green shiny bubbles

[RockoC87]

What are those little green shiny bubbles on my live rock? algae??? also there looks like 2 little bluish shiny bubbles things kinda like a small marble, weird anyone know what this is?

[hobogato]

sounds like bubble algae. if it is, it will take over your tank. you can just carefully pull out the bubbles before they get too big. when they get big, they burst and then the stuff spreads. you can also get an emerald crab, and he will eat it up.

[Darth-Tater]

Yep, I had a bunch of it. :( Tried to sell it on ebay as a rare type of coral but no one took the bait :D So....... I bought several emerald crabs and they had the all you could eat buffet :skeezy There is no more bubble algae. I am happy :D and the crabs are still happy to be away from the LFS :P . Good Luck


DT

[bigdscobra]

Only if the Emerald crab didn't eat the micro feather dusters, I had some of the bubble algea and stuck 3 emeralds in the tank and they ate all the feater dusters first :angry, so now I just pick them off with my hands and throw them in the fuge with the emeralds.

[Thunderkat]

Only if the Emerald crab didn't eat the micro feather dusters, I had some of the bubble algea and stuck 3 emeralds in the tank and they ate all the feater dusters first :angry, so now I just pick them off with my hands and throw them in the fuge with the emeralds.

I can just picture little emerald crabs with prison uniforms on :lol

[AlexKilpatrick]

I've heard that emerald crabs eat bubble algae, but I have about six in my tank and I have never seen them eat it. My population of bubble algae (pehaps 60-80) seems pretty constant too.

[Polkster13]

Alex,

How big are your emerald crabs? I have found that only the larger sized emerald crabs will eat the larger size Valonia. Most of my emerald crabs are at least 1.5 inchs in width and larger.

[AlexKilpatrick]

Are you measuring the body, or the span across the legs? I do have a couple that are that size, but I don't see them too often. It is hard to catch them eating in general, so they may be eating the bubbles and I am just not seeing it. I can't imagine how they would be able to eat the bubbles, though. Do they poke them first to deflate them?

[vic318]

Emerald crabs along with manual removal of valonia algae (bubble algae) is the best method I've found of removal. If you can remove the live rock the algae is on then take it out and scrape off as much as you can and rinse with SW to remove all the spores from the rock. Emerald crabs do a wonderfull job of getting the smaller bubble algae but it will take a couple of months to fully get rid of the bubble algae.

[Polkster13]

I am measuring the body, not including the legs. I had a large one that nearly wiped out my entire population of Valona (I had at least six different kinds in my tank) in under three weeks. That was a 135 gallon tank with about 300 pounds of LR that was covered in Valona. Now I only have a couple of individual pieces here and there.

[AlexKilpatrick]

Did you ever see him eating the valonia? How do they eat it?

In my tank, I actually have corraline growing on my valonia!

[GaryP]

Not much will touch the really big bubbles. They are a little tough to get a bite out of. The big ones are better removed by hand. The rabbit fish, including the foxface will also eat them, but it has to be able to get to them and again it may not touch the big ones. Both of my tanks are pretty much bubble free, except where the rabbitfish can't get to them.

[MikeP]

Rabbitfish will make short work of them like Gary says - along with anything else green in your tank!