Red Turf Algae -- Part II

[sen5241b]

This stuff is taking over my whole tank and I am losing the war. The thought of nuking my whole tank has crossed my mind! I put a Blue Tuxedo Urchin in the tank and he will not eat it. I pick him up twice a day and put him right on the algae and he immediately crawls off of it without taking a bite. I researched this and it seemed the Tuxedo was the most likely to eat this algae. But of course the urchin just loves coralline. My questions:

What kind of tang is most likely to eat this?
What tang has the biggest appetite for hard algae?
What about some other type of urchin?

At this point I could care less that my tank is small for a tang. I'll get a small one and sell it when it gets big then buy another small one. I am getting desperate here.

 

[wontonflip]

Bummer, Sen. You might want to change your profile signature to read: Proud member of the Red Turf Algae are Evil Society

:D

 

[yote]

I dont know of ANY fish that will eat that crap Sen.

 

[Bifferwine]

Sen I feel so bad for you. I don't have any answers either. :cry:

 

[reeffreak]

I have an answer.

Embrace tha algae,consider it a planted reef system with beautiful macroalgae.

 

[Piratefish]

I had a small patch of that on one of my rocks. I thought it was cool looking. I put in several Ecrabs to deal with some BA. A few days latter I saw one of the Ecrabs clipping off the red threads and eating it. I don't know if they are suppose to eat it or not? But they did and it is not there at all.

 

[bjohanson1234]

Ecrab? Is that another way of saying emerald crab? If not, could you post a link?

 

[Piratefish]

Yes sorry Emerald crabs

 

[sen5241b]

I have an answer.

Embrace tha algae,consider it a planted reef system with beautiful macroalgae.

It overgrows corals. This stuff, like cheato, grows on non-eutrophic (low 'trate) reefs especially in high-flow areas. There are numerous web discussions of this crap that confuses it with other red algaes and even with cyano. I doubled the light time on my cheato to try and out-compete the red stuff.

I'm going to throw everything at it. In which order would you try these?

sea hare
long-spined urchin
scopas tang
blue hippo tang
yellow tang
Mexican fluctuosa snails
other ???

 

[Hiker4twenty]

I'd try the sea hare first since they're supposed to be the best out there for algae.

 

[sen5241b]

Researching this and it seems like the Scopas is the biggest eater of Marcro-algae. Someone on my local Washington-area board suggested raising Mag to kill algae.