pippa Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 So I bought ten lbs of rock from gulf live rock and it's great, full of life, but it also full of macro algae. Some sort of red kelp, plus halimeda, red turf and cheato. So I'm at a loss what to do here, I don't want all this algae and I'm going to be moving everything into a different tank in the next week or so. Is a new cleanup crew in order? I have a handful of astrea, one emerald, and a hermit. Should I ditch the rock that is the most covered? Scrub it? The tank is only 8 gallons so that doesn't leave me with a lot of fish options. I've read an urchin might help as long as I don't keep him in there long term. Ideas please, thanks. Link to comment
Tamberav Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Tuxedo urchin or mexican turbo snails will eat most of it except the calcified algae. Manually remove what you can. I would not ditch the rock. The rock is beautiful! Link to comment
JohnnyBoy Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 My suggestion is to manually remove the macro and scrub those areas as best as possible with some type of stiff brush as some of these macro's can reproduce from little bits left behind. Clean up crew doesn't really tuch too many types of algae as some of them are calcium based and not very palatable to them, and therefore not a guarantee that it will work as you plan. Hope this helps. Link to comment
pippa Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 I appreciate the help. I'm going to pick up a brush and do my best to scrub it off during the transfer. It's the red turf that's the most troublesome to me, luckily it seems isolated to one rock, at least so far. Maybe it would be best to leave it out but I'll see what I can do. I read up on the tuxedo urchin, cool creatures! I'm considering adding one in after my soft corals grow out a bit more, they are still just little frags and I would hate to loose one so soon. Link to comment
pippa Posted May 27, 2014 Author Share Posted May 27, 2014 So I attempted to scrub the turf off this weekend and it didn't happen, this algae has a grip like no other! I ended up leaving the two rocks with the worst of it out of the tank and spot treated the rest with H202. We'll see what happens. If it's still there in a week I may attempt to dremel what is left and start adding to the CUC. Link to comment
River_styx Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 I read up on the tuxedo urchin, cool creatures! I'm considering adding one in after my soft corals grow out a bit more, they are still just little frags and I would hate to loose one so soon. If the corals are glued down you dont have to worry about the tuxedo grabbing them for camouflage. Link to comment
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