Brown Algae what eats it???????

[plateboy3293]

I have a brown algae outbreak covering all of my sand.
I don't seem to have anybody in the tank that wants to eat it. I have a 1 red serpent starfish, 10 nassarius, 6 mexican turbos, 1 long spined sea urchin, 1 sand sifting star, 1 atlantic cuke, 11 astrea, 1 emerald, and 1 arrow crab. None of them seem to eat it. Can someone suggest a reef safe invert or fish that will eat it and coexist with the existing inhabitabts? ( Besides a shrimp or lobster)
I also have a clownfish, heliofungia, and a coco worm in qt.

Thanks in advance:rollface:

 

[graveyardworm]

Without a pic its hard to tell what algae you have on the sand and even with a pic its not always conclusive. Chances are its Diatoms. How long has the tank been set up, can you post some water parameters? Do you have any Astraea or Cerith snails?

 

[plateboy3293]

Water Parm's are
Nitrate, Nitrite, Phophates, and Ammonia 0
500 Calcium
9 DKH
Salinity 1.023
Ph 8.3
Their are 11 Astrea Snails as I posted already.
Here's a pic

Sorry its kind of dark the lights went out at 7:00.
The tanks 3 months old not including cycling which would make it 5 months old

 

[graveyardworm]

Sorry I missed the Astraea in your original post.

Not the issue, but Ca is a bit high, and SG is a bit low. Ceriths are very good at keeping nuisance algae cleaned from the sand, also fighting conch.

How deep is the sand bed? Did you start the tank with live rock?

 

[Guygettnby]

conch's, sea cucmbers, nassarius snails, clams, cerith snails and there a some more but i have all of the above in my tanks and never have a problem with my substrate ever getting dirty.

only thing i have algea go crazy on is my glass... -_-

 

[Guygettnby]

oh one other question... is your substrate sand? or is it agranite? looks like regular sand from the picture.

 

[plateboy3293]

the link to the sand http://petco.com/product/7534/Nature-s-Ocean-Premium-Marine-Substrates.aspx
The sand bed is two inches.
I am adding a refugium today and I will add some live rock and chaeto.
Guygettnby what type of clams are you talking about?

 

[plateboy3293]

I thought 500 was an exceptable range.

 

[graveyardworm]

500 is the upper limit of what is commonly considered acceptable. I would add some sand bed herbivores listed and carefully siphon off the algae without removing too much of the sand. Adding the refugium should help so you could just wait it out. Decrease your tank feeding a bit and increase nutrient outputs, skimming , water changes, refugium, etc..

 

[KB3MMX]

I had some of this on my aragonite sand that was rapidly cleaned up by small blue leg hermits(4) over a couple days and hasn't come back.......

 

[Guygettnby]

i have noticed in my personal tanks and some friends tanks that regular fine sand is more prone to getting algea problems compared to sand mixed with agronite or just straight agronite. that was why i was asking.

the clams i am talking about are regular old clams, like cherry clams that you can get from the grocery store or buy off of saltwaterfish.com.... they seem to do a really good job cleaning the substrate, you never see them but they are always cleaning the substrate. also nassarius snails are a great addition and they are fairly cheap, i keep smail ones in all of my tanks. my 30g has the following:

persian sand conch
burrowing conch
king conch
20+ small nessarius snails
sand sifting cucumber
2 clams
2 serpent stars
2 brittle stars and a bunch of really small hitchhiking stars
2 red leg hermits
10 blue leg hermits
5 zebra hermits
5 astrea snails
5 turbo snails

my 30g tank requires little to no maintence at all and my sand bed is always very clean looking. the only algea problems i get with this tank would be the algea on the glass wich everybody gets and it only takes me 5min to wipe it off.