Green Algae I have a picture help!!

mila

Member
I used to have a lot of bubble algae, but after I got 2 emerald crabs it was gone. I don't think they eat hair algea.
 
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dboy999

Guest
hey bud do a search for my name i went through some major hair alage problems i fixed ..many post about it an how i fixed it ...gooooooood luck
 

escape2thewater

Active Member
How old are your lights? And what type are they? Other then that I have one word for you...ROWAPHOS. It cured my tank of that after everything else failed & now I run it 24/7 just as a precaution. Good luck.
KYle
:happyfish
 

fishking

Active Member
my lights are about 9 months old, are u suppose to change them every 6 or every 12 months, also my lights r 10k 250 w i think
 

fishking

Active Member

Originally posted by escape2thewater
What type of lights are they? Metal Halide, VHO, PC, ETc?
KYle
:happyfish


ooo sry stupid me, they ar metal halides
 

masterzeus

Member
Most lawn mower blennies will not eat anything but hair algae. That is why many people don't recommend them. Bicolor blennies are supposed to eat algae and flakes so they can theoritically survive after the algae is under control.
Most emerald crabs don't eat hair algae. They do eat bubble algae like someone above said.
Here is what I did to get rid of my hair algae in my 55 gallon - I bought the "Big Boy Reef Package" from this site and added a few more crabs (emeralds, sallylightfoot), shrimp (coral banded, peppermint) and a bicolor blennie. The blenie didn't do much since it went carpet surfing a week later, but the algae is now completely gone and hasn't come back.
 

masterzeus

Member
In the picture, I see some macro algae and a ton of hair algae. I assume it is the hair algae that he wants gone. The macro algae can be harvested by hand or just buy a tang to eat it. BTW, I have owned many tangs and they have never touched hair algae in my tank.
 

bacchus_fl

Member
You actually have both in that picture. The large light green branching weed looking aglea on the right side of the first picture is a macro algea. Which is actually good for your system, tangs love to eat it but if you are running a sump I would move it there.
The dark green wavey algea that is growing as clumps all over the live rock looks like hair algea.
I didn't see any corals in the pics, do you have any in the tank?
The best thing to do is take any rocks you have that don't have a coral attached to them and scrub as much off as you can in a bucket of saltwater. Once you have removed as much as you can manually you can get some Large mexican turbo snails, and lots of blue or scarlet hermits which will eat it. A sailfin tang will sometimes pic at it as well. I would also cut your MH lighting back to 4-6 hours a day until the algea begins to stop growing.
But to prevent it, you need to either buy phosphate kit or have a store test it for you (most around me don't test for phosphate) If your level are high you should use a sponge and if they continue to keep spiking you might look at buying a UV filter.
Hope this helps!
 

dragonboy

Active Member
Some hermit crabs eat the hair and sometimes the arrowhead crab eat them it just depends on if that crab or fish have a taste for it. So just keep trying to see what works.
 
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