Short red hair algae

[JeF4y]

Been battling this for a while now. Seems like we're slowly winning but I'm not 100% sure. Suggestions are appreciated, or identification if it's not simple hair algae.

It is all about 1/4" tall, and it's all over the place. It doesn't grow any longer anywhere. The blenny eats what he can, and the cleanup crew is helping but I'd sure like to get rid of this crud.

Tank is a 60 cube with a 15 gal sump.
Livestock - 2 medium sized clowns, 1 flame angel, 1 mandarin, 1 lawnmower blenny.
CUC = 1 cleaner shrimp, 20 or so snails of assorted types, 4 hermit crabs and literally a few hundred VERY small (just popped up out of nowhere) snails that only come out at night.

The parms are great and stable. No detectable nitrates/phosphates, calcium = 420, DKH = 11, Magnesium = 1280. Run chaeto in the sump, have added more. Run phosban and carbon in a canister filter (media changed & filter cleaned bi-weekly). Bi-weekly water changes 15 gal (RO/DI 0 TDS)

My light cycle had been running 11.5 hours (daylights were 9.5 hrs) total. I just dropped back to 10.5 hrs total (daylights down to 8.5 hrs).

Feeding is light. maybe 20 pellets daily except days when we feed frozen. We feed Rods sparingly twice a week, and spotfeed corals (suns, acans, torch, trumpet) around 1 1/2 cubes of mysis 2x per week.

Any other recommendations other than continue and wait? Any identification on this??

Sorry for the large pic, I wanted to preserve quality of it so someone could identify it.

[z34fiend]

what kind of flow do you have?

[JeF4y]

Ah yes. the one thing I forgot to add..

We have 2 Koralia-3's (one left, one right, switched every 12 hours so only 1 is on at a time), 1 Koralia 1 on 24x7, The return pump (Maxijet 1800 5' head) and the Eheim pro 3e (- 3.5' head).

In all, the turnover is around 1875 GPH. ~30x/hr

We are going to get an MP-40W soon, but it's not in the cards at this second.

I could turn on the other K3 without blasting the heck out of the tank but wonder if it's too much for the fish if they're both on constantly.

[kretzkiller]

source: http://www.3reef.com/forums/algae/ul...ead-58657.html

Gelidium:



Scientific Description: Species in this genus, (and the similar Coelthrix sp. which looks similar but is purple-sort of), cling to the rock, and spread from a runner. The branches do not get tall, and they are often found with hobbyist frags.

Manual Removal - Difficult. Macros that have fragile runners and creep along the rock are the hardest to manually remove. Do the best you can.

Clean Up Crew- Emerald Crabs, urchins, sea hares, large turbos, shore shrimp. Small emerald crabs would be my first choice if it took hold in a narrow crevice b/c they could reach it.

Why it happened - You didn't quarantine, and you have available nutrients for it.

Starving it out - Use a phosban reactor or a macro like chaeto to take down phosphate. If you have a nitrate problem too, you can add more live rock or rubble to the tank, do some more wcs, add macro, add dsb, etc...

John's Tip - Don't pass on frags with this stuff, don't put one in your tank. This algae has become extremely common on hobbyist traded frags, every time you add a coral or a rock look for it from now on. If you have it just keep at it, it takes a while but it can be beat back, at least you don't have byropsis.

[kretzkiller]

my personal experience is with tuxedo and other short spined urchins. they seem to do the most damage and can do a lot of cleaning in a short time. Keep at it and it will go away.

[JeF4y]

Thanks for the info. Very helpful. We were looking at urchins, just need to find one local as shipping to WI in the winter is pretty dicey.

[kretzkiller]

agreed, I have bought both a blue tuxedo ($25) and pink short spine ($9) locally. They both do wonders; however, the blue tuxedo is much prettier to look at

[JeF4y]

Question on the Urchins.

Do they move a lot of rock? My rock pile isn't set in stone, it's held by gravity. Nothing is real precarious, but I don't want anything falling

[brdracing]

I got 6 new big turbo snails and it took it out in a week

[kretzkiller]

Given the rock is heaving and large enough the urchins will glide over them. They will pickup quite a lot of empty shells and such from your tank though. They have sticky tenticles that they use to move around.

[kretzkiller]

btw, that's not my photo

[JeF4y]

Thanks. Yeah, I've seen them with Zoa's stuck to their backs. Pretty funny actually.