Will Chaeto out compete hair algae?

^^

I still have one I have yet to catch. It's big, furious and hungry for flesh. Crabzilla!

 

If you scrub....don't scrub in the tank. That will just spread it. You need to scrub it in a separate tank and then rinse it in saltwater prior to putting it back in your tank.

 

Thanks for all the advise, I'll keep my eye on those crabs.

 

if your chaeto is growing slowly try to get some tumble on it, and spread it as you can..increase your light, especially in the warmer end of the scale. Metal halide lighting is ideal for chaeto, you will get noticeable improvement with that kind of intensity...but not as fast as filamentous algae. In the short term hair algae will capture more nutrients.

When you use macro algae as a filtering strategy what you want to do is aggressively remove hair algae while allowing the chaeto to grow. Eventually it will replace the hair algae as the dominant established algae in your system and the hair algae will starve back. What makes chaeto ideal, (vs. something like caulerpa which is a more efficient nutrient competitor), is that it is stable, and unlikely to die back once the nutrients are depleted.

 

lots of light for the cheto and water flow - I started mine out on 24hour cycle for 4 days.

 

So are you saying that more light, will make it outcompete the hair algae?

 

It doesn't matter how much light you give it. Hair algae will always win. You have to manually remove the hair algae (or have a fish or sea hare, etc eat it) and then it will starve the hair algae of nutrients so it won't grow back. Chaetomorpha will never starve existing hair algae out of existence.

 

Thanks, I guess some people post without addressing about the original question.

 

John and Tank1970 weren't addressing the orignal question. You were told the answer and then answer is, "No, your chaetomorpha is not going to starve out your hair algae.

However, they were giving you great info on how to make Chaetomorpha grow faster and therefore making it more efficient at preventing future hair algae outbreaks. Of course, that's AFTER you follow other people's advice that you cannot simply set up a refugium and expect your hair algae to disappear.

 

Sorry inwall, it appeard to me that the poster was addressing my question. My appologies if that came off rude, I was just trying to explain myself, not be rude. This is a new world for me, so the obvious, might not be obvious to me, which is why I'm asking questions and trying to absorb everything that each poster has to say.