My 8L (2G) pico tank

[immortaly007]

Yeah. Might have starved. I usually feed algae pellets if I notice that the tank doesn’t have algae just in case for the grazers. I don’t keep a trochus anymore and switched to a diamond goby.

That algae looks like dinos but I can’t confirm. But it looks like snot. Does it have bubbles? If so it’s not algae at all and the inverts are going to be miserable.

I am suspecting it's a mix of dino's and regular algae types: some of it looks like snot with bubbles, others look more like hairs or filaments. I plan to confirm with a microscope soon.

I went to the LFS today. They suspect/confirmed the snail has indeed died, and that is why the GSP closed. They advised to manually clean/scrub the tank and rocks, do bigger water changes for a couple days, and maybe at a later point get a Clibanarius rutilus or emerald crab to keep the rockwork clean. I'm gonna look into both to see if that makes sense.

The GSP by now has opened up a bit more (after the water change I suspect, and the fact that the (probably dead) snail is now out of the main water body.

 

[bubbgee]

Long hair algae have very few predators outside of tangs and pitho/emerald crabs. Snails and hermits will not touch that unless they are tiny small algae. Reef Flux will work but the tank might be too tiny for it. So suggest to manually brush off the rocks and reset the tank if you can. I've done this with my 2.5 gallon before and sprayed the rocks with peroxide to help clear out the algae quick.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/hydrogen-peroxide-for-green-hair-algae.516320/

 

[immortaly007]

I did a lot of scrubbing (with a toothbrush) and a pretty big water change. At least it looks better now. The GSP is also looking a bit better.

 

[bubbgee]

Cool. Time to get some more clean up crew. Maybe an urchin for the longer strands of GHA.