hair algae eater

[minireef]

I need to control the hair algae, my purple tank and turbo snails are not doing the job! Who else should I employs? Thks

[Sapp]

Sea Hares. The big ones are really good but they are not much to look at...

[aramus]

aye my friend told me it is good for hair algae but i heard they squirt out a purple liquid if threatened and it is toxic so u might need a good filter to get it out fast

anyone have problems with that??

[gerrard_boon]

try fox face...

[iantoh]

try the common algae blenny. its been the best ive had, and it wont forsake hair algaes for pellet or frozen foods like tangs will do. the foxface rabbitfish is good too, though not really reefsafe.

cheers,

ian

[minireef]

Hi Ian,

I read from goole that it might nip on sps and clam. Is that tru?

[iantoh]

hi there bro,

from my knowledge, algae blennies dont pose a threat to sps or clams. perhaps, if the tnak is entirely devoid of algae for it to eat, it might nip at a clam's mantle to consume its zooxallanthae, but ive never witnessed that in my full sps system, with clams as well.

clown gobies though, do definitely prey on sps polyps. my previous one fed exclusively on it as it didnt eat a single thing i offered but stayed alive for months whilst the entire period, all my sps polyps were withdrawn.

cheers,

ian

[ervine]

the larger sea hares are lawn mowers for hair algae... problem is both of mine died after a few weeks in the tank, not sure if it was due to starvation after they cleaned out all the algae...

smaller sea hares I tried couldn't take the wavemaker and got blown around till they dissapeared...

algae blennies are a mixed bunch, mine doesn't seem to do much to hair algae, always just eats the flakes I feed the other fishes with...