Scrubbing Live Rock

Posted by gerard on November 20, 2008 under Aquarium Info | Be the First to Comment

I recently had a little bout of green hair algae and red slime algae.  More than likely my problems are caused by me overfeeding my fish and coral because my water parameters are always well within good ranges.   I could not figure out what was causing my issue.

Anyway, what I decided to do to get rid of this algae was to scrub my live rock.  I have about 10 pieces of rock in my biocube and there were only 4 pieces that were having this problem.  I DO NOT recommend doing this to all your rock at the same time but it did the trick for me.  This was a last resort for me because I could not get rid of the hair algae and it just kept growing and growing.

Basically what I did was fill a bucket with saltwater.  Then i took out the culprit rocks and put them in the bucket.  I then used an ordinary scrub brush to get all the algae off.  Once I did that, the water in the bucket basically turned black.  So i emptied out all the water and refilled it with new clean saltwater.  After I refilled the bucket the 2nd time i just shook off any excess gunk and then put the rocks back in my tank.

So far so good.  The algae hasn’t returned yet and I am trying to decrease my feedings to keep it away.