Critter for hair algae
 

What is the best clean up critter to eat hair algae? Thanks for your suggestions.

Lawnmower Blenny, they’ll handle it pretty quick.


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It depends on how big your tank is. Mexican turbo snails or urchins will tear through it. Many different fish will eat it. If you have a LARGE tank, a tang or rabbitfish would be my pick though blennies are super cool. You can also try a reef safe chemical like algae buster or whatever it's called now.

It's a 20 long. So I'm not looking to add fish to eat the hair algae.

How old is the tank? Aside from using a decent water source and applying things like GFO or GAC I would just add a couple Turbo snails and hopefully this stuff will burn itself out over time.

The tank is a new start up so I'm thinking this is the problem. I do use ro/di water that I make myself so I know it good quality.

Can you post a picture?
Depending on how bad/how long the algae is different solutions may be better than the other..
Once hair algae gets to a certain length many critters will not touch it..

It would also be beneficial to post your nitrate and phosphate test results and to attempt to use specifics and avoid generalized statements like "new start up",etc... does that mean 1 week? 3 months,etc...?

Sea hare is all that worked for me. Tried a lawn mower blenny, tang, urchin, emerald crab, and turbo snails

My Mexican Turbo won't touch green hair algae. Still trying to find a decent solution for my 90 gallon, but then again I don't let it get out of hand (scrub with a toothbrush).

+1

Emerald crabs will do a good job


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Lawn mower blenny or sea hare.

NOTE on SeaHares: extremely sensitive durimg acclimation, they easily die if you dont do some sort of 2hr drip.

They are also very very sensitive to NITRATES. If your Nitritrate are higher than 10mg/l it will most likely die in a couple of days

some swear by salt water mollies

Not only that, it’ll starve after it eats all the hair algae in a small tank. Heck, even in a large tank. Our local reef club had one for years that got passed around to different peoples tanks.

Yeah sea hares are sensitive and can nuke your tank, just take precaution and see if your LFS let's you rent it or sell it back once you're done with it.