i brought up the algae situation at the last meeting, and i had my lights off for 3 days [3/17-3/18] and 1 fewer hour every day, which helped, for a week. look at this poor critter, who’s still in bloom, but…
how should i clean him?
can i turn the lights off again?
there’s a lotta flow right on his, as that’s what these guys need, right??
buy a lawnmower blennie [can it go in with my starry?]
and there’s plenty more green algae plenty of other placed too, longer and shorter.
thanks
That looks like hair algae on the gorgonian. I have not found a way to get rid of mine but I have heard that AlgaeFix helps to cure it.
Hae you tried pulling it off?
in the water, it’s really difficult b/c as much as i pull off, that’s how much slips out from between my fingers, and ends up back on him/her.
anybody know if it could be toothbrushed in a pail of tank water, or would a soft toothbrush bother the skin. it’s a fairly thin gorgo.
I would think the agitation will lead to breaking the coral
so what would you do, al? fully realizing that most people doing tanks for years have solved their algae prob.
My :TWOCENTS
For the algae, I personally would use the lights out thing as a last resort, or to get ahead of the algae, or to finally finish off the algae. I would rip out as much as you can and get another snail or two and see if they can keep it at bay or start to knock it down. If they can knock it down just wait it out or help it along by pulling out as much as you can when you want. Once its almost all gone you could try to do a lights out to fully wipe it out or reduce your feeding even more for a few days to help drive it off. I’m still dealing with hair algae myself, but it is at bay and I really need to get in there and pull it out if the clown would let me…which he won’t.
For the gorgonian, can you put a snail on him? A snail might be the ‘softest’ way to get the algae off. Do you have any small snails that won’t destroy it climbing on it?
Those are the deep water gorgonians that aren’t photosythetic so the algae shouldn’t really be hurting it to much IMO as long as its polyps can come out and still get food. Being a deep water gorgonian, I’d be careful about taking it out of the water as they shouldn’t experience that in the wild so they might not take it very well.
yowza! that’s the kind of advice i wanted: knowledge and backup info.
i have lots of snails who ignore it. i used turbo snails from fishbowl for algae and still have one left, but theyre too heavyfor this guy. what kinda snails deal with this junk?
Removing the light will not help. The hair algae will still be growing long after the corals have died. I had some in a bucket of bleach that hung on for 2 weeks.
There are some really tiny snail (forget the name reef n ale had them) that would work perfectly. Maybe someone will remember what he had. I sent him an email. Also a small sea hare - Dolabella auricularia would do a great job. DR Mac usually has them in
I saw a small (blue spot) sea hare at DPA, I think they are like $20. I’ve heard sea hares really mow through the stuff, but I haven’t tried one myself yet.
Yea my snails seem to ignore the HA (hair algae), but if you pluck them off the glass and stick them on it they will usually munch on it a bit. If your glass is clean they’ll have to get their algae fix elsewhere.
First I wouldn’t recommend buying this species again. You would be the only person I know who has bought it and kept it alive in captivity. This should be kept in the dark if at all possible as it often gets covered in algae.
I’m sorry I have a bad memory, but what size tank do you have again? If your tank is large enough to handle a full grown rabbit fish and or tang you may consider purchasing one.(not a full grown one, but what ever size you want. Just a good idea to be responsible and buy something you will be able to keep.) You may also look into purchasing Julian Sprung’s book on algae which lists in it animals that will help you illuminate different types of algae. One other option like Ian mentioned may be sea hairs. Though I don’t know how long the different species of sea hairs will last in the long run, but perhaps it would help give this coral a little longer to live.(not sea hairs often end up in return pumps and power heads if small and large ones often starve unless fed a proper diet)
If you could take a movie of the animal so we can see what kind of flow is hitting it.(perhaps put some food in at the same time so we can see how fast it moves by) What type of foods are you feeding it? Also how is this coral mounted? It should not be buried in the sand as this will begin to rot the flesh from the base working its way up.
Do you have a sump hooked up to the tank with out a light on it? Mounting it down there as long as there is not many micro bulbs and no risk of getting sucked in the input of a pump may be an option to get it out of the light and keep it alive.
I would not do a tang as they rip algae off the rocks when they eat and would break the Fragile coral into pieces.
+1 on the sea hare
Well, something is still feeding the hair algae. it needs light, nitrates and phosphate. i suppose the rest of the tank has a lot of hair algae too? the trick is to break its food chain. eliminate one of the 3 needs. Phosphate might be the easiest with a good dose of GFO to absorb the phosphate. and basic tank cleaning will remove a continuing supply. like if you have sand. vacuum the sand to remove the dirt, fluff and detritis. that always keeps breaking down releasing nutrients for it. blow the rock off with a power head and filter the cloud out with filter floss, or a HOB filter. I use a Mag HOT.
Ken is right the algae is growing off of something, but at the same time even a system with 0 detectable Nitrates and 0 detectable Phosphates will grow a little algae. Some sort of clean up crew is always helpful.
Al I’d say there is a risk the tank might hurt the coral a tiny bit pecking the algae off, but if there is a good bit of hair algae growing in the tank he needs something to remove it. He could purchase a ton of tiny little clean up inverts which would out grow the tank, fight with each other, may eat everything and then starve or he could possibly just purchase one fish. In coral propagation many people just use a couple of fish and 0 inverts. Surgeonfish and rabbit fish are awesome at mowing down a lot of different algae. It is just what they do. If he ends up with 0 hair algae in the tank then that type of algae will no longer over grow any of his corals.
At least that is my take on things.
trying to answer all the issues brought up: here goes
reading about sea hares leads me to conclude that they will starve and possibly ruin tank after eating the algae.
gorgo has a great deal of flow on it, and is not buried in sand, it’s jammed into a rock, which is why it could be moved. my sump has a light and lots of macros and chaeto.
supplementing feeding the rest of the tank with marine snow, kent’s phytoplex, and a live phytoblend once or twice a week that i got from someone online at reef central. i feed the tank every other day and have 2 of my lights on from 11-9:30, with the other 4 on 1 1/2 hours less [nova extreme], but tank does get some extra sun morning and evening.
i don’t want a tang, maybe a rabbit fish, but i’d rather not.
tank is a 65 gal.
i got gorgo at tfp and no one there said keep in the dark or that it was deepwater species. i guess it’s mostly my fault on that front.
"Phosphate might be the easiest with a good dose of GFO to absorb the phosphate. " what is GFO, ken?
itested water on saturday and had no issues anywhere 8.2 ph 9.5 kh 0 amm, nitrIAtes, phosphates, 79deg and a reading of 550 CAlcium [is this too high, as ive only tested it once before?] right after a 15 gal water change.
i have lots of snails and a few hermits in my CUC.
i am gonna feed less, and will try a movie after work.
and i do thank everyone who’s offering help. thanks a great deal. i appreciate it. i love this site!
[quote=“moliken, post:16, topic:1444”]
trying to answer all the issues brought up: here goes
reading about sea hares leads me to conclude that they will starve and possibly ruin tank after eating the algae.
i don’t want a tang, maybe a rabbit fish, but i’d rather not.
tank is a 65 gal.[/quote]
A dwarf seahair is the size of a snail without a snail (about one inch). If you’re looking at the larger seahairs, the are the size of your hand, and will starve in your tank(4"). Rabbitfish get big, Tangs will bite at coral while trying to get to algaes. The other thing to consider is, if this is your three month old tank some of this is just par for the course. Your tank will cycle in 45 days or so from the offset, but takes much l,onger to fully mature. Nuisance algae blooms are part of that maturation. Most people get some kind of blowup in the first six months.
well i have never had any algea problems so i cant speak from experiance but will say that it must have been introduced to tank somehow. have brought it in on some rock would be my guess. sorry to hear it has been spreading paul, thought you might have cured it last week.
Tangs don’t peck they tear it off when it is abundant. If it is in the rocks and sparse they peck. I have seen my hippo and yellow rip large areas of algae to pieces. They would tear that coral apart.I also have not seen tangs go after hair algae. They do eat algae but They never seemed to touch the hair algae. And as for the argument that a CUC will out grow the tank? Will the tang not grow also?