Valonia help

[dvmsn]

I know that this is a tired thread, but I need help. Valonia are out of control in my tank. Pickings them out by hand doesn't seem to help. Mytrax crabs all die right away. I have been in the hobby for 10 years. I maintain sps, lps, and softies. Everything is very happy in the tank. The valonia don't seem to hurt anything but my feelings.

I moved to a new area about 6 months ago and the problem seemed to get worse after the move. I am guessing that my new water is higher in iron? I don't have a problem with any other nuisance algea.

Please help.

 

[newkie]

The things to look at with this plague are nitrates, silicates, and phosphates. If you're nitrates are >=10ppm you might ask yourself why. Is your skimmer up to the task, are you feeding too much, time for a water change, do you need to beef up your cleanup crew, maybe macroalgae for nutrient export, would your tank benefit from a dsb? Next your water, is this tap water or purified? If tap test it! Does it have nitrates, phosphates, or silicates? Probably. Cyano forced me to purchase an RO/DI unit. Be sure to maintain your Ro/di well, its easy to get lazy and not replace filters. With no incoming phosphates or silicates the building blocks are essentially missing and with no nitrates the nutrients are gone as well. Unfortunately you will need to remove the valonia which is there despite removing nutrients from the water. I do this with a .25" rigid plastic tube cut sharply at a 45 degree angel to form a sharp point. I then attatch this to a hose which I use to start a siphon. This allows me to poke at the base of the valonia sucking them intact to the bucket... and for those that do get punctured the hope is that most o the spores are either (A) immature, (B) are eated by corals and filter feeders, and (C) siphoned away with the water. Lastly, this topic is very well documented. Search threads here and read up about them in your books. HTH