Sea Hare

so i got this sea hare( blue spotted one) its about 2 inches long.
i have a major hair algae prob goin on right now. working on lowering all my levels, added a fuge, phosphate reactor the whole 9 yards.
prob is this thing is not touching the hair algae.
ive had it for about a week and i dont see any diffrence.
should i return it and get a 5-6 inch sea hare?

 

i've heard the praises of sea hares and tried one for a week. the thing did nothing but hang on the class. i physically placed him on the rocks with algae only to have him go back to the glass. i don't know if i got a bad one but mine never touched my GHA.

 

My sea hare did some major work on my gha, My tank was coverdddddddddd. he made that s**t spotless!

 

thats exactly what mine does, just chills on the glass

 

What kind of filamentous algae do you have? If it's Bryopsis, nothing will touch it. You need to aggressively lower nutrients and raise Magnesium and pH. Also, the blue spotted sea hares eat nothing compared to the ugly ones that look like a piece of excrement.

 

its deff green hair algae. i guess ill go pick up the turd looking one and see if hes any better. i just want this stuff gone. its driving me crazy!

 

my brown one ate all the hair algae then started on my green star polyps.if a brown one does'nt do it then maybe its not gha

 

All the sea hares tend to have differing diets, so you probably need the right one. If it helps, the excrement-looking ones are Dolabrifera dolabrifera.

Not much will eat Bryopsis, but a few species of Elysia will eat it. I have pics of one that was grazing on it, but unfortunately, it's not a named species (although it's pretty similar to Elysia ornata, which may or may not eat Bryopsis).

Cheers,


Don

 

sooooo i went to the lfs last night and traded my little blue spotted hare for a bigger brown one. got it home and acclimated it for about a hour. put him in the tank and he was moving around eating hair algae a little bit but nothing crazy. seemed to be doin ok. then i look for him this morning......DEAD i checked the levels in the tank and everything was fine. there was 2 snails a blue leg hermit and my cleaner all over him. i have no idea what happened

 

ive givin up on seahares because i cant get 1 to stay alive.i have crazy gha for them but for some reason im not ment to have 1 lol .2 power head deaths and 2 unknown reason deaths