Valonia vs Bleach - Round 1 - Ding! Ding!

[Myka]

[[[[For my own reference: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...ture/index.php]]]]

I will kill you, you $#%^&@% Valonia %$#$* one way or another!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >:-(



It's been over a year's battle with Valonia. I removed all my rocks and "cooked" them in a Rubbermaid for like 12 weeks in the dark about a year ago. Although the phosphate was completely undetectible with a D-D MERC phosphate kit, and the Valonia was nowhere to be seen when I put it back in the tank...IT CAME BACK!!! With a vengeance. I was doing weekly waterchanges manually removing it for 6 MONTHS, still didn't work.

After all that, I had a breeder trap in the tank with 30 baby Bangaii in it contributing to MASSIVE over-stocking...which only made matters worse. Then I had hair algae too! So, once a week I would patiently take scissors, and trim back my HA forest so I could see my (surprisingly) happy corals again, and remove as much Valonia as I could find. This made for 60% waterchanges...haha. Anyway, the baby Bangers aren't in there anymore, so the HA has 95% disappeared, but the #$&#@$&@#$@#($%!&#$% Valonia...dear God what did I do?????????? *pulls hair out*

Ya, so I'm going to remove all my rocks and bleach em. I know there's other ways...like a blow torch. Although a blow torch sounds like WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much fun, and absolutely satisfying(!!!!), I don't have a torch and I'm too lazy to go buy one for $6 because holy hell it's hot out there and my car doesn't have ac. BUT, I have BLEACH!!!

So...any comments on the ratio of bleach:RO/DI water and the length of dip time would be grandly appreciated!! I'm hoping to find the fine line where I can kill ALL surface life, but keep the anaerobic bacteria inside the rock intact. Hmmm...

Oh, and I have lots of Prime on hand to neutralize this devastating natural disaster that is about to happen!!! Bleach is natural after all - errr maybe not.

[saltaddict]

To bad you didn't have a bigger tank, my Naso tang loves to eat valonia. I actually have picked it off the rock in my small tank and thrown it in the big tank for him to eat. The foxface that I had would eat it too.

Edit: Oops, I posted this under Steve's user name. I didn't realize I (fishoholoic) wasn't the one logged in

[Myka]

Ya, that would be waaay easier than bleaching the dang rocks!!!

[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

[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.