What Would You Do?

[chatyak]

Clean up crew for a 125 display, 200ish total volume system.

Let's hear it.

Currently I have 10 or so red leg hermits
10 or so astrea snails
5 nassarius snails or so

Having algae problems and am working on exporting nurtrients with gfo, skimmer, and chaeto, but was thinking of adding turbo snails. Do these guys help out with hair algae or little bits of brown dinoflagellates?

 

[KyleO]

Yes, Turbos will help you out but you have to keep the hair algae short or they will go around.

 

[chatyak]

How short is short? Here is the tank a couple days ago (tore down for fish qt)

 

[JEFFR259]

IMO, some of the algae in the center and bottom middle is too long for Turbos. I'd still get some, but also consider a Lawn Mower Blenny or a Tang for that stuff.

Inverts (snails) will NOT help with Dinoflagellates. Dinos are actually highly poisonous to snails once the outbreak gets bad enough.

 

[JEFFR259]

Are the CUC #'s you listed in your opening post the current population in the tank or the amounts you're considering putting in there?

You can put more than that if you want! I would up the Turbo quantity and the Nassarius #'s as well.

In my 120, I have about 20-25 Nassarius and about 20-30 Turbos.

 

[JEFFR259]

Sorry, 3rd post, I'm not awake yet...

On second thought, I wouldn't put more than 5 or so Nassarius snails in there as there's not much sandbed area for them to patrol.

 

[jbird69]

lawnmower blennies wont eat hair algae. Tangs will...sometimes. Its a crapshoot if the tang you get will eat it or not. It would help if you could get one that is visibly already eating HA. Some emerald crabs eat it. Toothbrushes definately eat it

 

[blennymower]

Get a UV sterilizer

 

[MileHighFish]

I have had good luck with emerald crabs taking care of hair algae.

 

[chatyak]

Thanks for all the input fellas.

The CUC I listed is what I currently have (give or take a few). I haven't had a snail die... well just one or two now I think of it, not sure due to age or dinos... but the picture is actually not as bad as it was... after pumping up the GFO and manually ripping out a lot of the HA it has resided.. just have some dying HA now with some dinos taking over as the HA dies but those seem to be drying up and going away too.

I'm going to go look for 5 turbos today.

 

[chatyak]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14709205#post14709205 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by JEFFR259
Sorry, 3rd post, I'm not awake yet...

On second thought, I wouldn't put more than 5 or so Nassarius snails in there as there's not much sandbed area for them to patrol.

Well, I'm not sure on the sand bed area? There is a ton of room when the rocks are arranged correctly, it may just be the picture

 

[chatyak]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14710373#post14710373 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MileHighFish
I have had good luck with emerald crabs taking care of hair algae.

I noticed my bubble algae issues went away considerably... not sure if it was the GFO or the emerald crab but during acclimation I put a couple bubble algaes into the bucket and I saw the crab take hold