Can you ID this algae?

[PescadoraNM]

This is growing over most of my live rock. I've tried brushing it off with a toothbrush, with little luck and it does not come off when I try a turkey baster. The color is a greyish, hair like appearance, but it's not hair algea, I'm sure of that.

Is it bad? Is it something that some critter would eat? I have 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates, which I assume are being used up by algae and aren't detectable in any test. This tank has been up for about 5 months, and in all that time, I've never had nitrates.

Thanks for your help!

 

[semi_butterfly]

looks like hair algae but i cant see that well on my phone so i might be wrong. theres alot of things to try when removing it. i personally used emerald crabs

 

[hollister]

Looks like hair algea. MB some spot flow or increased overall flow or water source or both.

 

[TimeConsumer]

Tough to tell without a closer picture. Hair algae doesn't always appear green, it depends on the lighting. Try turning off the lights and using a flashlight to see what color it appears.

A toothbrush definitely doesn't get it off, try a wire brush. I've found it tough to find critters that eat it, but I've had luck with turbo snails. However, they only like it when it's really short.

 

[PescadoraNM]

Okay thanks all. I just tried the flashlight on it, in the dark, and it is more of a light green than it looks with lights on. I can't do the wire brush trick on all of it,because I can see it's really bad on the back of the rocks that are up against the back of the tank. I'd have to tear the whole tank down to get at all of it, which I just don't want to do.

I have one emerald crab and one big turbo snail. I hardly ever see the turbo snail, but see the emerald always munching off something on rocks. Maybe more emerald crabs are in order. He's grown soooo much since I got him

What a drag to have this stuff.

 

[TimeConsumer]

Just brush off what rocks you can outside of the tank in a bucket of water. The ones that you can't remove you may as well brush them off inside the tank while the pumps are off and use a net to catch the big pieces. Once the grass has been cut the turbos will be all over it.

When it comes to hair algae the best thing you can do is just manually remove as much as you can. Over and over and over. At the same time try to reduce po4/no3. FInd the source of the nutrients fueling the algae and get rid of them. Check your water source, rethink your feeding, do more aggressive waterchanges, run GFO, etc. All the while just keep pulling out the algae over and over again. Eventually you will win.