Sea Hare and Striped Puffer

[aquafox]

I need opinions/experiences on this one....I have 220 gallon tank that was a reef until a few months ago....I sold all my corals and now have it fish only with the exception of my anemones. I did this so I could add my striped puffer to the population since he was growing like a weed. I am now having the dreaded algae bloom since with my puffers appetite I am unable to maintain too much of a clean up crew. I have a couple sally lightfoots, a couple of peppermint shrimp, one brittle star, two pencil urchins, and a very few mexican turbos. I am pretty much certain that my clean up crew is just not large enough to handle the load. I was thinking of getting a sea hare to control the algae but I am not sure about putting it in with the puffer. He loves to eat corals....but he never touches my anemones....he doesn't seem to bother the lightfoots either....I am wondering if anyone has had a sea hare with a similar puffer with any luck??
As far as parameters, all is within the norms except my nitrates are a bit high - I am sure due to the load on the tank.....I have been doing water changes to bring that down but in my experience, it really doesn't stop or kill off the hair algae...it's sort of self sustaining, any algae die off just creates more phosphates for the other algae to live off of....
Lighting is halide for the anemones (bubble tips, long tentacle, tube anemone) and I run it for 8 1/2 hours per day.
Sooooo.......any ideas or thoughts on my sea hare idea?
Oh - and I am running a phosban reactor (which seems to stop/really slow down additional hair algae growth) along with sump and skimmer...

 

[itom37]

It's too bad you're set on keeping the anemones. You could just downgrade the lights and not keep them on so long. That not being the case: I bet the puffer will eat the sea hare. You might get lucky, might not. If it's just hair algae, why not a few lawnmower blennies?

 

[aquafox]

I actually have a friend who recently tried a lawnmower blenny on her hair algae and although they are good at working on other types of algae, they seem to stay away from the hair algae....hers doesn't eat the strands of hair algae at all....
I am still debating the sea hare....I keep reading that they are nocturnal and aren't out much when the lights are on....my puffer is the opposite, resting when the lights are out....and he keeps mostly to one end of the tank as I have a very large hippo tang that dominates the rest of the tank...so unless the hare spends alot of time on the puffer's end of the tank, he might just be okay.....
Thanks for the info though.....I am really open to all ideas....still trying to decide....I certainly don't want to put the poor thing in the tank only to see the puffer eat him!!

 

[stdreb27]

Man a puffer will eat your sea hair, that is their diet, and this one will be even easier it doesn't have a shell.