OZ REEF - It is up and running, full of hair algae. Help.

It took an aweful lot of begging, the writing of a starter-up grant, and hours of research, but the tank is up and running. This year the students are even more excited about the project than last year. The students are looking forward to propagating live rock which is one of the highlights each class leaves for the upcoming class.

It is going to be exciting to see what interesting forms of life they plan to introduce to the aquarium they inherited. They have a few hermit crabs, snail, damsels, a watchman goby and two clownfish. We are planning slowing down a bit on the fish to focus our attentions primarily on inverts and corals.

The down side of things these days for us lie in a profound hair algae issue. We did not pay it much attention until it started spreading onto our coral. We have since increased our snails, crabs, and added three urchins, but the problem still persists. (The algae is not pictued yet.)

Other than using some form of chemical, which we do not want to do, any other ideas?

Comments

Re: hair algae
Written by on 2006-11-14 11:08:50

Great to hear that it is still going along and you are getting such enjoyment out of it.

You definitely have the right idea with the hair algae, in not using a chemical to try and solve the issue. All this will do is solve the symptom, not the actual cause.

The most important thing that you can do, which you have done already to some extent, is have herbivores within the tank that will eat algae. A variety of different species of snails that are herbivores (different species because each one will graze in a different manner and consume a different type of algae) and sea urchins. Try to avoid boring urchins, as they consume too much of the rock in their grazing. The best ones are the smaller collector species. Since they are smaller, they don't act as much as a bulldozer throughout the tank as the larger ones do, plus due to their limited size they don't graze the rock down as much.

Fish don't tend to be a good solution, particularly with the more problematic hair algae, since they don't actually eat it. So putting in a blenny or tang would not be such a good idea.

Controlling Aglea with Light
Written by on 2007-11-06 15:42:43

In my expereience often the biggest factor in algea growth is the light. This includes both tank lighting and room lighting.

As the tank lights get older they begin to produce a different wavelength which may encourage the growth of nuciense algea. Its best to write the date of purchase on the globe with permenant marker and replace after 6 months.

Even more of a contributer to algea growth is the way the room is lit up. Direct sunlight obviously will be asking for trouble. Even the smallest reduction in sunlight in a room (even if not directly on the tank) will make a huge difference. If your tank is in a room that is normally well lit up during the day you will have trouble with nucinse algea even if you have hungry herbivors. One solution would be throwing a towel or sheet over the tank when your not at home (obviously you want to see the tank when you are home).

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