Help getting rid of bubble algae and sea lettuce

[jakesan68]

So I have my 20g nano tank that is roughly 4 months old now and I have a pretty good breakout of bubble algae and sea lettuce growing everywhere.  The lettuce looks like ulva which I guess isn't that bad since its a macroalgae but just doesn't look appealing in the display.  I figured maybe a lawnmower blenny could help out with this, but then I started getting the bubble algae in a lot of places.  I have seen people recommend emerald crabs, manual removal with a siphon, and vibrant.

 

I was wondering if anybody has had any success with these methods, I wish I could just try manually removing it but I know they say that popping them might let the spores release, but then others say that's only a myth and they need to be a decent size in order to actually have spores to release.  Vibrant does sound good as it would also melt away the lettuce I think with a good amount of dosing, but then I hear many drawbacks of vibrant including cyano/dino outbreaks after, corals dying, etc. and just really trying to figure out what to do about this.

 

Any feedback would be great!

[Vacobra1]

Emerald Crabs will help but in my experience they don't rid it but will keep it at bay.  I have been using Vibrant for the last 2 months with good success in combination with emerald crabs.  Seems like as the crabs eat it the vibrant is preventing it from returning.  I have not had any problems with vibrant other then I got some brown slime in my sump which I believe it because My chaeto has died back and the lights grew the brown slime, it was easy to clean out but I havent had any issues with my display.  

[jakesan68]

25 minutes ago, Vacobra1 said:

Emerald Crabs will help but in my experience they don't rid it but will keep it at bay.  I have been using Vibrant for the last 2 months with good success in combination with emerald crabs.  Seems like as the crabs eat it the vibrant is preventing it from returning.  I have not had any problems with vibrant other then I got some brown slime in my sump which I believe it because My chaeto has died back and the lights grew the brown slime, it was easy to clean out but I havent had any issues with my display.  

Oh okay well that's good that it ended up working out for you! I was also even just thinking of just taking out all of my rock from my tank one piece at a time and just manually remove the bubble algae and brush the parts that have lettuce with peroxide just to really get it out of my system and get the majority of it out and then handle it from there once its a lot smaller amount.

[BtmDweller]

Gotta find out what’s causing it. Usually water quality, over feeding, need for more water changes, detritus build up. Emerald crabs are a short term solution if you can drive down nutrients it’ll go away also.

[jakesan68]

1 hour ago, BtmDweller said:

Gotta find out what’s causing it. Usually water quality, over feeding, need for more water changes, detritus build up. Emerald crabs are a short term solution if you can drive down nutrients it’ll go away also.

Well my tank is only 4 months old and its like just now going through these algae blooms.  So maybe just some ugly stages along with some overfeeding? I guess I could cut back on feeding and just let the tank stabilize more and just starve out algaes. I thought bubble algae doesn't go away with decrease in nutrients?