thanks for covering sbcaes! i am going with the former rather than the latter though, unless I got that mixed up again lol...

[/quote]
[Cladophoropsis:



Description: Species in this genus, and related ones, cling to the rock, and spread from a runner. The branches do not get tall, and they are often found with hobbyist frags.

Manual Removal - Difficult. Macros that have fragile runners and creep along the rock are the hardest to manually remove. Do the best you can. Get a dental pick and get it all the first time and be done with it.

Clean Up Crew- Not sure. small rock boring urchins will kill any macro just sitting on a rock like that. try an emerald crab and let us know how it goes.

Why it happened - You didn't quarantine, and you have available nutrients for it.

Starving it out - Use a phosban reactor or a macro like chaeto to take down phosphate. If you have a nitrate problem too, you can add more live rock or rubble to the tank, do some more wcs, add macro, add dsb, etc...

John's Tip - ?? Never seen it in person, help me out here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[/quote]

I have this algae (I think). This is the first post I could find about it. People have just told me it's hair algae but hair algae is much finer, this stuff is like green grass blades. Here's a pic, can't see it too well but it's the only algae I have (at least in large quantity). I getting rid of my damsel to bring the fish count to 3 and I need to get some more LR. I am running chemi-pure and phos remover. My nitrates are still high but I think getting some more LR and getting rid of the damsel will help, the chemi-pure has only been in for a couple days.

or it could be something like Chaetomorpha area, (closer to "derebesia" in the guide, but probably not a Derebesia spp.) it is different than regular chaeto it grows in turfs like that. Yours is definitely a wirey green though as opposed to a filamentous green, so it wouldnt fall under "hair algae". I agree with you there. What species it is will be impossible to tell from a picture, at least not without some magnification. Are there any photosynthetics in the tank currently? I just paid attention to the algae and now it doesnt want to load....dsl is s l o w

The only corals I have right now are mushrooms, about 5 throughout (can't see them in the photo). I brought a sample of the algae to my LFS and he said to get a couple emerald crabs, which I did. So we'll see what happens with that.

I am starting to think my tank may be going through a cycle (tell me if I'm wrong) as I can't keep the nitrates down after doing multiple water changes in the last week and half. I also did the bc14 mods (water flow, chemi-pure, phos remover, no bioballs, eggcrate media tray (I'll get yours eventually steveT )) The nitrates have come down but are still riding at like 40 or maybe higher. I don't know if you saw my first post on this site but here is the Story, post #721. Any suggestions are very welcomed. Thanks.

i will check the post out in a few , emeralds seem like a good candidate for something like that. wirey greens require some cutting power. larger "turbos", urchins, or sea hares maybe as well but ther are drawbacks etc...

it would probably last a bit longer than you would want plus there are the mushrooms....i was going to say if it was new you could just cut the light, but that may be more hassle than it is worth at this point

It's been a few days and it looks like the algae is receding a bit. Hopefully it's either the emeralds, the water changes or a combination of both. Attached is a better picture than above. On another note, can anyone identify this red algae? Couldn't find any algae on here when searching "dark red algae" except for cyano and I'm 95% sure it's not because it's actually attached to the rock.

Here's the red algae from the post above.

that is a coralline species if we are talking aboutt the same thing

The red "algae"? Or the green algae?

The deep ruby red in the second pic sure looks like coralline to me. The stuff in the first pic, too.

the red is the coralline algae, you can have green coralline algae too, but I dont see it in your tank

Me again, thank you for your help. Meantime I added 10x Turban snails and 3 x emerald crabs. They've been very effective cleaners except a part of rock they don't want to touch. Any idea why, and how many types of algae can you identify, please:







I added 10 more turban snails and one Tuxedo Urchin, and 30h later, the rock looks like this:

I'm back to post the green algae is virtually gone (I'll post pics). It's still there but looks like it's been mowed down and I think it's the emerald crabs that did it. BUT, both my emeralds died...or were killed. One day I was looking at my tank and saw the blenny had picked up an emerald and tossed him across the tank and then bit him a couple more times. The emerald ended up dying. Then the other day I found the second emerald dead. Has anyone heard of this? An aggressive blenny? I add some seaweed to feed the blenny and the emeralds seemed to really like the seaweed, so maybe it's a competition thing? Sucks because I really liked those emeralds. I may have to get rid of the blenny. Any thoughts?

This happened to one of my emeralds, so I bought the biggest baddest ass emerald I could find. He is the size of a silver dollar!

LOL

Really?! So you are saying a blenny killed your emerald? I may have to do that! Mine were about the size of a quarter.

Maybe some help with this algae?
Is is red (maroon), spiny and hard, doesn't sway in the water. Stays short. Not like a hair algae at all. Heres two pictures,
Not really invasive in my system. Its only on that little rock, and then it has covered my anemone container. Sometimes it attatches to glass.

[quote name='johnmaloney' date='Feb 15 2009, 06:42 PM' post='2073221']

Chondria:



Description: Species in this genus look like translucent red plants cylindrical plants with irregular branching. They make stick to the rocks only like Chondria repens, or they can brach and are bushier like Chondria minutula. The important thing in identification is look how the "branches" have smaller branches

Manual Removal - Somewhat Difficult. Macros that have fragile runners and creep along the rock are the hardest to manually remove. Get the holdfast, if you miss it get it with tweezers or a dental pick, etc...

Clean Up Crew- Just manually remove. If it is a too much of it, then emerald crabs, larger hermits, urchins, etc...

Why it happened - You didn't quarantine, and you have available nutrients for it.

Starving it out - Use a phosban reactor or a macro like chaeto to take down phosphate. If you have a nitrate problem too, you can add more live rock or rubble to the tank, do some more wcs, add macro, add dsb, etc...

John's Tip - Easier to remove than gelidium, but it has similar features, including a holdfast that will creep along the rocks to some degree.
[quote]




Has this been known to be misidentified as Laurencia?

When we "cram" a variety of animals into our relatively tiny environments, warfare of all sorts is bound to break out. In the ocean, these guys would have much more room to retreat and find hidey-holes.

There's not much to be done; it's a consequence of nano-life.

THat, they do like their space, but also fish die sometimes, the crab eats the dead fish and you come home to find a crab eating your fish so it looks like the crab did it. I am not saying that is what happened here, but that must happen sometimes right?