Hair and Coralline Algae Issue

As I said before, my take is a wreck. I have rid my take of that Grape C. Racemosa, and now I am working on the chem. of water quality. I have a hair algae issue I am trying to resolve. I don’t want to use any chemicals if avoidable, I’m just trying to get my take back to good chem. levels. I’m thinking of adding a Seahare as well as maybe even a phosphate reactor. I have some amazing coralline algae growth though that I am scared of loosing.

Will the Seahare eat the brown and purple coralline algae?
Are my mushrooms safe with the Seahare munching away?

I’ve attached a few photos of the coralline algae so you know what coralline I’m talking about. Can any one ID this coralline?:Looking:

 

Sea hair will not harm anything Mushrooms can't be harmed and if you get the ca and Dkh and Magnesium up and get any nitrates under control as well as PO4 and with these you have to use a chemical/media to absorb and bind the phosphates up.. Got a good skimmer ? and cut back on any over feeding most people could cut feeding by over half and still have fat fish and tanks with waste ..

 

Hate to say but that's not coralline algae in those pictures. Can you take a clearer/closer picture of that algae?

 

i had a seahare wipe out a big algae bloom within a week in my 55 gallon when i started it ,then it starved and i had to give it away before it would die.

 

A sea hare will woek but as others have stated you will need to find it a new home after it finishes off the algae. I prefer to use emerald crabs as long as there are not very many snails in the tank.

 

response

Okay, this is the best I can do for a photo of what I thought is coralline algae. There are two diff. kinds here brown and pink. I cant at the moment take a higher quality photo due to the fact some guy mugged me in Costa Rica a few weeks back. I am left with my camera phone, sorry for the poor image. :-/

As far as the water quality goes, yes I run coralife needle wheel, which I know is not the best but it works. When I was gone for the better part of last year, my tank did not get one water change(okay maybe 5 months...). So it is a lot of water changes I'm doing. I have done one 50% and then every week and a half I've been doing 25%. Yes I use RO and DI h20. I feed like once a week at best. I'm not too worried about getting the water quality under control, I know Ill get it back.

Im just wanting to get clean up the hair with out damaging any of the good growth I have going on the LR. Thats why I thought the Seahare I read in one of the recent post...

 

Well, that just stinks That looks like a type of wafer algae to me but without a better photo, I can't be sure. Don't worry though, once you get your water parameters in check and stable, all of that nuisance algae should get choked out by coralline algae.

 

The pink purple stuff on the glass in the last photo is coralline But the hair and red stuff on the snad in the first are hair and cyano.. the cyano can be managed with sronger water flows directed at it as well and red slim or cyano remover or Reeferlife makes one and Boyds chemi clean will also knock it out.. Its a antibiotic that kills the bacteria under the red fuzzy covering.. But get those levels up , the corallines you do have are removing the Alk and Ca and Mag really fast these 3 elements are its primary source of food.. Might want to add a few dozen snails also..

 

I already have a blue leg crab but he/she does not touch the hair algae, so when I take a trip by my LFS this weekend are there any down falls to getting a emerald crab? (for the hair clean up). I'm just always cautious when adding anything...

 

brown leaf algae.it grows like monti or mushrooms.emerald crabs love that stuff