ID Help: Foot long Green "Hair" Algae

[brian2kgt]

I have a green hair-like algae starting to cover my rocks. It's nothing like regular GHA, it grows in single isolated strands and is about the width of a human hair and grows very long. If you watch the video below, at the beginning of the video I pan and show a piece that is over 12 inches long. It looks just like very very fine Chaetomorpha. I tried searching and only found one other thread with something similar but there wasn't an ID.

I first noticed it on the shells of some dwarf ceriths I got from an online vendor out of Florida. It started to spread so I did a round of Flux Rx to try to get rid of it and a GHA problem I had. The Flux Rx worked great and got rid of all of it and the GHA but I also let my PO4 bottom out and dinos took its place. I beat the dinos and now that the tank is flourishing again it came back worse. Regular GHA is totally gone though.

Really curious if anyone can give an ID of this stuff so I can learn more about it. Also, any ideas of something that will eat it. I have an emerald crab and Mexican Turbo in QT now(learned my lesson after the ceriths). I'd rather not put in hermits but will if I have to. I'm also very hesitant to use Flux Rx again after beating dinos but may have to if I have no other options because I know it works.



4X Magnification

10X Magnification

 

[andrewey]

Fascinating! I thought I knew until I saw your scope photos. I'll check some of my references and see if we can figure out a name- pretty striking morphology!

 

[brian2kgt]

Fascinating! I thought I knew until I saw your scope photos. I'll check some of my references and see if we can figure out a name- pretty striking morphology!

Here are some better scope shots. I think the algae was drying out or damaged in the first set.

 

[andrewey]

Interesting. Your second set of photos look much more like chaetomorpha (e.g. chaetomorpha linum). I'll play around with it some more and see if I can't give you a better answer.

 

[brian2kgt]

So I thought my side glass which I don't clean often just had normal film algae on it until I took a closer look. Nope, it's this stuff also. It is completely covering the whole side pane of glass.

 

[HB AL]

I have a couple questions I need to ask but 1st hopefully someone figures out what it is.
1st question is why did you let it get that long to begin with and 2nd how long did it take to grow to that lenth.

 

[brian2kgt]

I have a couple questions I need to ask but 1st hopefully someone figures out what it is.
1st question is why did you let it get that long to begin with and 2nd how long did it take to grow to that lenth.

99% of the strands are less than 6 inches long. I'm almost positive this one long one must of grown overnight. I've been looking at the tank a lot recently and before lights out yesterday I swear there wasn't anything longer than 6 inches, but this thing is now about 16 inches. I've been letting it grow today just out of curiousity.

During my recent battle with dinos I let my nitrates get a little too high (~50). After a couple of water changes I am now down to 20 and PO4 at 0.052.

 

[brian2kgt]

I was thinking and it is entirely possible that the long strand might of been wrapped around the rocks in a way that I didn't notice it until it untangled itself. It just seems unlikely that it grew that quickly.

Looking at scope shots of chaetomorpha linum, this does look very similar. It's just weird though because I've never heard of chaeto being this invasive and anchoring to rocks/sand/glass/snails. This stuff also seems much finer than normal chaeto. After noticing the growth on the side glass I may have to go with the nuclear option and hit it with Flux Rx again.

 

[HB AL]

I would remove as much as possible versus letting it grow.

 

[brian2kgt]

Just realized my entire back glass is absolutely coated with this stuff, mistakenly thought it was just film algae again. Microscope pics of a scraping I took of the pictured area. Here you can see the base and that it is actually growing from a bunch.

 

[brian2kgt]

I thought I should mention, if you notice in all the microscope pics something that looks like small shards of glass. During my fight with Amphidinium dinos, I was dosing sodium silicate without a test kit. I heard the Salifert kit was unreliable and I didn't want to buy a Hanna for a one time use situation. After dosing for a while, I bought a Seachem silicate test(still not sure if reliable) and my sample result matched the color of the included 6ppm reference solution so I stopped dosing. Have done three big water changes since then so I figured the levels would be down. Wondering if what we are seeing in the scope shots is silicate and if maybe this stuff loves it.

 

[HB AL]

So do you dose aminos? I've noticed that although my corals love the stuff and grow quicker when I dose aminos I also noticed that if I overdose aminos although the corals like it and it doesnt hurt them that the algae really likes aminos and starts to grow crazy fast. So it's a fine line on dosing aminos and overdosing them causing the algae to start growing at a rapid pace. Over the years I've figured out that fine line but still on occasion add a little to much just by looking at how much algae is growing and the pace it grows at. If your not dosing aminos disregard everything I just said. Just trying to give ya some other ideas on how and why that algae is growing so quick. And on the few occasions I do add a little to much aminos I've noticed it takes a good month or so without dosing any aminos before the algae growing slows down to a crawl allowing my cuc to keep up although the corals love it as far as growth and color is concerned. For now dont just let it grow rampid manually remove as much as you can without adding chemicals to subdue it. Only algae I fight with chemicals is bryopsys and I think I've finally won that fight (knock on wood)
My tank is stuffed with fish and corals and I feed the fish 12 to 14 various Hikari cubes a day so I've got plenty of nutrients going in but between all that food and fish poop it's not enough to cause an algae issue. Just trying to give you some other options to look at. Good luck

 

[brian2kgt]

No, I don't dose aminos. I agree with you about not adding chemicals unless you have to, I'm gonna try to fight this first with manual removal, cleanup crew, and good husbandry. I kinda regret adding the fluconazole the first time and am going to save it as a last resort. This tank is only 5 months old, I think I just need to have a little more patience. Thanks for the advice.

 

[andrewey]

Just wanted to let you know- I haven't forgotten about you! I haven't been successful yet, but I'm still on the hunt

 

[Llg]

Hello. Any luck on identifying the best way to remove this and what it was? I noticed about 10 strands that popped up after lights went out yesterday. Nitrates are 2 and phosphates are 0.08. This was all dry rock and I have had it for 4 months now.

 

[brian2kgt]

Never found out what it was but I just scraped it off the glass and once I got my Nitrates under control it eventually disappeared off the rocks too. Guess maybe it was just a phase of the tank maturing. I would say just give it some time if it isn't too bad but if it gets out of control, a fluconazole product like Reef Flux works well for most types of green algae.

 

[Butcher333]

I should post a photo of what I believe to be the same thing you have. I thought it was time to see if someone knew what it was and found this thread. My sump is where it grows the most now. When it was in my display it would grow to over 3ft in length and tangle up on itself of course. It will fill my sump up completely. I can grab a handful and just keep pulling until almost all of it is removed. It’s ridiculous. Nitrates are undetectable but can’t be true. I got to zero(salifert reading) nitrates by the following
My phosphates were too low (.01), so I dosed phosphate so I could vodka dose to get nitrates down from 25ppm. down to .1 trying to help. Nothing touches the stuff.
I had originally started off with chaeto, ulva, ogo etc from the barn and the chaeto was never able to grow because of the ulva. Then this stuff showed up and choked out all my ulva. Something happened to my chaeto so that moving it in an attempt to regrow it without competition and it just continued to die. I was able to save the ulva from a few scraps in my pod tank. Most forms of algae I’ve been able to get under control. This stuff is bulletproof. I even dosed some with vibrant in a separate test 2.5gal tank and nothing.
I am now wondering if the outside air intake for my skimmer is responsible for bringing this stuff in. Some soil born strain. It does grow fast. Like really fast. A strand a few inches in the morning can reach the other side of my display(36”) in a day. Don’t add amino to the tank. WOW! Bad idea.
I appear to have some in my freshwater tank too. Weird.

 

[BeSaltyReefer]

Pretty sure I have this in my tank now. I'm at about the 6 month mark of the cycle/ start. Test corals have done great and I'm just letting it go through the uglies and for the most part is cleaning up nicely, however over the weekend I noticed a few little strands. Now 2 days later a ton of them. Hoping this just part of the cycle too, but did this stuff ever get identified? Does it just disappear?

 

[brian2kgt]

Pretty sure I have this in my tank now. I'm at about the 6 month mark of the cycle/ start. Test corals have done great and I'm just letting it go through the uglies and for the most part is cleaning up nicely, however over the weekend I noticed a few little strands. Now 2 days later a ton of them. Hoping this just part of the cycle too, but did this stuff ever get identified? Does it just disappear?

I never found out what it was but it didn't stick around too long for me. I scraped it off the glass and it kind of just went away on it's own from the rocks. My tank was around the same age as yours when I had this stuff(5 months). I would guess it's just one of the "uglies" that might show up in a new tank.

 

[WheatToast]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/chaetomorpha-with-a-holdfast.898045/