sump. My tank volume is approx 350 - 375 gallons in my best estimation.

[asylumdown]

awesome thanks! Once I've got my whole system back on track and I sort out a better nitrate control system, I'm going to try that out as a regular maintenance item. 6 tablespoons is about 89 mL, so that's about 0.25ml/gallon per day. When you think about it, 89 mL of 3% in to a 350 gallon system is like diluting an already highly diluted solution another 15,000 times, and it's a compound that all eukaryotic cells have sophisticated enzymes in place to rapidly decompose. I bet at those concentrations it's not even directly killing the visible algae or the bacteria, but possibly oxidizing spores in the water column or destroying dissolved organics that wouldn't/haven't been picked up by your skimmer. If you've got even the tiniest bit of organics in your water, at that concentration it's probably completely decomposed before any of it reaches your rocks.

PS, where do you buy 30% H2O2? I thought only laboratories could get it that concentrated?

[Sebae again]

I bought mine from a health food store.

[Proteus]

Hydroponics store carry 30% also

[pinkreef]

Is using the commonly sold 3% stuff the same thing?

[asylumdown]

Is using the commonly sold 3% stuff the same thing?

yes, but I'm not sure I'd put 30% H2O2 directly in a tank, that stuff is crazy reactive. Most accounts I've read of people who use it for whatever purpose dilute it down to 3% before letting it come in contact with water/rocks.

When you do automated particle size analysis in a soils lab you need to digest all the organics in your sample or it messes up the sand/silt/clay distributions. My lab uses 30% peroxide to do it. The reaction is usually strong enough to boil the water in your reaction vessel. If you get it on your skin it instantly turns snow white to a depth of about half a mm, though if you rinse it off right away it will eventually get its normal colour back.

It's very potent stuff. Safer for all involved if it's diluted first. The benefit of 30% is that you get more for your money, and if you ever wanted to make a batch with a higher concentration for something like cleaning a filter sock you could.

[Relect]

The 3% from the drug store usually has a stabilizer added to prolong shelf life once opened. For salmon we use 200 ppm of 35% for prophylactic treatment of fungus with no harm to fish. We dilute and use immediately as once mixed with water the extra oxygen molecule leaves the solution. This also raises D.O. quite a lot.

[Relect]

Oh ya wear gloves and eye protection.

[asylumdown]

The 3% from the drug store usually has a stabilizer added to prolong shelf life once opened. For salmon we use 200 ppm of 35% for prophylactic treatment of fungus with no harm to fish. We dilute and use immediately as once mixed with water the extra oxygen molecule leaves the solution. This also raises D.O. quite a lot.

Don't they have to add stabilizers to the 35% stuff as well? I thought H2O2 without a stabilizer present decomposes rapidly regardless of the concentration?

My bottle says the stabilizers are:
Sodium stannate
Sodium nitrate
Sodium pyrophosphate
Methylenephosphonic acid
Phosphoric acid

4 out of 5 of those would basically just add small amounts of nitrate and phosphorous to the water. Each of the phosphorous containing compounds should be bio-available, though I don't think the methylenephosphonic acid would register on the test kits we use as it's an organic compound. The bottle doesn't say what concentrations of each are in it, but assuming you've got functioning nutrient export systems in place and you're dosing relatively small amounts I doubt you'd be inadvertently adding to your problem

The one that concerns me is sodium stannate, as that has tin in it. I found this article in reef keeping that only briefly talks about tin: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-08/rs/feature/index.php

The basic gist is that no one knows anything about tin or its role in marine ecosystems, but that tin concentrations in aquarium are already 200,000 times higher than natural sea water.

So that's definitely something to think about. Now that I've read this I think I'd be a little more comfortable with dosing peroxide if I could find a brand that did not have sodium stannate as a stabilizer, but I don't know if such a thing exists or not?

[Relect]

Ours doesn't list the stabilizers used anywhere on the label or msds but it does say it is approved for aquaculture by health canada.

[gregzz4]

Ok. Here's my dosing schedule
Thanks for the info Dez - Greatly appreciated :smile:

[Reef Pilot]

Does dosing hydrogen peroxide have any effect on corals? I thought some corals culture photosynthetic algae?

Also, don't tangs and some other fish need some algae to graze on? I don't think just nori is good enough for them.

I found the best solution to beating excess algae was to get the phosphates right down to zero (hanna checker, not the color test kits) with HC GFO. Then any hair algae would literally let loose, and was easy to clean up. But as soon as the P04 got up to near 0.1, it would reappear. And SPS does best when it is near zero.