What eats this?
- Thread starter fiji4118
- Start date
Any herbivore will snack on it. Tangs, snails, rabbitfish, bleenys, crabs, etc. If your cleanup crew is undersized, adding any of those should help your issue. Assuming you have a reasonable size cleanup crew already, I would focus more on reducing nutrient added to the system or increasing nutrient export from the system rather than just getting something to eat it. While a test kit can show 0 nitrates and phosphates, there can still be a nutrient problem in your tank that is masked by the algae growth. I personally saw my tank have a huge algae bloom (2" long hair algae all over) and nitrates were 0.05 ppm and phosphates were undetectable on both the red sea kit and the salifert kit.
How big is your current cleanup crew and tank size? Are you running a refugium? If so how often do you remove macro from there and how much do you remove? How much skimmate do you remove each week? what color and consistency is your skimmate? How much do you feed?
How big is your current cleanup crew and tank size? Are you running a refugium? If so how often do you remove macro from there and how much do you remove? How much skimmate do you remove each week? what color and consistency is your skimmate? How much do you feed?
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fiji4118;320093 said:
Hey all,
Never really had algae issues until recently when I put predators in my tank. Ate the snails and crabs. Gone now so who do I need to add? Just put in some emeralds but they don't eat this.
Phosphate is 0 and everything else is good.
Never really had algae issues until recently when I put predators in my tank. Ate the snails and crabs. Gone now so who do I need to add? Just put in some emeralds but they don't eat this.
So running GFO and dosing Red Sea Po3X. I have 2 tangs, a foxface and a lawnmower blenny. Skimmate is dark green and get's emptied once a week. Refuge has calerpa and cheato and I trim it back about every 3 weeks. Tank is a 150. Clean up crew is small due to them all being eaten. Need to add some additional snails and crabs. Feeding might be an issue as I feed mysis every day 2X to keep my leopard wrasses, anthias and blue spotted jaw fish happy.
I have personally seen better results trimming cheato weekly or bi weekly. That might help. I like to remove half of my cheato every time it doubles in volume (usually takes one to two weeks). Not sure how big of predators you got, but most will keep away from turbos cause they are too big for em. You could try a couple of those or a sea hare as mentioned earlier.
Even your grazers will stop eating the hair algae if they're being fed enough from other sources. I had a starry blenny that went after hair algae, but barely put a dent in the problem...he definitely preferred film algae and mysis.
Foxfaces and yellow tangs seem to be preferred for hair algae if you're looking at fish; bristletooth tangs rarely touch it from what I've read...and my kole tang certainly never touched it either. It's my understanding that the zebrasoma genus of tangs are more reliable when it comes to snacking on green hair algae.
All that being said, your best bet is probably to just rely on manual removal and increasing your nutrient export. I beat back my GHA fairly well a few months ago, but unfortunately it all came back after a temp spike killed off several snails while I was on vacation. Get some long gloves on so you keep your hands out of the tank, and just start pulling out what you can on a regular basis (read: daily). I made a little cleaning tool with basically a stiff-bristle pipe cleaner at the end to help with removal...just stick it in the middle of a clump, twirl it around, and pull it out. If you keep up with it, cut back feedings a touch, and just keep on doing frequent water changes...you should notice that it eventually stops growing back and all you are left with are short tufts of algae. I wouldn't add more CUC until you get to that point, since that's when they'll be effective in actually removing it from your tank. Turbo snails should clean up the rest once all you have are small remnants in your tank.
just my .02 on this since I'm dealing with it as well
Foxfaces and yellow tangs seem to be preferred for hair algae if you're looking at fish; bristletooth tangs rarely touch it from what I've read...and my kole tang certainly never touched it either. It's my understanding that the zebrasoma genus of tangs are more reliable when it comes to snacking on green hair algae.
All that being said, your best bet is probably to just rely on manual removal and increasing your nutrient export. I beat back my GHA fairly well a few months ago, but unfortunately it all came back after a temp spike killed off several snails while I was on vacation. Get some long gloves on so you keep your hands out of the tank, and just start pulling out what you can on a regular basis (read: daily). I made a little cleaning tool with basically a stiff-bristle pipe cleaner at the end to help with removal...just stick it in the middle of a clump, twirl it around, and pull it out. If you keep up with it, cut back feedings a touch, and just keep on doing frequent water changes...you should notice that it eventually stops growing back and all you are left with are short tufts of algae. I wouldn't add more CUC until you get to that point, since that's when they'll be effective in actually removing it from your tank. Turbo snails should clean up the rest once all you have are small remnants in your tank.
just my .02 on this since I'm dealing with it as well
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jahmic;320198 said:
Even your grazers will stop eating the hair algae if they're being fed enough from other sources. I had a starry blenny that went after hair algae, but barely put a dent in the problem...he definitely preferred film algae and mysis.
Foxfaces and yellow tangs seem to be preferred for hair algae if you're looking at fish; bristletooth tangs rarely touch it from what I've read...and my kole tang certainly never touched it either. It's my understanding that the zebrasoma genus of tangs are more reliable when it comes to snacking on green hair algae.
All that being said, your best bet is probably to just rely on manual removal and increasing your nutrient export. I beat back my GHA fairly well a few months ago, but unfortunately it all came back after a temp spike killed off several snails while I was on vacation. Get some long gloves on so you keep your hands out of the tank, and just start pulling out what you can on a regular basis (read: daily). I made a little cleaning tool with basically a stiff-bristle pipe cleaner at the end to help with removal...just stick it in the middle of a clump, twirl it around, and pull it out. If you keep up with it, cut back feedings a touch, and just keep on doing frequent water changes...you should notice that it eventually stops growing back and all you are left with are short tufts of algae. I wouldn't add more CUC until you get to that point, since that's when they'll be effective in actually removing it from your tank. Turbo snails should clean up the rest once all you have are small remnants in your tank.
just my .02 on this since I'm dealing with it as well
Foxfaces and yellow tangs seem to be preferred for hair algae if you're looking at fish; bristletooth tangs rarely touch it from what I've read...and my kole tang certainly never touched it either. It's my understanding that the zebrasoma genus of tangs are more reliable when it comes to snacking on green hair algae.
All that being said, your best bet is probably to just rely on manual removal and increasing your nutrient export. I beat back my GHA fairly well a few months ago, but unfortunately it all came back after a temp spike killed off several snails while I was on vacation. Get some long gloves on so you keep your hands out of the tank, and just start pulling out what you can on a regular basis (read: daily). I made a little cleaning tool with basically a stiff-bristle pipe cleaner at the end to help with removal...just stick it in the middle of a clump, twirl it around, and pull it out. If you keep up with it, cut back feedings a touch, and just keep on doing frequent water changes...you should notice that it eventually stops growing back and all you are left with are short tufts of algae. I wouldn't add more CUC until you get to that point, since that's when they'll be effective in actually removing it from your tank. Turbo snails should clean up the rest once all you have are small remnants in your tank.
just my .02 on this since I'm dealing with it as well
Adam is this new rock or old rock? I assume you have LEDS right, not old/expired and past life time T5 bulbs or PC even?
Now if you were crazy like me you would try the following:
1. Manually remove as much as you can
2. Replace any filter socks if used, clean skimmer
3. Do 3 days lights out - complete darkness no lights at all (wrap in a sheet - except to feed of course)
4. Start dosing Kent Marine Tech M until you hit 1600
5. Continue to change filter socks and maintain dosing Tech M
6. Start to look at methods to increase your nutrient export - maybe bigger skimmer, ATS (algae turf scrubber), increased water changes, increased chaeto trimming (when I kept chaeto I used to tear it into smaller pieces, which makes repair itself, thereby increasing growth and nutrient removal).
* I would say that really no invert is really safe in a predator tank - but if you go the route of snails make sure you manually remove as much as you can and go with as many mexican turbo snails as you can afford to buy and prob loose
Now if you were crazy like me you would try the following:
1. Manually remove as much as you can
2. Replace any filter socks if used, clean skimmer
3. Do 3 days lights out - complete darkness no lights at all (wrap in a sheet - except to feed of course)
4. Start dosing Kent Marine Tech M until you hit 1600
5. Continue to change filter socks and maintain dosing Tech M
6. Start to look at methods to increase your nutrient export - maybe bigger skimmer, ATS (algae turf scrubber), increased water changes, increased chaeto trimming (when I kept chaeto I used to tear it into smaller pieces, which makes repair itself, thereby increasing growth and nutrient removal).
* I would say that really no invert is really safe in a predator tank - but if you go the route of snails make sure you manually remove as much as you can and go with as many mexican turbo snails as you can afford to buy and prob loose
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