My battle with dinoflagellates

[Llorgon]

Originally Posted by Frogger

I use this to scrub the rocks https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/small...ood-grips.html I bought it off amazon.ca.

Just take the rock carefully out of the tank trying not to dump the detritus into the tank. Scrub them until you remove all traces of hair algae. You can spot treat with straightup 3% peroxide for tough to reach areas. Not the difficult to do just takes time. It is important after doing it to turkey baste your rocks regularly and not let any detritus settle on them.

You also need to look at maintaining your sandbed before it becomes part of the problem. See this thread,
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/th...t-many.230281/

This thread has a lot of useful information in it.
it is amazing how much detritus builds up in your sand. I actually ended up siphoning most of it out and only left some in one end of the tank for the wrasse. Mostly because I had a really bad cyano outbreak that took me over a year to get under control.

You are lucky you do not have a lot of rocks in your tank.

Ok I will have to try the rock scrubbing.

The sand cleaning is interesting. I definitely thought the stuff living in the sand was more fragile than it seems. I am quite bad at cleaning the sand as well.

Also made me think of the sump... I don't think I have cleaned that at all. Next water change I will have to suck it out. Will probably be a big help.

Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

I always liked emerald crabs in a small tank like yours I’d only put one .
Reefers say never trust a crab .
They are opportunist so if they run out of algae the might try something else .
All the years of having emerald crabs I have never got a gouge one .
Now hermits yea bad killed my snails just because they wanted to try a new shell then went back to there old shell . Go figure

I might have to try a emerald crab. If it can help in the gha fight why not.

Anyone tried a urchin? I heard they were great algae eaters, but with my track record of snails I'm not sure how well it would do.

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[Dash]

I love my tuxedo urchin. Spike is a nice small fellow & doesn’t cause too much trouble (I tried a beautiful white urchin that grew enormous in a couple of months & he disrupted things so much that I took him back to JL). Sometimes I move him onto a rock that needs cleaning and he’ll do it haha. He’s also been with me since the beginning so around 3 years old now at least. I don’t have big long clumps of HA though, just small patches here & there. He scrapes rock clean, leaving a white trail

[Frogger]

I have a tuxedo urchin you could have for a reasonable amount. Not much algae left in my tank and he loves putting things on his back, snails, small corals ect. Kind of want to get rid of him.

[Llorgon]

Originally Posted by Dash

I love my tuxedo urchin. Spike is a nice small fellow & doesn’t cause too much trouble (I tried a beautiful white urchin that grew enormous in a couple of months & he disrupted things so much that I took him back to JL). Sometimes I move him onto a rock that needs cleaning and he’ll do it haha. He’s also been with me since the beginning so around 3 years old now at least. I don’t have big long clumps of HA though, just small patches here & there. He scrapes rock clean, leaving a white trail

I'm impressed with your ability to keep things alive for so long. I would hope it would eat the hair algae. I have a yellow tang that ignores it so I don't want more things that won't touch it.

Originally Posted by Frogger

I have a tuxedo urchin you could have for a reasonable amount. Not much algae left in my tank and he loves putting things on his back, snails, small corals ect. Kind of want to get rid of him.

I will probably take you up on that. I need to get my nitrates down a bit first. They are at 15-20ppm and from a quick google about them it seems they can be sensitive to nitrates.