Personally, I have never been a big fan of the "MONSTER" cleanup crew. All the tanks I have ever run have gone with minimal cleanup crew. I think a lot of my success with controlling algae can be attributed to diversity of cleanup crew as opposed to numbers.
For example, in my 75 gallon system (50 gallon sump/refuge), I have the following to control algae:
6 trochus
9 cerith
3 money cowries
1 scarlet red hermit
5 astrea
2 orange turbo's
This is all assuming all these animals are alive since their initial point of purchase (almost three years ago) and that isn't very likely. No new snails or hermits have been added since the initial introduction of the cleanup crew.
My seahare gets dropped in whenever I notice any bryopsis, which is almost never lately.
Aside from that, I also have a naturally occuring population of both blastamusa and a small brown and beige striped snail. These animals fill up the gaps that my reduce numbers have left.
I've always found large numbers of introduced reef janitors to be fairly unstable with many dying off due to starvation. I'd much rather start with a minimal amount and add according to observation and wait for naturally reproducing snails to start populating. Additionally, buying species that consume specific problem algae's is also important. 300 astrea's isn't going to do any better then 5 if you have red turf algae taking over your rocks and neither will perform as well as true Mexican turbo's which are about the only option one would have against this problem algae (a little besides the point, I know, but only for illustration purposes).
Anyway, I'll be there on Friday from 2-6 Dan. Do you think you could take a picture of your hair algae? There's a couple different kinds and I'm sorta curious as to what the hare will and will not eat in case you decide to grab him.
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This and that.
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