Micro dose of flucozanole

Charlie’s Frags · Apr 3, 2023

I have been battling a bad bryopsis outbreak for over a year. Maybe even longer but the last 12 months have been awful. It seemed to spread exponentially within a couple days each time I would manually remove as much as I could. I actually developed tendinitis in my elbow from spending so much time pulling this crap off with surgical pliers. I tried raising magnesium to 1800 with hydrat mag from brightwell aquatics for months but all that did was cause acros to rtn. The bryopsis was so bad it was creeping up under some of the corals….that cause them to stn. I had to frag a bunch of them and then new bryopsis would soon follow. I tried a rabbit fish, tons of snails, and 10 lettuce nudis but nothing would really help. The lettuce nudis helped a little but all but 1 disappeared within a couple weeks. I also tried draining the tank trying to spot treating as much as I could with 12% h202. This would knock out a bunch but eventually it all just came back.
I didn’t want to dose flucozanole bc I had issues with it in the past and had heard many sps horror stories associated with it. But I was reaching my mental and physical (I wasn’t lying about the elbow) limit. Then I saw a video from @ReefBum with Jason fox and he said he doses 1 pill of reeflux for 1000g. The product recommends 1 pill per 10g. So figured what the h3ll. Now the recommended dose of reeflux for my 50g tank looks like this

but I only dosed this much

Within 3 days the bryopsis was disappearing and the rest of the algae was turning white

Everything looks really happy even though my nitrates are higher than ever.

Dburr1014 · Apr 4, 2023

Interesting, when did you start dosing and what other kind of algaes have you noticed been disappearing?

Charlie’s Frags · Apr 4, 2023

Dburr1014 said:
Interesting, when did you start dosing and what other kind of algaes have you noticed been disappearing?

I just did the one chemiclean spoon sized dose 2 weeks ago. All the bryopsis and 90% of the gha are gone.

Dburr1014 · Apr 4, 2023

Charlie’s Frags said:
I just did the one chemiclean spoon sized dose 2 weeks ago. All the bryopsis and 90% of the gha are gone.

Only one dose?
I assume you followed the rest of the directions. IE: turn off skimmer for 72 hours, blah blah blah.

Charlie’s Frags · Apr 4, 2023

Dburr1014 said:
Only one dose?
I assume you followed the rest of the directions. IE: turn off skimmer for 72 hours, blah blah blah.

Yes
Just the single scoop, turned the skimmer off for 3 days and the blah blah blah.

chipchipbro · Apr 4, 2023

thats crazy man!
but very cool it helped without causing any problems.

Troylee · Apr 4, 2023

Charlie’s Frags said:
I have been battling a bad bryopsis outbreak for over a year. Maybe even longer but the last 12 months have been awful. It seemed to spread exponentially within a couple days each time I would manually remove as much as I could. I actually developed tendinitis in my elbow from spending so much time pulling this crap off with surgical pliers. I tried raising magnesium to 1800 with hydrat mag from brightwell aquatics for months but all that did was cause acros to rtn. The bryopsis was so bad it was creeping up under some of the corals….that cause them to stn. I had to frag a bunch of them and then new bryopsis would soon follow. I tried a rabbit fish, tons of snails, and 10 lettuce nudis but nothing would really help. The lettuce nudis helped a little but all but 1 disappeared within a couple weeks. I also tried draining the tank trying to spot treating as much as I could with 12% h202. This would knock out a bunch but eventually it all just came back.
I didn’t want to dose flucozanole bc I had issues with it in the past and had heard many sps horror stories associated with it. But I was reaching my mental and physical (I wasn’t lying about the elbow) limit. Then I saw a video from @ReefBum with Jason fox and he said he doses 1 pill of reeflux for 1000g. The product recommends 1 pill per 10g. So figured what the h3ll. Now the recommended dose of reeflux for my 50g tank looks like this

but I only dosed this much

Within 3 days the bryopsis was disappearing and the rest of the algae was turning white

Everything looks really happy even though my nitrates are higher than ever.

Looking good bro! Nice pe! My buddy just did his Sps reef without any issues also… I gotta get my polyps out! I got a bunch of ticked off acros after I just upgraded tanks..

my Walt, pink lemonade and stylo digi etc All have great pe.. my Millie’s and short cake etc no polyps… ugh..

Jared Bryant · Apr 4, 2023

I have always used fluconazole at either 1/2 or 1/4 dose and had good results. I believe the label dosage is too high.

billyocean · Apr 4, 2023

I've done flux rx twice at full dose. The first time I followed directions and water changed and added carbon after 14 days. The second time I did and extra half dose at 14 days and let it ride for 24 or so days. Killed all the gha too that time. I actually think it might be a decent idea to keep some in the tank all the time. Sps dominate btw..no losses and PE the whole time.

ryshark · Apr 4, 2023

Charlie’s Frags said:
I have been battling a bad bryopsis outbreak for over a year. Maybe even longer but the last 12 months have been awful. It seemed to spread exponentially within a couple days each time I would manually remove as much as I could. I actually developed tendinitis in my elbow from spending so much time pulling this crap off with surgical pliers. I tried raising magnesium to 1800 with hydrat mag from brightwell aquatics for months but all that did was cause acros to rtn. The bryopsis was so bad it was creeping up under some of the corals….that cause them to stn. I had to frag a bunch of them and then new bryopsis would soon follow. I tried a rabbit fish, tons of snails, and 10 lettuce nudis but nothing would really help. The lettuce nudis helped a little but all but 1 disappeared within a couple weeks. I also tried draining the tank trying to spot treating as much as I could with 12% h202. This would knock out a bunch but eventually it all just came back.
I didn’t want to dose flucozanole bc I had issues with it in the past and had heard many sps horror stories associated with it. But I was reaching my mental and physical (I wasn’t lying about the elbow) limit. Then I saw a video from @ReefBum with Jason fox and he said he doses 1 pill of reeflux for 1000g. The product recommends 1 pill per 10g. So figured what the h3ll. Now the recommended dose of reeflux for my 50g tank looks like this

but I only dosed this much

Within 3 days the bryopsis was disappearing and the rest of the algae was turning white

Everything looks really happy even though my nitrates are higher than ever.

Glad to see you beat it! Crazy it only took such a small dose, you've got to be kicking yourself for not trying that earlier. Cool video, your acros look great! Would love to see the names for all those in the video pop up.

stoney7713 · Apr 4, 2023

I might give this a go, I wanted to try a more natural approach but sometimes just solving the problem is best.

shakacuz · Apr 4, 2023

so you dosed less than what is recommended and it worked even better?

i may have confused myself reading your post but…kudos!

Charlie’s Frags · Apr 4, 2023

shakacuz said:
so you dosed less than what is recommended and it worked even better?

i may have confused myself reading your post but…kudos!

I tried my best to do 1/100th the recommended dose and yes…it worked very well.

shakacuz · Apr 5, 2023

Charlie’s Frags said:
I tried my best to do 1/100th the recommended dose and yes…it worked very well.

any WC after the treatment? i’m curious of trying this method whenever bryopsis does come back in my system. but i don’t do WC’s at all.

Charlie’s Frags · Apr 5, 2023

shakacuz said:
any WC after the treatment? i’m curious of trying this method whenever bryopsis does come back in my system. but i don’t do WC’s at all.

Instructions say perform a 30% wc after 3 weeks.
I’ll probably do a 75% wc to knock down my no3. They doubled when all the algae started dying

Charlie’s Frags · Apr 5, 2023

ryshark said:
Glad to see you beat it! Crazy it only took such a small dose, you've got to be kicking yourself for not trying that earlier. Cool video, your acros look great! Would love to see the names for all those in the video pop up.

Take some screen shots of the ones you’re interested in and I’ll let you know the name

ScottB · Apr 6, 2023

I've been pretty wary of fluc given that we have both read the same stories. I have personally seen a bad outcome on a neighborhood system. That said, there really is no other way to knock back bryopsis that I have heard of. (I would never risk it for GHA, but bryopsis is a very different algae that nothing will touch.

Super excited to hear that a microdose got it done. One thing to note, any shaded bryopsis will survive.

Charlie’s Frags · Apr 6, 2023

ScottB said:
I've been pretty wary of fluc given that we have both read the same stories. I have personally seen a bad outcome on a neighborhood system. That said, there really is no other way to knock back bryopsis that I have heard of. (I would never risk it for GHA, but bryopsis is a very different algae that nothing will touch.

Super excited to hear that a microdose got it done. One thing to note, any shaded bryopsis will survive.