red furry algae

mnmsea

New member
I have had my tank set up for about 16 months. I had bought some live rock and some had a dark red dense algae (really stuck on - not cyano!). In the 18 months it is getting a bit out of control and has spread to other rocks. how do you get rid of a nuisance algae that can't easily be pulled off?:(
 
Is it red course hair like? My tank was overtaken with it, I bought a few Mexican turbo's and it was all gone within about 2 weeks
 
Yea, it sounds like red turf algae, I too have had great luck with Mexican turbo's eating it. I rotate one snail between the two tanks that have it. (( the snail would starve in my 29 if I didn't move it back to my 75 ))
 
It is red and coarse - Is the mexican turbo sail really big? I think we had them once and they all died (a different tank)- so, do they only eat this algae and a 75 gallon tank only needs one or two? What else do they eat?


thanks for the help!
 
I had a real bad outbreak of Red Wirery Algae. At first I thought wow pretty cool good looking Algae. Of course I left it and it spread like wildfire.

After I researched it, I found many people have had to take their tanks down; because, they couldn't get it under control. Others swear by Large Mexican Turbos and only authentic Mexican Turbos from the gulf are the ones that will eat it. Mine didn't seem to touch the Red Wirey Algae, but they've really kept any hair algae, red bubble, brown turf, and diatoms on the glass in check; so it wasn't a complete failure.

I tried an urchin but he kept knocking corals over and putting small pieces of algae on his back, while only seeming to rasp at the coraline algae. I decided to pull the Urchin due too the bulldozing.

I just said the hell with it and I decided to aggresively pull the Red Algae out by hand whenever it started to create dense mats, Very hard to get out little patches, but; when it has a little size you can work off large chunks.

The problem with this many people said is that when you remove it, little pieces drift all over the tank causing the algae to spread. However; since the algae was pretty much on every rock in my tank, I really didn't think it'd make any difference anyways.

Then on the philosophy of forcing algaes to compete for nutrients I added a small hang on back refugium with the green spaggeti type alge chaeto. The Chaeto grew like crazy at first meaning I had too many nutrients, even though a couple of test kits consistently read near zero phosphates, and nitrates.

Moral of the story is, don't trust test kits; instead trust clean water (I now change 10% a week), Only use RO/DI for make up water, soak frozen foods in cold ro water, improving skimming, (larger pump) add competition (chaeto) and be persistant. At least thats how I beat the RED WIRE ALGAE.

The thing is not only have I controlled this Red Wire Algae, I've also got a cleaner tank, with corals that have colored up and have starting growing real fast, even too fast for me. Fish that seem happier. And an overall healthier looking tank.
:D So good luck it can be beat. Cheers.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13975965#post13975965 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mnmsea
It is red and coarse - Is the mexican turbo sail really big? I think we had them once and they all died (a different tank)- so, do they only eat this algae and a 75 gallon tank only needs one or two? What else do they eat?


thanks for the help!

They are fairly large -- for a snail. Mine right now is about the size of a golf ball.

I am shocked at how fast it eats that stuff. I had a decent amount of it in my 29, two days after putting it in there it is all gone.
 
Ive had the same thing. It took over Half my rock in 1 week. It woulnd not go away. Water was fine. It wasnt hurting anything and was adding color to my brown rock. Then a nice purple coralline algae took over everywhere the red stuff was. LFS said it wasnt feeding on the red algae, and it was probably due to lighting and other factors that they where just growing in the same place. Either way, My rock went from brown to red to purple. It doesnt appear the two can grow together on the same surface.
My thought, If you dont have any rock w/coralline, add a couple and add purple up. This should cause the purple stuff to take over and hopefully remove the red hair algae without damaging your rock.
With that said, this is not based on facts, and might not work for you. I only mentioned it because it worked for me, and I am hoping someone with more knowledge will comment on the situation. Thanks to all here at Reef Central. I will try to post a picture.
http://www.bebo.com/PhotoAlbumBig.j...01&PhotoAlbumId=9663336875&PhotoId=9663410695
 
here is a picture...

When really looking again and taking pictures, I found a tiny bubble algae...I am ready to put this tank out on the curb!
118699DSCN2866.jpg
 
here is a picture...

When really looking again and taking pictures, I found a tiny bubble algae...I am ready to put this tank out on the curb!
118699DSCN2866.jpg
 
I've got some fluorescent red [coraline? - looks like coraline anyway] algae in my tank on one of my rocks. It looks awesome with just the actinics on. I hope it spreads.
 
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