Algea takeover: I.D please

Hello all, i have recently finished my first sump/fuge build. a few days ago i stocked it with some chaeto and calupera, and some mangroves. I made a sump/fuge to reduce the amount of pesky algea in my DT.

I have never up until now had algea like this in my DT and would like some insight into how it all started and what i shold have done to prevent this.

To me it looks like GHA or maybe some sort of turf algea. I have never had either so i can't say that i've seen them but from the descriptions i've read i think its one or the other. It's short haired, thick and dark green. Most bothersome of all is my entire cleanup crew ignores it! I think i have a very diverse clean up crew so someone should want to eat it. also my foxface usually grazes on the LR and i thought forsure it would be interested in this but no...it ignores it too. I don't understand why all of a sudden i get this stuff and what bothers me more is i built the fuge and sump so this stuff would not grow in the DT. What did i do wrong? and how can i get this stuff off my LR? any suggestions??

 

Looks like you are right with your ID. An excess of nitrate and phosphate are the usual causes. You may have detritus accumulating in the area also.

Scrape it off carefully out of the water if at all possible. If it isn't as thick the crew might finish it off.

Check for dead zones in the flow, this allows hydrogen sulfide to form and it is super fuel for algae.

 

a couple lettuce nudibranches and/or fuzzy chitons will eat the gha..



thats my nudibranch.. have had it for a couple months now..

 

GHA for sure. i had some on a rock that i acquired and i nuked the rock before i put it in the tank. if the rock isnt very lively you could nuke it. otherwise starve it of its nutrients and it'll die off.

my emerald crab ate some of mine...

 

thanks for the tips guys....today when i looked the GHA seemed to have decresed in size so i think i have a taker on eating the stuff!

 

if i went the nudibranch way would i have to remove it after words or does it just target GHA? i heard of nudibrances eating zoa's and other corals too..??

I'm hoping my Fuge will start to win the battle and hopefully starve the GHA before it has a population explosion in my tank.

 

my emerald crab does a great job too.

 

Trust in your fuge' it just takes time.... I have a sally lightfoot that does work on the stuff, but you have to pull it off the rocks and let the CUC get to the "roots" (I think the ujnder stuff is more tender lol)

 

The lettuce nudibranch will not eat corals, just algae...

You may want to rethink keeping caulerpa... If I were you, I'd take it out of your refugium and just keep the cheato. It can "go sexual" and cause a disaster.. If it gets out-competed by the cheato, and it probably will, it will die off and release it's contents (basically the bad stuff you want it to absorb). I would take it out before it gets rooted at all. Trust me on this, I've had it before... it's considered by many these days to be a nuisance algae.