ID macro algea please.

[Myanth]

I am having trouble getting a picture uploaded so this may be pointless but I'll ask anyways and keep working on the picture.

I have an issue with purple macro algea. This stuff grows in pads almost like a potscrubber or SOS pad. Very coarse and stringy, deep purple with very small bubbles on the strands. It does not grow very rapidly and never grows out in strings, always in pads with no colour variation towards the root. Although it is a great media for pods and little bugs to breed, I am starting to have issue with it shading some of my slower growing corals so I need to remove some. I haven't as yet found anything that will eat it, so manual harvest has been my only recourse although it will re-cover any area that I have removed it from quite quickly. If anyone knows a natural inhabitant that may feast on it, I would love to know.

Thanks.
Mike

[Static]

does it look kind of like ?


I had something similar to this and found that mexican turbo snails ate the stubs after I picked most of it out by hand. I still have the odd strand, but the snails are keeping it down pretty good.

I think the name I found for it was asparagopsis taxiformis

Just found this link and it looks pretty good http://www.aquatouch.com/algae.htm

[Ruth]

It sounds to me like cotton ball or cotton candy algea (don't ask me for the latin or proper name for this crap). Sort of a reddish purple and does grow sort of like cotton candy. It is a pain in the rear. The only thing I found that seemed to eat it was a sea hare and/or MEXICAN turbo snails. I added both at the same time and one or the other of them ate it all up. I have read that it is the turbo snails (and you have to make sure they are the Mexican turbos) but I am sure that the sea hare ate it as well. I know that there was a couple of threads on RC at about the same time that I was battling this and that is what made me try these methods.

[Myanth]

I still don't have a picture, but it is much more coarse than the pic you put up. It's strands are about 1-2 mm thick and it doesn't float away at all. I have seen it as ornamental until recently. I'll keep working on the pic. (turbos don't like it)

[dockrat]

try looking up ochtodes secundiramea or wrightiella blodgettii... I have battled the first algea and won it was a long battle. I basicly just hand picked it off make sure not to allow the little peices to get back into the aquarium because it will spread... and for the problem spots i fryed them with a small blow torch (very effective for killing algea if you can remove the rock from the tank)
kris