strange hard black bubble on lr

[martianarts]

hey everyone, there is a rather interesting black 'bubble' with a rainbowey coat. i tapped it with a chop stick and it was rather hard. i was wondering if anyone could tell me what it is. it looks almost hollow but i cant really tell. is it something i need to worry about ??

 

[ivanfj]

It looks like some bubble algae. Don't pop it in your water. Try gently taking it off your LR and then net it out. Another solution would be getting some clean up crew. Usually emerald crabs would take bubble algae but some don't as well. It's a hit-and-miss thing. HTH

 

[lm]

Its bubble algea. If it breaks it will spread rapidly through out your tank

 

[leopard_babe]

Will it pop on its own? Or can you just leave it there???

 

[martianarts]

would an emerald crab go well in a tank with a cleaner shrimp, tang, and damsel?

 

[asbury030]

yea i have snails hermit and he doesnt bother anyone.
When i bought mine within a week all the bubble algea was all gone.

 

[flydan]

Hey,
Just a little side piece of information. Emerald (mythrix) crabs will only take care of smaller bubble algae. If you already have a lot of larger "bubbles" you will have to remove them on your own. The emerald crabs should be able to prevent the smaller ones from speading.
Left on their own they will pop all by them selves. They spread by releasing all those little spores into the water and growing all over the place. I've always wondered if certain corals used the spores as food, sort of like plankton.
One fish that I've heard will eat the smaller ones is the Red Sea Sailfin Tang.
HTH,
Dan'l

 

[fshhub]

definitely bubble algae
an emerald crab may help, but not guarenteed
remove it, it is hard and will not pop easly and spread. But this stuff growing and spreading is hard enough to upset rock structures, if it gets between them. So, my advice is to do something about it and not wait for it to go away.

 

[leopard_babe]

This piece that it is on is small. I will remove the rock from the tank to get off the algea. What if i pop it out of the tank? Will it stillspread in the tank? Like would some of the spores stay attched to the rock when i take it off?
Thanks guys!!!
Leopard

 

[fshhub]

You do not need to remove the rock. Try getting the algae first and you will see how durable it really is. You are not going to harm anything by taking it off in there.

 

[martianarts]

right now, its maybe a quarter inch across. i really dont want to remove the live rock, as it is supporing a few mroe on its sides. but how do i go about removing it? just pull it off slowly and carefully? if it does happen to burst. what harmful affects will it have on the habitat? will it make nitrate/nitrite levels rise? or is it just a major p.i.t.a.

 

[fshhub]

just pull it off gently and that is pretty much it.
as far as bad things go, the worst that coudl happen is that some spores spread just like any other plant. spreading spores means that it can spread to other areas of the enviroment(ie somewhere else on the rock)
No chemical inbalances or anything at all.

 

[soupysteve]

I've wondered - if you were to just stick the bubble algae with a syringe and suck the "goo" out, could you stop the stuff? I've yet to have the stuff except for a small blob that attached itself to some macro algae I bought for my fuge...

 

[jrpage]

If you go with getting an emerald crab to help with the problem - make sure to throw in a couple "bubbles" while acclimating it. Someone else suggested this and I used this method with mine.
He took to it great and had five bubbles chomped the first fifteen minutes into acclimation:yes: