Best Blenny for eating green hair algae?

[jraker]

I am going to get a blenny to take care of some of my algae until i get a refugium set up. My tank is a 36 gallon nano with 1 green chromis, 1 firefish, and 1 randalls goby. I am thinking of a tailspot blenny or a starry blenny. My main concerns are bioload and aggression. If you have any suggestions, please tell me. thanks.

 

[ginpang]

Best Blenny for eating green hair algae?

Hi of course sailfin or if you prefer lawnmower Blenny is the most efficient hair algae remover on rocks! I am not familiar with the tails pot blenny's behavior at all unfortunately .... But starry Blenny will graze rocks but might behave a bit more like a bicolor Blenny and concentrate mainly on glass and make nice little mouth shape patterns everywhere you didn't scrape manually.
Both sailfin and starry can get pretty big so ideally you'd find a really small one. Sailfin tend to be annoying sometimes with other fish, starry is a bit more reserved but still have a pretty bold personality. Tail spot I think is more tame but like I had said I don't know on how good he' ll be on algae .

 

[ginpang]

Toxedo urchin will do the job really well and there will be no aggression

 

[RGS2]

Don't count on a Blenny to take care of hair algae. It would be hit or miss if you get one that might eat some, and if it doesn't then you have a fish you might not want long term.

 

[Scorpius]

Nutrient control and turbo snails.

 

[Genera]

Mollies! Snails work too. But if you must have a blenny, a Starry Blenny I had happily gobbled up hair algae, and rabbitfish scales...

 

[jraker]

Nutrient control and turbo snails.

yeah, i will be starting a refugium soon, and will be getting more snails. my turbos are super lazy. i dont want a blenny that gets very big, as in 4 or 5 inches. i am leaning towards the tailspot because i hear they will be less aggressive.

 

[jraker]

Toxedo urchin will do the job really well and there will be no aggression

ill be getting one soon. im just worried about one picking up my utter chaos frag...

 

[ChrisL1976]

my algae blenny devastated the GHA in my tank and does a great job keeping it out now.

 

[Jlentz]

My lawnmower won't touch the stuff on the rocks, only the glass. And he killed my kole tang. I wish I could get him out.

 

[ginpang]

ill be getting one soon. im just worried about one picking up my utter chaos frag...

They usually pick up star polyps , zoanthus , little mushrooms and small snail or chiton shells. All the cheaper stuff [emoji4] I strongly doubt he'll bother hard coral ... Though he might accidentally make them fall if your frags are real small and not secured to the rock. You might want to epoxy them down if that's the case.

 

[ginpang]

My lawnmower won't touch the stuff on the rocks, only the glass. And he killed my kole tang. I wish I could get him out.

He must be huge... [emoji16][emoji33]

 

[Jlentz]

He must be huge... [emoji16][emoji33]

He's full grown. The Kole was about 3.5".

Lawnmower is the only other thing in the tank that can get aggressive.

 

[jraker]

yeah. ive heard stories of larger blennies being very aggressive. i really dont want to risk it, especially because i have a smaller tank. does anyone have experience with tailspot blennies?

 

[bbowler1]

In the new tank syndrome I had a forest of hair algae from low bacterial, die off from cured rocks a friend gave me. Good water changes and some manual removal helped but the real treatment was the 4 sea hares I put in. Its been 2 weeks and they have cleaned 90% or more of some pretty long stuff. Great little guys. I will let them go another week and take back 2-3 of them to the LFS and just leave 1 or 2 as a cleanup crew for a while.

 

[Genera]

I never got any hair algae! (sadface)

 

[owen386]

Had a bad problem with HA recently caused by high phosphates, has since been fixed. But in the mean time i got a seahare, cleaned up 99 percent of the HA in just under a month.

 

[Hwobarg]

I prefer the lawn mower blenny

 

[jraker]

In the new tank syndrome I had a forest of hair algae from low bacterial, die off from cured rocks a friend gave me. Good water changes and some manual removal helped but the real treatment was the 4 sea hares I put in. Its been 2 weeks and they have cleaned 90% or more of some pretty long stuff. Great little guys. I will let them go another week and take back 2-3 of them to the LFS and just leave 1 or 2 as a cleanup crew for a while.

i dont want to use sea hares because they can rellease toxins that can nuke your tank.

 

[Bent]

i dont want to use sea hares because they can rellease toxins that can nuke your tank.

You are thinking of cucumbers.

And of the tons of cucumbers I've had, I've never had one Nuke a tank. Not even the sea apples I once had.