Algae ID, Help, and Sympathy Please!!!!

[Magma]

red coral has some nice big fat ones for a great price, the ones at big als are very small size i have been to both stores within the last few days, call Kevin at red coral just to make sure but he normally has lots of them in stock

[daniella3d]

You have my sympathie! I habe been battling this pest for a long time in my nano 21 gallons and it's VERY persistant. The turbo snails goes on a rock and eat the thing as much as they can but this pest seem to always avoid them in some spots, then it detach and recolonize.

The mexican turbo does eat it though, but you would need to first clear it up a bit because the dend forest that you have right now is no match for turbo snails, unless you put 20 of them maybe? I am not sure they actualy eat it when it's that long either?

I don't know if high magnesium will help with this algae the way it does for bryopsis?

The slightest bit that detach is going to anchor itself somewhere else and grow like weeds

If you can cover some of the rock for light or take them out and give them a good scrub, that would help. YOu seem to not have much coral so maybe you can take out the rocks that have no coral and give them a good scrub with a brush in saltwater at the same salinity as not to kill the good bacterias and that will help.

[reefwars]

Would also suggest a complete blackout , cover your tank and let in no light what so ever.... Before this I wiuld remove all you can manually.

[Duffer2]

Alright... blackout starts today. I'm relocating my clams and a couple corals to the display tanks, but all the Xenia, mushrooms, frogspawn, and zoa's are going to have to suffer. Thoughts on how long? I'm thinking 5-6 days blackout + snails + manual removal.

[Dez]

Hey Dave,

I had similar algae once and I just took a few clumps to my LFS and asked if I could throw it in certain tanks to see what ate it. I found a yellow tang that ate it and it took care of it in a month. Hope this helps.

D

[mark]

no idea how to deal with it but you got my sympathy

[Youngster Dan]

You have my sympathy as well.

That being said, if you look at it differently you could have one funky "planted" marine tank with crazy purple algae!

Good luck with the battle!

[daniella3d]

I seriously doubt you are going to kill the stuff with light's out. I tried and it did not work for me and I did it 7 days. This plant can live much longer and you will kill everything in your tank before it die.

This is not cyano or diatome. If you want to do that, remove all your corals or they will die before that algae.

You can try high magnesium level too.

My yellow tang did not toutch the stuff at all.

Originally Posted by Duffer2

Alright... blackout starts today. I'm relocating my clams and a couple corals to the display tanks, but all the Xenia, mushrooms, frogspawn, and zoa's are going to have to suffer. Thoughts on how long? I'm thinking 5-6 days blackout + snails + manual removal.