Green hair algae eater for a nano??

Haha - ok, I give up... what do you nano nerds use to consume HA in a nano (other than water changes ) lol

With this dwarf angler in my 25, I forsee many strugges with the dreaded HA monster in my future! And right now, I've got nothing in there that grazes the rocks.... and I mean nothing!! haha, no crabs, a few dwarf cerith snails, and thats it

Here's my evidence to my poor tank husbandry

Baby tuxedo urchin?

turbo snails. Mine tear up my HA.

If you only have it on the frag rack GOOD LUCK I gave up trying to get rid of it.

+1 on the turbos, they love the HA.

I would start with a turbo snail or a small urchin and the frag rack i would bleach it once a week.

ugh, once a week?? hahaha you guys are killing me!!!

more diligent water changes are in my future for sure I think once the macro catches back up in the fuge on this tank it will slow down too - I was down to a little quarter sized blob of chaeto in the fuge before I realized it was all clogged up

its growing back now... so hmmm.... snails eh? The last one I put in here ate all the HA, then died... guess not enough food for long time sustenance

what about hermits?? I kinda like those evil lil bastards....

Stick with snails , there is a large asortment that can highlight a tank, I allways like the bumble bee snails , they burrow in the substrate during the day and go crazy when the lights are off !!

JMO

Turbos are excelent for grazing and gorging 24 - 7 .

I would be concernd about the crabs ,, ya never know what they might decide to eat!!

Again JMO

yeah and with a small tank, the crabs are more likely to have at anything that gets close.

Turbos are good, but I honestly throw a few emeralds in mine. They tear at the hair algae like it's manna from Heaven. Ironically, they don't touch the bubble algae

What about some chaeto to take up some of the extra nutrients, and a fuzzy chiton or 2?

Originally Posted by Variko

What about some chaeto to take up some of the extra nutrients, and a fuzzy chiton or 2?

got chaeto in the fuge I'm also gonna be adding some of that red flame algae to this tank as well... actually, I got some nice looking red grape algae... maybe I'll put it in here and see how it grows out ... a macro display/frag tank wouldn't be bad

I see reefcleaners.org are out of fuzzy chitons. Did you buy some? lol

You could bleach the frag rack once a month if you want, doesnt have to be every week

Originally Posted by Variko

I see reefcleaners.org are out of fuzzy chitons. Did you buy some? lol

lol - oddly, I did as our club did a group buy with them last week... but I put them in my main tank, and havent seen them since I released them! My tang thought they were algae too and kept trying to eat all the fuzz off of them, so who knows what their future holds! haha

Originally Posted by chris&barb

You could bleach the frag rack once a month if you want, doesnt have to be every week

ohhh how nice, I have permission to be lax

well........I can say from experience that our small pincushion urchins LOVE LOVE LOVE hairy algae....we haven't had any in our tank for years since we got them

OK, so I found a small tuxedo urchin at the LFS today he has a big task ahead of him!! haha, and I did a water change, so that should help as well !!

Let me know how you make out with the tuzedo Joanne. I want one, but I was turned off by the bulldozing aspect and the eating all of my corraline thing. However, after learning I may not have alot of coralline if I have really good lighting anyway, I am reconsidering an urchin. I also recently learned the tuxedo's wont hurt you if you pick them up.

Variko, if you glue your frags down you wont have to worry about them bulldozing. Urchins will eat coralline algae but they have a very short digestive system and a lot of the corallines cells will pass through undigested and this will actually help spread coralline throughout your tank. Also if you let coralline fully cover the surface of your live rock it will block all the pores and water wont be able to pass through it so the bio-filtration capacity of the rock will drop. If you have an urchin that comes by and grazes parts of it away from time to time its helping to keep the rock alive and active.

i have a tuxedo in my main tank he is the cornerstone of my clean up crew... I just make sure everything is glued down well when I put it in there..

hell - my damn jawfish steals more frags than my urchin does to shore up his cave - I can't count the number of times I've had to totally demolish his cave cuz he decided to steal my favorite zoa frag.. He still has my AOG frag - never could find it.... ba$tard!!! That had to be 10 polyps!!