What would be your choice(Hair Algea)

I have had great success in not seeing any hair algae with my yelloweye tang. I do have to agree, best to find the cause and do a surgical strike than to send in hordes of armies to take care of the skirmishes. Leaves more available bioload for other things.

 

I had a hair algae problem, changed to RO/DI water, and added some emerald crabs, turbo snails, and one lettuce nudibranch. Algae is gone, now I have to feed the emeralds algae. My nudi got sucked up in the PH

 

I have a few turbos, I only have 20mgallon tanks, so I can't have more than a few this and thats. I agree with Tangster on water quality. IMO, a small patch of hair algae isn't too bad, if you get something where you need a powerhouse organism to clean up the tank, you might want to check the water. I know you said you haven't detected anything yet...what brand test kit are you using?

hey look, I've been promoted to astrea snail! Kegger time!

 

I've been reading that it's recommended that you have 3-4 snails per gallon of water.... IMO it works and they keep it down, all types of algae! Also, the cause of the algae might be;
lights on too long, over feeding, water temp too high, not doing regular water changes, dirty filters, fish overload. I've been thru each and every one of these(plus some) to get my algae down and the snails work for me

 

True, I have read similar. But here is the deal. Once your system is no longer providing the snails' source of food, you need to supplement otherwise they will die and all of a sudden I have 60-80 dead snails if I am not careful. I have been successful staying small. With 3-4 turbos and several cerith snails per tank, I am not having issues.

 

Since I tried all the other stuff I figured the snails might work. They have done great and I found I haven't had to supplement them. The rest stayed the same because everthing was under normal limits when tested, and I still had algae growing. It's pretty simple, algae grows and a snails' purpose is, to eat it....


tryin_it_again: sorry didn't mean to hijack your thread, just needed to explain myself

How's the tank looking, have you changed anything?

 

I used a pair of tweezers and picked it out. Didn't have too much, so it didn't take long. Didn't get it all, either, but what I missed either died or was eaten by someone.