What is this algae?

Reefing_Engineer · Oct 4, 2020

Hi! I have a 5 month old system and am starting to see some new algae pop up, but this one looks like a spiders web with dust in it. I would think it was vermatid snails however you can see in the picture it is growing in the glass with no sort of body so my next thought was some sort of algae? (Ignore the GSP I just did a water change and had to blast it a little to get the sand off)

I just want to make sure it’s not something that is bad! Thank you guys!

Coralsdaily · Oct 4, 2020

looks like good ole hair algae. nothing an army of hermits can't conquer (for now).

vetteguy53081 · Oct 4, 2020

It is diatom algae blend and looks like its becomming a mat algae. See if you can blow it loose with a baster and siphon up the loose matter. If not, add the following snails which should get to it:
cerith -3
astrea -4
Nerite -3
turbo - 4
and about 6-8 blue leg hermits

Reefing_Engineer · Oct 4, 2020

stevenliu9 said:
looks like good ole hair algae. nothing an army of hermits can't conquer (for now).

Okay thanks for the help, Steven! The one on the back just didn't look green so I guess it threw me off!

vetteguy53081 said:
It is diatom algae blend and looks like its becomming a mat algae. See if you can blow it loose with a baster and siphon up the loose matter. If not, add the following snails which should get to it:
cerith -3
astrea -4
Nerite -3
turbo - 4
and about 6-8 blue leg hermits

And thanks for the tip vetteguy, I have a 10-gallon tank though and already have 2 cerith, 2 Astrea, and one scarlet hermit crab (the other died about a week ago) do you think that they should be enough to take care of it?

vetteguy53081 · Oct 4, 2020

Reefing_Engineer said:
Okay thanks for the help, Steven! The one on the back just didn't look green so I guess it threw me off!

And thanks for the tip vetteguy, I have a 10-gallon tank though and already have 2 cerith, 2 Astrea, and one scarlet hermit crab (the other died about a week ago) do you think that they should be enough to take care of it?

Add 2 turbo and 2 trochus or nerite