Macro algae or Hair Algae, ID Please!

[equinecpa]

I have some kind of algae growing in my nano tank that I need an ID on. It looks like hair algae and is fine just like hair algae except it grows very long and stringy like cheato. I have cheato and know it's not that - it's too fine. It's well over a foot long now and growing rapidly. It is wrapping around the little nano!

I'm thinkin it is hair algae and needs to be yanked (whatever it is, it needs to be controlled anyhow), I just need to know if it should be totally eradicated, or if I should leave a little bit (which will soon be a lot anyhow) :

Carolyn

 

[kmk2307]

Try looking up Derbesia, Bryopsis, and Cladophora. Whatever it is, if you want it gone you need to manually remove what you can and reduce the amount of nutrients in your water. Do you use RO/DI or another type of purified water for water changes and topoff? More frequent water changes to remove nutrients may be helpful. A couple hermit crabs or a small urchin would probably help control it.

HTH,
Kevin

 

[equinecpa]

Hmmm...I took a look at pics of each of the above algae species, none of them looked like this one. It's not branching, each strand is over a foot long...very similar to cheato but not much finer than cheato.

I should add, this is a seahorse growout tank with lots of macro so I don't really mind algae growth. I just don't want this taking over and killing the others. I did haul a bunch of it out tonight and stuck it in my volcanic shrimp tank. They'll probably enjoy munching on it.

Carolyn