Reef Discussion

[Joele]

I have been looking for a way to control the hair algae on the sand in my nano tank.. My phosphates are undetectable (lots of GFO running) and my nitrate low (but not zero as clam prefers a low level), but since a few weeks in hospital (near start of year) where my tank got neglected I have not been able to eliminate the long filamentous hair algae which I think is feeding off the missed fish food and detritus..

So I have been looking for sealife that can control it, unfortunately the fish that would help are too big for my 18" cube and so I was looking for crustations.. Yesterday I walked into coburg aquarium and noticed a lot of dwarf hermits, they of course had no idea what they were or what they ate..

I worked out they have two distinct species one is clearly the Yellow striped hermit as linked below..

http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/Find out about/Animals of Queensland/Crustaceans/Common marine crustaceans/Hermit Crabs Squat Lobsters and allies/Yellow-striped Hermit#.U-bPSvmSwl8

They look OK as they are omnivorous and so will eat algae but the other species was more interesting it looks 100% identical to the one linked below i.e. the yellow tip hermit crab. The one pictured on the link below might as well be my larger one (relative term as they are small hermits) is indistinguishable from it..

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497 501 2604&pcatid=2604

I guess the question is as these hermits come from WA, can a Vietnamese species be found there?? And if this is them, they are a useful addition I think... I have glued all my coral onto the rocks already as snails knocked them down, so that shouldn't be a problem.. My only other concern is what my Coral Banded Shrimp thinks of them but they haven't gone near each other yet..

What I did first was hang them in the tank and take a big chunk of some of the long hair algae that grows in patches on my sand and drop it in with them, they proceeded to fight over it, and it was gone in a few minutes... ;-)

Anyway will post back here in a few weeks as they sound like a very useful clean up crew addition for dead spots in the sand as they live aquaria site claims they are a "voracious eater of nuisance algae and cyanobacteria". I might have to supplement some nori sheets for them, but that is a good problem if it gets to that..

 

[ezza]

You might need to also figure out what is keeping your phosphates up. If your reactor is the only thing reducing the level of phosphates in the tank, you may have a greater issue. If you check the level without GFO, you should try to reduce it naturally and the GFO can be considered an additional maintenance system. It sounds like the level is too high and the GFO is providing a crutch that just isn't enough.

I'd investigate your lights, are they hitting the right spectrum? Are you over feeding? Is the skimmer working well enough? Is there too much detritus under the sand? I had a bit of a blow out for similar reasons. I changed the light tubes, reduced the feeding frequency, kicked the skimmer until it worked properly, cleaned as much algae off the rocks manually as I could. I then even turned some rocks over so the algae was starved of light. I vacuumed the crap out of the sand (literally). I nearly died when I saw the colour of the water from the complete sand overhaul. It was only a few months after setting up the tank, but it resembled what happens after you get food poisoning. Just gross.

You may find that after doing some extra maintenance, the phos level drops completely and the problem goes away.

Best of luck.

 

[holly]

I'll do the same in my tank (had some recent issue with cyano) and see if it helps me as well.