Need help with algae

[firerock]

There are algae growing on the LR that I have purchased from fellow reefer locally, they are dark red/brown colored, grass-like, and are difficult to get rid of. I have tried scrub it, pull it, but they don't come off at all. My turbo snail seem to munch on the shorter ones, but not the longer ones, and they have been growing out of control. Is there anything that might eat it? Will a tang help? or I just need to add more turbos?

My water condition are good, no detectable ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, and silicate, all tested with Seachem testkits.

 

[tmplge]

The firn looks kinda cool actaully. I would think your best bet is to take them out of the tank and scrap it off then find out what is causing the growth and solve that problem as well.

 

[JeffersonReef]

Get 2 or 3 emerald crabs. They will deal with it! Also, do you have any tangs? Im sure that the tangs would consume that in a matter of hours!

 

[SurfOnH20]

Fire,
I had the same stuff in my tank and my blue tang couldn't seem to get enough of it. Tangs are great when it comes to this kinda of stuff.

 

[JeffersonReef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8371823#post8371823 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SurfOnH20
Fire,
I had the same stuff in my tank and my blue tang couldn't seem to get enough of it. Tangs are great when it comes to this kinda of stuff.

Yeah... I wish my tank had some of that growing somewhere deep down behind my rock... so it could grow, then get eaten by my tangs... then grow back just for them to eat again! I could cut back on feedings! U know... if you go scuba diving/ snorkeling and see a real reef up close and personal.. theres crap like that ALL OVER THE PLACE! Dont get caught up in that "sterility syndrome"... the fact that your captive reef is producing growth of these types of natural food sources is a good sign, IMHO. Could it be a nuisance? Yes. But if you look at ur tank as an ecosystem, its a good thing. It should all balance out. IF you dont have one, now is a good time to buy a tang or two... or a coral beauty. They would keep it in check.

-TJ

 

[sharkdude]

a long spine urchin will graze it down in no time, but they have there own problems, ie knocking stuff over, will graze coralline and other corals once algae is gone. I had one do significant damage to a orange monticap after clearing up a turf alage bloom. I eventually got rid of him.

 

[JeffersonReef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8372012#post8372012 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sharkdude
a long spine urchin will graze it down in no time, but they have there own problems, ie knocking stuff over, will graze coralline and other corals once algae is gone. I had one do significant damage to a orange monticap after clearing up a turf alage bloom. I eventually got rid of him.

Thats good to know. I was thinking about getting one... they look pretty cool. Now... not so much.

 

[firerock]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8370328#post8370328 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tmplge
The firn looks kinda cool actaully. I would think your best bet is to take them out of the tank and scrap it off then find out what is causing the growth and solve that problem as well.

Yeah, we like the firn as well. It is pretty cool looking. Wife has pulled it and it was easy to pull out, nor does it grow at an alarming speed, so now we are just letting it grow.

I have tried scrapping, that didn't work at all. :mad2:

 

[firerock]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8371322#post8371322 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by antjefferson
Get 2 or 3 emerald crabs. They will deal with it! Also, do you have any tangs? Im sure that the tangs would consume that in a matter of hours!

Emerald crabs will eat it? That's great news. Thanks for the info. :thumbsup:

 

[firerock]

SurfOnH20 & antjefferson

Thanks for the assurance on tangs. I used to have a juv. purple tang, but sold it earlier this year because it was stealing food from corals, literally grabbing food from coral's mouth.

Heck, even the clowns steal food from corals now (probably learned from the purple tang), so maybe it is time to add a tang to the shopping list.

 

[firerock]

Thats good to know. I was thinking about getting one... they look pretty cool. Now... not so much.

Same here.....

 

[Frankysreef]

urchins suck... I had one, and it mowed over tons of frags...

Conch's are GREAT, they will eat that stuff... I have one that is going on 5 yrs, huge, and when I have an algae outbreak, he is great for munching on anything. Stays on the bottom of the tank most of the time too.

 

[Crusty Old Shellback]

I've got a bunch of urchins in both of my tanks, including a black long spine urchin. Never had a problem with any of them bothering corals and such. I know that seacrop used to put their zoa frags in a tank full of urchins when they were covered with alage. Next day rocks were clean and zoas were fine.

You say you have no detectable nutriens in your water. That's probably because they have been consumed by the alage. If you get rid of the excess nutrients, the alage will die and go away. If you scrub your rocks in the tank, then the nutriens are just being released back into the tank.

Nusiance alage grow because of excess nutrients in the water, nothing else. They cannot live by light alone, they do no care about the color temp of the light and they don't care about flow.

I've had all kinds of nusiance alage, including red slime, growing in all conditions, high flow to the point that it looked like a sheet blowing in a toranado, calm water, High light to almost no light.

I quit feeding my fish as much and started doing bigger water changes, everything is fine. Also after your tank has been set up for several years, you will notice that it will go thru cycels of alage blooms even though nothing else has changed with your husbandry techneques.

 

[Frankysreef]

strain your frozen food and your algae will go away.

 

[firerock]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8373222#post8373222 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by blown63chevy
You say you have no detectable nutriens in your water. That's probably because they have been consumed by the alage. If you get rid of the excess nutrients, the alage will die and go away. If you scrub your rocks in the tank, then the nutriens are just being released back into the tank.

That's a good point.

 

[firerock]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8373222#post8373222 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by blown63chevy

Also after your tank has been set up for several years, you will notice that it will go thru cycels of alage blooms even though nothing else has changed with your husbandry techneques.

Can you elaborate on this? TIA

 

[firerock]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8373229#post8373229 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Frankysreef
strain your frozen food and your algae will go away.

I haven't feed the tank in weeks. Perhaps that's why it is not spreading faster. :rolleye1:

 

[Crusty Old Shellback]

One of my current tanks has been operational for over 8 years. I use NSW and feed every other day. With nothing else changed in my regeime, I've seen hair alage come and go. I've changed nothing and yet it dissapeared. I have a few spots in the tank that no matter what I do, I almost always have a small patch of hair alage growing there.

Also if you spend some time reading Paul B's threads and some of the things he's noticed in his 35+ year old tank, you will find out that he too has observed the same things. One year you'll have alage, the next year it may be an abduance of a certian pod, the next a certian snail. The ocean has a lot of mysteries that we still don't know about.

On my fairly new 400G tank, I had some extar large pods growing in my skimmer sump one day when I went to clean it. Nothing was in that sump except for the skimmer. Several months later when I took it down, there were no pods to be found in that sump yet they were in the other sump and main tank. But I had an over abduance of baby snails in that sump along with inside my skimmer.

Thses are the types of things that come and go the longer you keep the same system running.

 

[firerock]

Ah, I see. So our tanks goes through "seasonal" changes just like the nature does.

Thanks for the info. :thumbsup:

 

[Paul B]

Blown Chevy is correct. Eventually your tank will go through cycles that may not last as long. In a new tank such as yours, you will get algae cycles sporatically because your bacteria is not exactly up to the task of eliminating all of the waste. A tank cycles for years not just when your nitrite test kit reads zero as most people think. Your algae may also die off very quickly too thats why you will read of all sorts of animals that will eliminate it in a day, there is no such animal. A fish has a stomach about as large as his eye, how much algae do you think will fit in there?
A real reef in the sea is different. There you will see very little algae because of the abundance of 8" long fish like tangs and hourds of urchins. If 400 8" tangs decended on your tank they would undoubtably eat all the algae in a few seconds but they then poop in the sea which has square miles of water most of which is too dark and deep for algae to grow. Your tank is different, the fish poop in there and do you know what tang poop is made of? Algae fertilizer. You can't depend on animals to eliminate a large algae bloom. (yours is not too bad, so tangs may help) They will keep it from growing once it is gone but they will not help much with a big hair algae problem. As a matter of fact, it will die on it's own the minute it exhausts the nutrients. But of course if you leave the dead algae in there it will grow again forever.
There is an answer though. If you can let the algae grow in your water but not in your tank and harvest it occasionally you will eliminate it from your tank. You can use a lighted refugium or as I do by means of a lighted trough. The idea is to harvest the algae out of the tank.
If you don't think I know about algae look at my reef in the early eightees. The bottom picture is an algae cycle. It disappeared as I knew it would.
I do have snails, sea hares, and tangs but only because I like them, not that I think they will eat all that algae.
Have a great day,
Paul
Now you can go out and buy all the animals that you think will eat all the algae.