Algae problem overcome-ed

[finind]

About 1 year back, hair algae problem started in my tank and was having hard time battling

Astro snails and hermit crabs could only do a half-hearted job

slowly these cleaning crews died and I also giving up. And the hair algae also spread to most of the rocks and even on the glass.

one month ago I decided to give another try and got a few Turbo snails and 1 urchin from Ah Beng, plus a small snail from aquamarin.

Miracle happened.These guys managed to cleaned up most of the algae and now my tank has a much tidy look with the algae down to an acceptable level.

Luckily the urchin did not attack my coralline algae ... for now.

In the picture with the hermit crab, the rock on the right was later cover with short green algae. Somehow the cleaning crews love it .. this rock was first to be cleaned up.

 

 

[JMW]

That's great news! Hair algae is annoying to clear, good to know your CUC did the job.

did you manage to identify the cause of the algae? Was it caused by high nutrients?

[finind]

I think I really is lazy

many times wanted to measure the phosphate also never do it

just tried to reduce the light on period.

I only "target" feed 1 flame goby a few small round ball dry fish food once everyday

but I guess is best to have these cleaning crew around to keep the algae in check round the clock

 

[finind]

The hermit crab is cute and beautiful

but it likes to carve .. yes, carve, on the branch of the frogspawn ... and the cut is deep till the branch turn very weak and break easily

so cannot get more of it to help with the cleaning

[finind]

to those who are desperate with hair algae... try the urchin .

[tuajia]

Agree, urchin is awesome but one bad thing is that it eats coralline algae as well. Also he knocked down a few frags but ok lah, no big deal

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[kohanson]

1 bad thing about urchin is they may eat into your silicon. Other than that, they clean really deep into the rocks and make it really clean.

[finind]

eat into silicon? ... how how how?

clean really deep is very true

[Lenny]

I have 1 blue tux and 1 pin cushion urchin and they really don't care much for my hair algae unfortunately.

They focus more on the shorter strand algae and coraline. But that's ok for me still cause my hair algae isn't all that bad.

So far the silicon is fine in my tank.

[Harlequinmania]

Sailfin tang and fox face is a good algae cleaner as well. 

[finind]

nano tank,maybe not suitable these fishes

[finind]

if I want to keep the urchin in the sump... since the algae is now under control, what should I feed it with?

[tuajia]

Can feed it with nori. Soak the nori until it sinks then put in a isolation box and put the urchin inside so it can find it easily.

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[tuajia]

Forgot to mention, make sure it's plain nori for cooking and not the seasoned one for snacks!

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[kohanson]

not that serious actually. They only eaten very small area of my silicon and I can see abit jagged. They even eat into my caribsea Life Rocks' purple coating and now, some of the parts are white. Haha.

[kohanson]

20 hours ago, tuajia said:

Forgot to mention, make sure it's plain nori for cooking and not the seasoned one for snacks!

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Any side effects if fed with the seasoned ones?

[finind]

2 hours ago, kohanson said:

Any side effects if fed with the seasoned ones?

ha, season with sea salt but the urchin maybe more salt-ish

[finind]

2 hours ago, kohanson said:

not that serious actually. They only eaten very small area of my silicon and I can see abit jagged. They even eat into my caribsea Life Rocks' purple coating and now, some of the parts are white. Haha.

it probably realize the silicon is not for consumption after those little bit

[tuajia]

Any side effects if fed with the seasoned ones?

Not really serious but will probably add unnecessary "extra ingredients" to your water

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[kohanson]

I see, I am actually feeding those seasoned seaweed in my tank. My blue tang, ruby head fairy wrasse and bicolour blenny go crazy about it. Haha.

[finind]

seasoned as in get from supermarket?

[Jason Ng]

Great info, thanks. I have always got the algae problem on my live rocks n sand. Tried p04 n n03 removal and also the sea hare but algae still grown back very fast. Really very frastrated. Will try the urchin n hermit crab this week to see if it works for me.

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[leong_rei]

Jason u use ro water or just tap water ? I have this problem too

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[acidjc]

Need to control feeding and do regular WC. Algae issue is a constant effort.

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[leong_rei]

My algae only come very worst when I change water

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