Bubble Algae

[spuds]

My bubble Algae prioblem is gettign a lot worse. The bubbles have now spread to three rocks. Is there a fish or a crab that I can purchase for a 40 gallon tank that will take care of this?
My current fish and corals include a percula clown,cleaner shrimp, feather duster, a few schrooms, and some sun polyps. So whatever I purchase would have to be able to live well with what I already have

 

[carrie1429]

I have heard that emerald crabs eat them. Or I think you can remove them manually (but who wants to do that) You just have to be careful not to pop them.

 

[saltyj]

I had my emerald for a week before he died and he never touvhed the stuff. Try and remove them by hand just don't pop them. JMO

 

[elan]

what i have found to work well for me was to use a thin tubing and syphon out some water when i would do waterchanges..... i would then "vacume" out any bubble algae along with any other overgrown algae that i found to be unsightly.. this method helped me make sure that if any bubbles did pop, most of the spores made it out to my "dump" bucket.

 

[spuds]

That sounds like a good idea, but will the bubbles break loose just from suction alone?

 

[tangman99]

I did the suction thing also and it works great. The suction is not enough to pull of the algea. I taped a sharp pointer on the end of the tube that stuck out about 1/2 inch. I then used the sharp pointer to pop and scrape off the algea and it all got syphoned out of the tank.
I did this after I bought two emerald that did not seem to bother it. There were a couple that I could not get too at the time and decided to do them later. When I came back to get them, they were gone and I have not seen any since. I think my emerald finally found them.

 

[leigh]

I never had luck personally with suctioning--but those who do I'm jealous!
Emerald crabs: have been known to eat bubble algae; they also have been known to go after fish, polyps, anything green, and in my case bubble coral. It really varies on the personality of the crab. Some go nuts with bubble algae and that's all they touch. Some could care less about bubble algae.
Fish: Some tangs and the foxface rabbitfish are known to munch on bubble algae. However neither tangs nor foxface are appropriate for that size tank unfortunately. Maybe you could get a loaner for a few days from a friend (just kidding, not that the idea didn't cross my mind quite a few times...)
Other crabs: Some folks have mentioned their sally lightfoot eating bubble algae--never tried it myself--perhaps it's something to look into.
Mostly I've stuck to manual removal. Kinda along the line of what elan suggested, so as to avoid needing to be totally worried about bursting the bubbles I prefer the method of removing bubble algae in conjunction with a water change. Put 5 gals of tank water in a bucket. Pull the algae covered rock out of the tank and remove the bubbles--rinse the rock off in your removed tank water and then add your new water back to the tank. Obviously it's impractical to do this with some rocks in which case if at all possible try running a siphon right at the rock while you're removing bubbles--again, then if you break the bubble the spores get siphoned right out.
Hope this helps,
-leigh