I have just had it!

[johnnstacy]

Originally posted by goodblasson
Hey man, I hate to say it but, I told you so. Those emerald crabs will eat that algae. Good luck I hope this solves your problem.

I'm not sold on this yet. I found one dead at the bottom of the main tank today. I have no green hair algae for them to eat in there and I have yet to see one on the brown hair. I heard that you can't really kill a crab with starvation but........

[johnnstacy]

Originally posted by wentreefgirl
Throw in a yellow tang and youll be doing great.

I know you have mentioned that yellow tang before...

I have been told they are kind of mean to other fish. I don't know. I'm going to try this urchin and if that doesn't work, the yellow tang it is......

[KingsX]

It seems to me, as long as I put the Tang in last it works better.. I have had the common yellow tang and they can kind of be a bully, I have a sailfin tang and he is worse I think, If I want to add another fish, he has to come out for a month, he just came back into the main tank from a month on vacation. I re-aranged everything, added 5 new fish, let them get comfy for a month, tossed him in and he's back to being a total jerk. He's already put a slash mark on the biggest green chromis..

Just my experience with tangs, every fish has it's own personality. Maybe you'll get lucky..

Enjoy the real winter in Eastern Wa. Good Luck..

[wentreefgirl]

I dont know about that. I have 3 fish. A purple damsel, a bicolor angel and the yellow tang. I got the tang second. He just goes about his busniss. Actually kinda side by side with the angel as they both are algae eaters.

[hipertec]

I dont know about the yellow tang. I have one and he does eat algae but not to the extent of getting rid of the problem.

I am still battling this problem and I would say that the best for me was adding an extra skimmer (CPR2 - I already have a Euroreef 6-2), the phos reactor, manual removal, and continual water changes.

And my cleanup crew consists of:
2 Emerald Crabs
8 Turbo Snails
150 Nausis snails (something like that)
1 Lawnmower blenny ...never see him eat but still healthy
1 short spine urchin
1 long spine urchin
1 sand shifting star
had a sea hare...didnt do anything

Has anyone tried the Lettuce Nbranch?

[fittdog8848]

I agree Yellow tangs ( like everything in the hobby) are a 50/50 chance of them eating algae. I ahve had one for 4 years and he only eats grape caulerpa. I have green hair in my main tank but it is do to me starting to add iodine for my softies. ( which by the way has made them look incredible)....Jonh I too put my rock in the fug and the algeae goes away. I DO NOT have any smails, crabs or anythin in my sump. The reason IMO the algae goes away is because it is in direct competition with my MACRO. As soon as I put the cleaned rocks back into the tank the hair comes back. Just my .02 but I would keep it up. You will win and then it will come back and then you will win and then it will come back.................wentree NICE TANK!

[Loralie]

Try a foxface, I recieved a "colony" of candycane from a fellow reefer. The problem you couldn't find the coral because it was covered in hair algea. I put it in the tank and the faoxface had it clean in less than 24hrs

[hipertec]

anyone got a foxface I can borrow in Los Angeles/Inland Empire?

[moses13]

My foxface does not eat hair algae.

[hipertec]

thats what Im afraid of..having a faxface that will not touch the HA, just like my Yellow Tang.

[johnnstacy]

The foxface didn't eat any of this brown turf algae either.

[moses13]

Any update on your progress?

[johnnstacy]

In fact yes, I do have an update. I think I mentioned the sea hare died. Last week I bought a baby yellow tang that has no interest in brown turf algae. He does pick at the rock but he is so small that I wouldn't be able to tell what he is eating anyway. I worry to about his size. He looks kind of fragile so in pity, I have been supplementing nori instead of forcing him to fee off the rock.
I did have a surprise yesterday when I spotted this huge emerald crab in the tank. I had put 3 of them in but it wasn't even 2 months ago. This guy is probably about 1 1/2". That is large for a crab. But I spotted him late yesterday eating that brown hair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I have heard that you are not supposed to keep large emeralds as they will start going after larger prey but this guys seems to be behaving himself for the time being. The brown turf continues to spread but not at an alarming rate now. I have maintainted a ph of 8.2 to 8.4 and that has seemed to slow it down a little bit. Hopefully I will start gaining ground soon. I was considering a wire brush but I think it would require siphoning at the same time or else I may get a lot of free floating stuff that will lodge and grow somewhere else.
Until next time..................

[wentreefgirl]

Thanks, keep us updated. Great on the emerald. But if you start to see stuff missing, be aware.

[compfreak311]

Hi there:
I was looking for a thread that contained some info on this thick brown hair algae I have been trying to deal with, and now i found it. Seems to me that lots of different things have been tried with an unaccurate affect. I just started into the hobby about 4 months ago with a 55 gallon 4'x1'x2'. I purchesd fiji rock from a whole saler in texas and cycled with the rock only and a N.O. 40watt 50/50 for 6 hours a day. Once the cylce was finished i bought snails, sandsifting stars, a yellow tang and a cleaner shrimp. The first algea break out was light brown algae that has turned into a really course brown hair over time that the snails and tang wont eat. I have been running carbon, cleaning prefilters daily, and siphoning weekly with water changes and its still on the back wall and rocks. The stars i bought did manage to keep it off the sand bed. I though thought that it might be the rock that i bought as well just because I got it for pretty cheap ($2.75) a pound. It seams that the rock is the only underlying factor in everyones converstion on this thread.
Thats just my 2 cents.

[dufferdan]

What kind of salt mix are you using? The reason I ask is about a year ago I switched to Oceanic and a month later started seeing this kind of algea bloom. At that time there were a number of thread started complaining about Oceanic salt being the cause for some people for algea blooms. I had just swtich to BB as well with clean rocks.
I'm not sure if it was bad salt or not but I didn't want to chance it so I switched back to IO (just recently I'm trying Kent).
The brown algea started clearing up.
Just a thought.

[Alaskan Reefer]

Is the urchin in yet? Mine started about the size of a small peach, and is now about the size of a medium honeydew. A couple of notes -- my coralline growth got stronger once I added the urchin. Yes, he eats the hell out of it (very nice for the back glass), but in doing so sends spores everywhere and it just comes back stronger. Secondly, you will only need to get spined once to realize how important it is to look for them before sticking your hands in -- mine managed to get 8 barbs into me across my knuckles one day when I wasn't looking, and I could only describe the feeling as 8 wasp stings all in a row. Took two days for the swelling to completely subside, and of course there's the fun of digging barbs out of your swollen hand.

They're damn good at eating algae, and very interesting to boot.

Also, regarding emerald crabs, they can get pretty big. I had one in my 75 that I couldn't find after a couple of years. When I upgraded to the 125 I found him -- in the bottom of my Remora Pro. His carapace was about the size of a silver dollar and including legs he was about 5" in diameter. Scared the hell out of me when I dumped the skimmer water into the utility sink. Easily could have taken out a small fish and definitely any snails he felt he needed to eat. I can attest to the fact, though, that they eat the hell out of hair algae. No question in my mind...

Good luck!

[cdraughon]

I had a red turf algae problem that I battled for months. I finally put two long spine urchins in my 55 and within a month, it was 99% clean. I'm going to remove one soon.

As for the emerald crab - I have one that will be evacuated when I upgrade my tank. He is about 1 1/2" and believed to be the murderer of my maxima clam. Beware.

[johnnstacy]

Fortunately I have no clams to worry about. Bought 3 more emerald crabs today in hope of bombarding the tank and taking out this algae. The LFS did have a black spine urchin but I just couldn't buy it. The thing was large. With the spines it was about half the size of a basketball. I don't want that thing in my tank. I bought a royal urchin instead just to see if it will do anything. We'll see what happens. I'm heading to Bucharest for 5 days next week so we will see what it looks like when I get back.

[GRREEF]

tagging along... I have a pincushion and it is a hog.

[johnnstacy]

While I don't see the emeralds actively seeking out this brown hair, they are eating something off the rock. The brown hair still has a foothold and continues to spread but I remain hopeful. The royal urchin......not sure what to say. Since you can't really see them eat, it's hard to know what it's doing. Since I'm bare bottom, he has managed to pick up a couple of crabs and snails to cover himself with. This wouldn't be a big deal but now those inhabitants are dead and hanging out of their shells.

[GRREEF]

is a Royal the same thing as a Pin Cushion? I just manually take the snails off of him. Never saw anything die because he picked them up though.

He did pick up a crab once....once. (Johnny Dangerously)

Also, I can see where he eats. He mows down any "film" or stubs of GHA left by other inhabitants. He won't eat the long stuff though. But I don't have any long algae left in my tank now.

[Jfoster33702]

Have you noticed and dead inverts? I ask because I've had some wierd algae for a while and the last time I introduced snails/hermits, they all seemed to die within a week or two.

[goodblasson]

So how are those Emerald Crabs doing???

[BRI7969]

any up date?