A recipe for success: How do you manage algae in your tank?

[Jeremy_d]

I just accept it as part of the ecosystem and make sure it doesn’t affect my corals. A little patch of hair algae moves pretty gracefully in the current and just adds to the tank in my opinion. Plus it ensures me that my algae eating inverts are fed.

 

[Blottie]

I always start of with live rock and a decent pod population. Keep snails and hermits. Only have the lights on for the necessary amount of time and at the necessary power. I also let small amounts grow in small areas that aren’t an eyesore and just get on with it.

 

[Kfactor]

my tang / foxface and blenny dont do anything there lazy lol

 

[Mortgaged Reefs]

I don’t stress algae. It’s part of the hobby. Obviously if it’s out of control it’s a sign of other issues. Algae will tell you if you’re over feeding. My sps usually are happy when algae is present because that’s a good sign they’re being fed also.

 

[TWYOUNG]

I think herbivores is an obvious missing choice.

I can only suspect they were considering beneficial algae as well as those nuisance varieties. It would seem the obvious choices for undesirable algae are herbivorous fish and inverts. Limiting light or nutrients can be detrimental to coral.

 

[mooseymoose]

Big fuge full of chaeto and some turbos in the display.

 

[Onixom]

I'm a lazy tank owner so algea is a partner (Before panic starts i have only what you would call a "beginner" tank)

So when i started i had lights on for like 18hrs (light bar default day night cycle) and you guessed it within the first week of having fish she was dirty and hairy (brown hair algea you perverts)

So with Help of LFS i bought some turbos which 2 years later theyre still going strong.

But my main point it my tank is now green rockwork from algea to mimic natural ocean life. The microorganisms and such keep everything healthy.
The algea is kept in check by turbo snails, astraea snails and a tuxedo urchin (he is dapper just hard to find a tailor for him)

 

[sghera64]

I chose "other". I have chaeto and skimmer in the sump of a 200 gallon system (135 oceanic display w/ deep sand bed & 50 Gal bare bottom frag tied together + sump). Not sure the skimmer does much for algea. I'd agree with others that I manage algae by managing where it grows (in the sump) as my tanks don't have a lot. But the system is 20 years old and has a fox face, yellow tang, CBB and most of my trochus snails have passed.

Once in a while, I notice may chaeto hardly grows and then I find more algae in the DT. If I feed more (grocery store fresh sea food, flakes and reef roids), my chaeto grows more and almost no algae in the DT (go figure). I also grow two strains of micro algae and dose the mixture 2x per day to keep the pod population robust (for the dragonettes).

Along with feeding more heavily, if i can keep the parameters (light, temperature, "hands out of water") very stable, then algae in the DT seems to vanish and chaeto grows well. The other thing is my tanks are pretty darn full of mixed reef corals: SPS, LPS, mushrooms, sponges, zoas. Perhaps stability is a factor.

 

[vlangel]

I don’t manage algae, I partner with it.

After Reefing for 53 years, I exercise nutrient management by recycling nutrients into live food, using algae, bacteria and sponges as major players in achieving “dynamic equilibrium”.

How in the world did inverts not make it on the list. Just keep adding inverts

I like these posts, and I also like the post from @ tnw50cal that reference TIME and maturity.

I have macroalgae, mature live rock, an herbivore fish, a hermit crab, and an Atlantic cucumber to help with nuisance algae. So far so good.

 

[biecacka]

Input for bubble algae? It’s almost out of control in my tank and many of them are on large rock and rock formations that aren’t easily removed.

corey

 

[mooseymoose]

Input for bubble algae? It’s almost out of control in my tank and many of them are on large rock and rock formations that aren’t easily removed.

corey

Emerald crabs et. al. / manual removal?

Does anyone use emerald crabs to controle bubble algae.

I have some small amounts of bubble algae on my candy canes skeleton and on my torch corals skeleton. I have one emerald crab and he hasn't touched it. Its a 29 gallon mixed reed so I know I cant have any tangs but do I have any other options besides manual removal. Could I get more emerald...

www.reef2reef.com

How to deal with Bubble Algae

Bubble algae is one of those nuisance algaes that can take over a tank (ask @Rakie... he knows...). It can also be one of the most frustrating to eradicate because of trying to find predators that will take it out. The one predator I know of that is usually the go-to IMO is the emerald...

www.reef2reef.com

Plenty of previous threads on this topic, or other results on Google.

 

[nursingcoral]

I have adjusted my lighting color levels and schedule, keep a refugium, and the tangs eat some algae in my tank. I use ro/di water. My current tank has much less nuisance type algae than my previous tanks.

 

[Paul B]

I formally request that in 2024 anyone who writes reef articles on invasion control (reefbuilders, are you reading) formally throw their hats in the ring to do a mere ten outbound work jobs from web forums, show masterful control over the method across a few tanks. many hundreds of challenge tank owners love to hand over the reigns if u catch them at the right posting stage (I'm going to quit) then write about that experience

Anyones methods may not work in anyone else's tank. Some people feed dry foods and some fresh clams, some use NSW (as I do) and some use fake sea water. Some have 3-2" fish in a 300 gallon tank and some have 18 groupers fish in a nano. There are just to many variables not to mention (as this thread shows) That some people feel algae is a harbinger of doom. It is not.

Algae grows on every healthy reef in the sea and if you SCUBA dive you will see that.

Remote Island in the South Pacific



When the herbivores disappear from the reef for whatever cause, algae takes over.
Normally there are millions of surgeonfish cruising over a reef which cut the algae very short, then urchins, snails, chitens etc, eat the rest.

Most of the oceans contain no fish as it is to dark and deep. We see a lot of fish because we only can see relatively shallow water but the ocean is 7 miles deep in some places.

Hawaii, rocks covered in urchins so no algae.



Urchins and a CUC won't work well in a home tank because they are not eliminating the algae, just recycling the nutrients back in the water so it grows again. A means to eliminate the nutrients like an algae scrubber is key.

So we want algae but we also want to limit it so it doesn't cover the corals. If a tank has absolutely no algae, it isn't a healthy reef. There is algae in the tissues of the corals which is needed by the corals to live.

I have quite a bit of algae in my tank which I view as a sign or health and which allows me to keep and spawn many types of fish because in that algae is the beginning of the food chain and is loaded with pods and all sorts of tiny worms and creatures which is the reason I can keep many dragonettes, pipefish and other small fish for their normal lifespan and have them spawn and never buy pods.

 

[AustinBabler]

I let the algae do its thing…except hair algae. I despise the hair algae. Recently I’ve had an out break of sea lettuce. No idea where it came from but it outcompeted the little patch of bubble algae the size of a penny and The last remaining patches of hair algae. I’d rather look at a macro algae instead of a nuisance one but it’s getting a little extreme.

 

[reeftankdude]

Three Turbo Snails for every 20 gallons of water and run a little Seachem Phosguard 24/7. Make sure the water you use to mix the salt into is zero ppm.

 

[biecacka]

Emerald crabs et. al. / manual removal?

Does anyone use emerald crabs to controle bubble algae.

I have some small amounts of bubble algae on my candy canes skeleton and on my torch corals skeleton. I have one emerald crab and he hasn't touched it. Its a 29 gallon mixed reed so I know I cant have any tangs but do I have any other options besides manual removal. Could I get more emerald...

www.reef2reef.com

How to deal with Bubble Algae

Bubble algae is one of those nuisance algaes that can take over a tank (ask @Rakie... he knows...). It can also be one of the most frustrating to eradicate because of trying to find predators that will take it out. The one predator I know of that is usually the go-to IMO is the emerald...

www.reef2reef.com

Plenty of previous threads on this topic, or other results on Google.

Yeah I have searched most of them. No real luck with emerald crabs. Maybe I didn’t add enough or something. Hard to remove the rock structures when they are larger and have coral on them. itll take time, I’m sure. Or I hope…..hahaha

corey

 

[brandon429]

I noticed nobody started any work threads this week in the nuisance algae forum asking for live time jobs



stay safe out there heh

-I kicked up one, but passivity still wins out/I have to offer 100 times to get 1 person who's willing to win.

has anyone noticed that asking for an ID is the trained response for algae invasions, as if genus matters...

an interesting way to see algae invasions in reefing is that they're psychological-choice based consequence and not biological or chemical in nature. if they were biological or chemical in nature, it would be easy to run work threads in the disease forum and results would abound to the point ten would have already been linked after poke-challenge here on page one.

but since they involve human resolve levels #1, and training for passivity in tank management circles is tantamount to reef tank invasions, we have what we see each week in the nuisance algae forum/lots of help requests and so few cures I don't know of any recent ones.


it's amazing what results we get for others, in their reef tanks in the nuisance algae forum, when their resolve rises above complacency. being fed up and willing to take decisive action is the #1 missing trait in outbound reef tank invasion work.



outbound work on file (us doing work in other people's tanks and they post the final results, not us) is the only thing that evolves reef tank invasion control, at home work in our tank does not evolve it.

 

[brandon429]

if it's not obvious, my goal is to push peers way far out of their comfort zone and into where the work is


so that we can actually test and evolve best practices vs rehash the 90s in all algae discussions


reef sages, consultants, rule-makers...if they're not doing work in the trenches then that's a mighty safe perspective to write best practices from.

here's who I'd like to see actually doing live time work in the nuisance algae forum:

Dr. Tim

Mike Paletta

Rich Ross

anyone who works or writes for reefbuilders blog

anyone who has ever published an article regarding marine algae control or best practices

we aren't going to see them doing live-time work in the nuisance algae forum, is the bet.


Im amazed that macna speech writers don't want to actually do the live time work first, then give a talk on that using all updated link examples.

 

[shnapper20]

For 2 yrs struggled with algae i had 30 snail 6 tang algae blenny they either didnt like it or couldnt keep up. I believe it was green hair algae and bryopsis . After scrubbing manual removal twice a week i was about to chuck it in. In last effort i dosed reef flux and vibrant . None of my sps died or my fish after about a month there appeared to be no algae. Im still dosing reef flux, im on auto water change and i dose the new water. Vibrant i tried stopping and the algae started to come back , im now dosing 10 ml/ wk in a 200gal system and it appears to be under control. Its still there i find it on the power heads and in the sump. My corals sps and fish are all doing well. I intend to stop adding the reef flux in the next few months and see what happens. Hopefully ill get away with only dosing vibrant once a week.

 

[shnapper20]

My tank is full of pods as well. 3 wks ago i started carbon dosing. Fingers crossed i can stop the vibrant once i dial in the carbon dosing