I've been noticing slight growth over the past few months of this Red-Type algae. It came from a piece of LR with a hitchhiker Kenya tree from my old tank.

I thought having nutrient poor water in the new tank would eradicate it, but I guess not (levels are 0ppm po4 and .02ppm no3)

The algae is very difficult to remove, I even tried taking a toothbrush to it and still couldn't break any loose. I can pick strands away one by one basically, but that doesn't do a whole lot.




Thanks

Well, this may not be what you wanted to get in reply, but I just happen to have a set of algae ID sites in my copy buffer from another post I answered. As I told the other poster, if you have a lot of time you might want to browse through them.

http://www.saltcorner.com/sections/guest/a...e/algaepage.htm
http://www.coralreefnetwork.com/stender/ma...ds/seaweeds.htm
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-j...hikeralgae.html
http://www.seewasserlexikon.de/uebersichthoeherealgen.htm
http://www.surialink.com/HANDBOOK/INDEX.ASP
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/greenalg.htm
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/redalgae.htm
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/brnalgae.htm
http://www.meerwasser-lexikon.de/eng/47/0/0/liste_Algae.htm

BTW, some of the genera listed in Sprung's new Algae book as "red hair algae" are Polysiphonia, Asparagopsis ("sporophyte stage"), and Gelidiopsis ("wire algae").

HTH,

--Diane

that's c est ma - I posted the same thing over at RC.

It seems to be some sort of red-turf algae. Hard to narrow it down to what type, but since then I shaved off what I could and took a dremel to the frag it was on.

Since then I've been placing various snails and hermits over it to clean up what I missed. They seem to like it since whatever is left is a lot shorter now.

Mines exactly the same, this stuff really sucks. Very hard to get off manually with my fingers. I read a lot on here and decided to get some big turbo snails to take care of it. Well the first week they didn't do much but graze on the glass and rocks like my smaller turbos do. argh, frustration. Patience.... a week and a half go by and now one has really gotten after this stuff. This is amazing, I can see him chomping down even the longer bigger leaves this morning! Get yourselves some BIG mexican turbos and be patient. Remove what you can with your fingers, and trim it even, then let the snails do the rest. Good luck!

I was just noticing today that it was coming back a little. I will have to get a turbo this weekend maybe. They just knock so much crap over.

Thanks for the input.

Heres my turbo mowing over this pain in the butt algae. Much less behind him than in front as you can see.




Mine hasn't knocked around my corals and stuff too much, just lucky I guess.

I also have a patch of that stuff in my tank, fortunately, it seems to be growing very slowly.

I have that stuff too. You are right, it's very difficult to remove until it creates large clumps you can pinch off. I might be wrong, but it seems to grow more rapidly when I add regular iodine supplements. Are you an iodine doser?
I think turbo snails are nasty and way to large for my tank so I leave it to the hermit crabs to take care of. They seem to do a pretty good job of keeping it under control.

I doubt hermits even touch that stuff.........could it be that you are the one going into your tank and munching on that stuff?

-Oscar

Be careful picking it, you might want to remove the rock from the tank if you're able to and pick it in tank water when you do a W/C. The point is the spores from the algae are released when you remove it and it spreads the problem further.

I had that stuff What I do is with a toothbrush I brush it off every once in a while.....

I battled that stuff for two years by manual removal with little luck as it spreads rapidly. I tried everything and had some success with a few chemicals but the algae would always come right back.

I recently bought a big mexican turbo snail since I lost most of my cuc in the move and I just noticed today that the stuff is being mowed down. My zebra turbos did not touch the stuff but I can see the algae being mowed down by this big guy. The only part left is the "roots" in the rocks that he can not get too.

FINALLY something works. Now Ive beaten bryopsis, cyano, hair algae and red turf algae.

gelidiopsis sp. or one of the gelidiums.