Nightmare Red Cotton Algae: Took over my tank

Thank heavens I found this thread. A few days ago I was in the "look what a pretty red fuzzy macroalgae hitchhiker" stage. I was going to let it grow because I thought it looked good. After reading this thread I immediately went to my tank and removed every speck, with extreme prejudice. I feel as though I have dodged a bullet.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9049623#post9049623 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by KH971
It is all intertwined in my refugium on my calupera prolifera. Mexican turbos cannot knock down the prolifera and get it, how do I get rid of this nightmare? It is mostly in my refugium and if I found a rouge crab I would throw him in, because he can't go anywhere.
Click to expand...
Did you try the mexican turbo in your fuge anyways. I had the same problem in fuge only and tried adding two. They ate it all right out of my mess of macro.
 
They would not get on my prolifera and eat it off. The Turbos ate it from my main tank except where they could not reach it. My fuge is slam full of the stuff. i try to siphon off as much as i can when I do a water change. Would an urchin eat it?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9119258#post9119258 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by KH971
They would not get on my prolifera and eat it off. The Turbos ate it from my main tank except where they could not reach it. My fuge is slam full of the stuff. i try to siphon off as much as i can when I do a water change. Would an urchin eat it?
Click to expand...
I doubt it I have a pencil urchin in my fuge he never really seemed to touch it.
 
Well it's nice to know I am not alone. Such a familiar story. The stuff started off as a single ball about the size of an orange and I thought it looked neat.......O MY GOD.

Now my tank is in the same shape as the guy who started the thread.

I was at SMILLER's house picking up corals last week and noticed he had this algae and he told me about the mexican turbo's.

I just put in 30 of them yesterday. I think I will buy another 70. Good grief this stuff is frustrating.

BTW if you put a wad of it directly under pure actinic it fluoresces like an orange highlighter. The most amazing orange color I have ever seen.

Anyone want to buy some hot orange algae. $5 per cup. Unlimited supply.... :lol:
 
Ok I read the part about not needing so many. I will see what my HERD O' 30 Mexican turbo's can do in the next 3 weeks in my 550 reef full of the "RED SCARE"

Zebra turbo's do not touch the stuff. I have the really big ones and almost didn't realize the difference.

BTW this stuff grows just about anywhere except areas with Zero light.

It seems to bleach out when it gets hit with really high intensity light but underneath the bleached surface is happy red cotton.
 
I tried starving the tank but this thing takes very little to grow. It would begin to die out by becoming pale but it would bounce back with a nice vibrant red as soon as I fed the tank or dosed it with even a small amount of aminoacids. I introduced mexican turbo snails and they took care of it but not entirely. What defnitely killed it was when I accidently introduced a sprrig of caulerpa in my tank about 3 weeks back. Since then I've been travelling and have had very little time to maintain the tank and now the caulerpa (racemosa) has completely swamped the tank, the red stuff is gone.
 
I was able to get rid of it by packing my refugium with chaeto and manually picking out the red stuff. As nitrates went down so did the red stuff. Prior to that I had just a smallish ball of chaeto. But after filling it up with chaeto, now it grows like crazy. I have to pull a huge amount every week.
 
Where you ever able to get rid of this stuff??? I think I have it slowly growing on all of my rocks and nothing stops its slow onslaught. It grows in very high flow. My display has about a 90X turnover rate. My phosphates are undetectable. I have a deltec ap600 on my 70 gallon system and I use GFO as well. My phosphates are undetectable with a Salifert test. It's this brown/black fuzzy turf algae that just slowly creeps and creeps over everything. It's not this red nightmare algae stuff, it's worse since it literally clings to the surfaces of the rocks. It's also a little fuzzy on the surface.

It looks a little like the picture you posted only mine is not as fluffy and it's a little browner/darker.

Anybody have any idea how I can save my tank from this stuff?

Peace,
John

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7352858#post7352858 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by wharfrat48
Add me to the list too. Very greatful to have found this thread. Had a bunch in my fuge and the turbos kicked it's azz in no time. I am having another issue in my main tank, but I don't think it's the same algae. I posted a separate thread, but here is a pic to see if any of you have any ideas about what it is.

Thanks-- Rich



54215fuzz0001.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Army green, thanks for the info... so you had more of what wharfrat is talking about? I mean, my stuff is definitely not the red nightmare algae... it's this dark gray/black crap with a slight fuzz on top.

I'll try the true mexican turbo snails. I really hope they work because I'm going out of my mind! :)

Peace,
John
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8140782#post8140782 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by lilprincess
Does anyone think this looks like Red Cotton Algae?

Redalgae.jpg
Click to expand...

This crap is taking over my tank... let me know if you have any luck getting rid of it.
 
Do you have any tangs.... I bet a tang would destroy that stuff. It looks a little bit like what I had before I got a tang. They eat that stuff up!

Peace,
John
 
I have this stuff all over my tank until i picked up a rabbit fish :) he cleaned house and now there is none all gone try it you will love what they can do.


Michael
 
rufio173- I'd wager that it's probably the same type of stuff. Those mexican turbo's eat a wide variety. If they don't do the trick, you might have to resort to a certain kind of urchin (name escapes me ATM) but they'll eat your coralline algae too and you'll wind up with white rocks. Obviously, when you put the mexican turbo snails in the tank, get as much of the stuff out by hand as possible so the snails have a better chance of getting ahead of the algae's growth rate.
 
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