C.U.C ideas

[ihglifelol]

I have a 5 gallon pico with not much living things in it. however, i had an old light which helped algae growh alot which I changed last weekend. however My small C.U.C didnt clean up the thing yet. I have tons of hair algae and some red slime algae. Algae growth is slowed down, but hair algae is a fast growing algae, even in higher lightings.

I have a lonely fireshrimp and getting a peppermint shrimp on wednesday

5-8 dwarf ceriths

1 rescued saltwater feedershrimp (not the freshwater variety)

1 large trochus snail(likes the glass, never on rocks,)

1 keyhole limpet, oldes C.U.C member, not the best

have 1 acan, kenya tree and duncan coral and a recovering GSP (on fragplug on kenya tree so was buried in the sand in the LFS)

algae infestation is bad. any good cuc members.

 

[mndfreeze]

More trochus snails.  More ceriths, probably some of the florida variety as they are bigger.  

 

You will need to do manual removal of some algae.  No CUC is perfect and sometimes you can have bunches of algae growing in a spot and somehow snails starving to death because they just never found it. lol.   

 

Some astrea would also work, just keep in mind they have issues righting themselves if they fall upside in the sand.   

 

IMO, I try to get a mix of different species of snails because they all have strengths and weaknesses and different preferred algae foods.  Being you are in a smaller pico tank you don't want to go too crazy, but I would do some manual removal of algae where you can, cut and brush it off as much as possible, then add some more snails in.  I've noticed that once algae gets larger it seems to become tougher and snails don't like to eat it as much as new budding algae.

 

red slime is cyano and while always present in systems in some degree somewhere, it usually means you have too high of nutrients and need to look at your water chemistry, as well as your flow being a little to low.

[straydog]

The best thing I have found to remove hair algae is a Sally light foot crab. I used to keep one in my sump and would put rocks in for it to clean up. I kept it in the sump because I didn't trust it  with fish or snails. 

[A Little Blue]

Having larger CUC crew might not be the answer. 

Keep in mind that whatever they consume, they will return as added waste. Waste that algae will feed on again. And then you have to concider unpredictable fatalities among your CUC crew which effect is self explanatory. 

Manual removal, decreasing nutrients would be a good start. You can look up Peroxide treatment as an option to address your issues as well. 

 

[mndfreeze]

Definitely should be checking water chemistry and nutrient input first, but that said it is important to have a CUC to break down the algae into smaller particles for bacteria to then break down to then ideally export in a skimmer or water change.  So I don't think its the "answer" but its definitely one part of it.