trimming back bryopsis = more palatability for hermits?

[morty]

Im not advocating growing bryopsis. Bryopsis bad. BUT, I've had a few tufts pop up here and there, and a busy schedule kept me from getting at them. It spread a little. in fact, some of the strands/tufts got pretty long. The clean up crew wanted nothing to do with them. Then I did the requisite 3-4 hour tank cleaning and plucked the hair algae back as much as possible. (btw - using a short piece of thin acrylic tubing plugged into an air hose siphon works great for trimming hair algae -- just suck up a tuft, then put your finger over then end to pinch it off short. I'm embarrassed to know this.)

Afterward, there was still a lot of fuzzy areas left on the rock with 1/4" to 1/2" algae on it. Early on, I was bummed that I had let it go that far, because I thought that only meant another rock that now had to be "weeded" every time I did a water change/cleaning. My experience from older tanks made me think that I now had a problem that was going to be chronic.

However, many of these fuzzy rocks became spotless, almost overnight. The cleanup crew was going after them big time after they'd been trimmed. Where there had been a lot of hair algae now looked like new rock. But, some areas that weren't eaten became longer again, and the cleanup crew wasn't interested in them until they were trimmed short again.

So the question is, is this common? I'm wondering if "mature" tufts of bryopsis are known to produce some kind of chemical that acts as a natural defense, and trimming them back somehow makes them edible, or palatable to grazers? Or is it more of a strand size issue -- hermits and other grazers only like macaroni, not spaghetti, even though they're both pasta.

[morty]

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