so these algae came with the SPS frags i got a few months ago, i didnt think much about it, thought it was pretty cool......i thought wrong

its starting to spread all over my rocks and annoying some of my zoas, blocking light to my monti. i tried to pick these off the rocks and they are anchored in there pretty good. any idea what would eat it?

tang's. but since your tanks so small it would be a bad idea...
and even tangs have a varied liking to that stuff. i think its because of toxins or calcium.
i saw a lot of that stuff at the LFS i worked at during the summer.

thanks, my new tank (100gal) is coming in this friday and will be moving my stuff over when it matures, i guess i can wait till then

yeah. definitely try and introduce a yellow or blue tang and see if they at lease pick at it.

dictyota. get it while you can, it can spread like wildfire.

yup, thats the stuff, thanks

DHaut just got an Emerald Crab that he says is eating the Dictyota in his tank.
Def. manually remove as much as possible though.

I had it. Definitely get a couple of emerald crabs. They love the stuff. Also siphon as much out as you can during water changes.

+1 to what peeps have said and an urchin may take to it as well.

edit: also you ever think about a blenny? they are fantastic ate eating algae. I'm partial to my starry blenny

Urchin will decimate the stuff within a month.

I know Nate. I picked up some of it from there !

+1 and probably your coralline algae too.

Granted, but if that junk takes over his tank, he won't have any coralline to speak of.

Win/lose or lose/lose imo

Now I know where to exile mine to - Emerald Crab tank!!!!

Luckily mine is growing on Halimeda leaves so all I have to do is cut off the leaf and drop it in front of the emerald..ahha

Hahaha... could happen! Urchins are super cool though. They're strong as hell...

manual removal. i haven't really found anything that would eat it. when removing manually, take it out of the tank; any lttle flakes of it that get off have the potential to start growing.

urchins actually prefer soft algae over hard algaes. an urchin fed enough even if it by supplimentary nature rally wont go after coralline too much. but yeah i still say blenny or urchin...both really cool biological solutions to the problem...oh and an emerald isnt a bad idea either

thanks for all the suggestions.

i dont have a blenny in my tank although i do want to get a tail spotted one, but they arent always available. did some research and some say a tang might not eat it. ill try an emerald crab or urchins and see if they touch it. my blue legged hermits dont touch it.

also, i probably have too much nutrients in the water...been feeding kind of heavy lately. ill cut back the feeding and see how it goes.

Algae Fix Marine by API will take care of that dictyota. It takes a while with dosing but so far it's the only way I've been able to get rid of it completely. Fish, and inverts never worked for me and manual removal just spread it.

ill see if we have that product here

Eh, go natural. Chemicals can be finicky, even those with a good track record.

Not to say that I haven't ever used some (flatworms and aiptasia killers), but try a natural method first. Unless of course the outbreak is severely effecting the health of your tank or you don't have the patience to deal with it.

Using a natural method is (almost) always safer but sometimes it isn't enough and you have to use chemicals anyway...

The thing about dictyota is that it's toxic and tastes nasty to most things. Or... The animals that will eat it are usually too big for our smaller tanks and they all usually end up hit or miss. Some people have luck with them and others don't. The majority being the ones that don't. Including me. Another problem is this algae can thrive in ultra low nutrient systems. It spread pretty rapidly in my SPS system with 0 phosphates and 0 nitrates/trites. Those readings came from various test just to be sure. Dictyota is VERY efficient at uptake of any available nutrients it needs to thrive. It also uses them efficiently to spread and out compete existing macros. This is the exact reason it's at the top of my list when it comes to nuisance/pests in a tank. It's also very hard to remove manually because it embeds roots into the rock or whatever it attaches to. Manual removal of it leads to it spreading. All it takes is a tiny piece of it to land somewhere and stay for a day or less to spread it. I've seen it grow on everything from rock, coral (SPS and LPS), power heads, tubing, to glass and acrylic. If you have it, you should start the battle against it immediately. Left unchecked (which I did at first because it looked nice) it will lead to many headaches.

This is just based on my experience with Algae Fix Marine. I can't say you'll have the same results but I wouldn't hesitate for a second to use it again if dictyota showed it's ugly head. My tank has thousands of dollars worth of SPS in it and after trying EVERYTHING (not to mention the difficult task of getting very small livestock specimens that were rumored to eat it) to get rid of the stuff I went with Algae Fix and honestly wish I'd had used it from the start. Below are my results.

TRIED
Tangs (yellow, naso, blonde naso) = fail
Urchins (tuxedo, purple, atlantic) = fail
Crabs (emerald) = fail
Rabbitfish = fail
26 doses of Algae Fix Marine = WIN
Around the 7th-8th dose you'll notice bubbles in the dictyota and it will fall off in little clumps. It's also very easy to remove at this stage. The base/roots will stick around till around the 15th-17th dose. You'll notice it declining however and at the 20th dose it was nowhere to be found in my tank. Also, around the 10th dose I was able to remove the longer bits of it as well as big clumps with just a siphon using a piece of airline tubing. What fell off on its own ended up in the sponge in my overflow.

The first 3 doses were my approximate water volume factoring in displacement from rock and such. The following 23 doses were my tank and sump volume if they had nothing in them but water. I started this after the first doses showed no effects to any of the corals or inhabitants. The only negative effect I had was at the end of dosing I was getting a bit of red slime in the sump. This was caused because I removed all the macro from the sump (cheato and dragons breath) because the Algae Fix will also kill it. Within a few days of placing the macro back into the sump the slime vanished.

IMPORTANT: You MUST remove any macro you want to keep before you start dosing. It will kill it. I replaced my macro 48 hours after my last dose with no ill effects.

Wow, thanks for the education. I always enjoy learning something, that is part of the saltwater hobby.

In light of the Stephen's comments, go ahead, dose her up!

Thanks Stephen for your post, i hope they the algaefix marine in hong kong.

im wondering, if bryposis dies with high levels of kent tech M. would it work with this algae also.

So this thread scared me into manually removing all of my dictyota out of my 5.5g pico today - it was growing on Halimeda so I was never concerned about removal but I decided I didn't like since it wouldn't get that blue hue under my CF's and I'd rather encourage Gracillara and Halimeda growth. 45min manual removal and I got 99% but some fell on the sandbed behind the rock.. figured I'd get that later in the week..checked back later today and it was all gone - checked back even later and saw a new clump of dictyota right where I had been cleaning it out...strange... I thought I got it all...then it moved a couple cm's...so either my dictyota has grown legs and decided to make a run for it or I just found a hitchhicker decorator crab that cleaned it all off the sandbed for me. Now lets hope he doesn't spread it further or I might have to manually remove it from him....

from what ive read, they will surely make a come back since their roots are lodge into the rocks, its a matter of time they pick up again and start spreading like wild fire.

went out to get a bottle of algaefix marine and started dosing yesterday. i will let you all know how it turns out. also pulled out as much of the stuff as i can. they are really hard to pick off the rocks, and really brittle. im sure i had tones of leaves ended up back into my tank and will start to spread. hopefully the dosing will help eliminate that.

the algeafix marine seem to be doing its job. i pulled out as much of that crap out of my tank as best as i could and dosed the stuff. ive only dosed 3 times and i have yet to see the algae spread. there are some which still remain in place. some just kinda disappeared. pretty happy with the results. ill continue to dose until they are completely gone.

i noticed other algae is slowly dying as well...

the green algae film on the glass cleans a heck of a lot easier. even the encrusted green algae that wouldnt come off unless i take a razor at it comes of with a few scrubs with the mag scrubbers.

looks like its working pretty good for me

Thats good to hear your getting good results. I will save this thread as a favorite in case I ever have to deal with it.