Chaeto in display on Zoas

[SteveOhio]

I recently noticed I had growth on my zoas. my LFS has informed me that it is chaeto and instructed me that only hand picking it off the frag plugs is the answer as there is nothing that eats chaeto or any way to get rid of it. I was checking to see if anyone was aware of any options that might work? I have picked as much as I can off.

 

[SteveOhio]

FYI, I tried to upload images but it didn't seem to upload. Hopefully I now figured it out.

 

[101010]

IMO it isn't chaeto ,it's bryopsis.

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[tomreefer]

yup it's bryopsis!

 

[Oldreeferman]

Cheato grows as a free twisty ball of entangled strands, it does not attach itself ever to anything. Cheato never grows on frags,.......... LFS info missed the target.
If algae CUC can't keep that in check you may have a prob down the rd.

 

[hilltopreef]

Lots of fish eat Chaeto anyway. My purple sail fin loves it!

 

[tomreefer]

I have a bryopsis/Hair Algae issue and I used Phosphate RX last week and seems to fix my issue so far. The thing with this algae it's hard to remove and the higher your phosphates the harder it is. Take out as much by hand without pumps on and have a bucket with water and swish your hands before getting more out. Search Melevs Reef youtube on this very helpful.

 

[ThRoewer]

Chaetomorpha actually exists in an attached form as well.
However, the algae pictured are not likely to be Chaetomorpha.
The one in the first picture could be an early stage Bryopsis, but more likely is that it is just turf/hair algae. Bryopsis can be identified by the feather-like "leaves" that give it a fernlike appearance. There are many species and some are soft and can easily be confused with regular hair algae. But Bryopsis grows in more neatly looking shorter tuffs than hair algae which grows unruly and long strands.