Good Uvla or Bad Uvla?

[Ryebreadiest]

Hi all,
I’m nearly a month into a tank upgrade and running into a fairly quickly growing green algae that seems to be some form of Uvla. I’m trying out reborn media as a substrate and it’s spreading along it (little to none anywhere else). I think I had a little bit of it on a frag in one of the nanos that moved into this tank, but it never grew much.

I’ve since dropped the white lights from 40% to 10% (pair of AI primes on a 30” tank) but I can’t tell yet if that’s slowing it down. The live rock is a mix of my old tank rock and some new KPaquatics wet live rock. How aggressively should I be fighting this? I’ve removed a bunch of the larger reborn pieces that had the algae to do a peroxide dip, but there are still some pieces that have it.

Cleanup crew is mostly just blue leg hermits and trochus snails, but I orders two turbos and some money cowries today that I’ll be putting in. NO has been in the 3-10 range and phosphate in the 0.05-0.1 range over the last week, although it’s been dropping plausibly due to the algae uptake. 5 small fish fed about half a cube of frozen a day.

Should I see what the turbos and cowries can do with bluer lights? Find a small fox face? Reef flux? Couple of pictures attached. There seems to be a fairly benign species of Uvla and a much more aggressive form, not sure which I have. I don’t HATE the look of it but it’s starting to grow on plastic in the tank as well. Thanks!

 

[KrisReef]

I think a Foxface would eat that like candy and then the problem could quickly be solved?
It does look like ulva. Algae growth on the clean surfaces of the aragonite is to be expected.

 

[slingfox]

That looks like ulva to me. I was growing that in my refugium but then it spread into the display tank and grew all over. My one spot Foxface and yellow tang picked away at it but could not keep up with the explosive growth. I eventually removed think a from my refugium and then did a combination of scrubbing, peroxide dip and Reeflux to get rid of it. It has come back in small pieces a few times but i remove it manually when I see it.

 

[Ryebreadiest]

Thanks for the replies, I’m gonna let the snails (get her after Xmas) and the blue light with some peroxide dips for affected reborn media work for a bit. Reef flux does seem like a safe option if the forums and Reddit are accurate.

 

[Ryebreadiest]

Update: added a tiny tuxedo urchin, a pincushion urchin and 2x turbo snails. Saw the tuxedo on my Tunze 9004 skimmer before bed, and when I woke up the side that had the urchin had been cleaned off of the 4 or 5 small leaves of ulva it had. Also saw one of the turbos eating it off a reborn piece in the substrate. I’ve been watching a few pieces to keep track of growth and the shift to blue heavy lights + a 15 day acclimation mode on the lights starting at 70% seems to really have slowed growth rate.

I also witnessed both emerald crabs and hermits eating the algae that I had dipped in peroxide.

Phosphates are creeping up which I’m assuming is due to reduced growth. Will probably continue with this strategy for a bit as the danger of a rapid proliferation of the Algae seems to have abated.