Cali Kid Corals

What's your non-tang/foxface algae crew of choice?

S

sfsuphysics

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So my anemfuge has some decently LED power over it. However I'm noticing a kind of brown stringy algae forming on the rocks and in the sand (seems to grab onto the sand too, so not exactly cyano although bubbles do seem to be clinging to some of it). Now the main tank has no algae going on it, 4 tangs and a foxface constantly picking on rocks made this happen and there's even coraline algae growing on rocks (big shocker for me since I usually grow it much better on the acrylic panes!). The lighting spectrum is identical in the anemfuge too, however there is significantly less flow.

So I'm trying to figure out some non-tangs to do the dirty work of cleaning up the algae a bit. I was thinking hermits, but I'm not sure how effective they'd be. Perhaps some turbo snails could work. I wouldn't mind any less-than-reefsafe fish for the area too like dwarf angels, although I don't have much experience with them as far as algae eaters. The anemones currently have a little more than a dozen clownfish in them, so I'm not worried too much about the anemones getting picked at since I'm sure the clowns will get all attacky as they get larger. And the anemfuge is a good size area (6 feet x 3 feet x 18") so angels could work if they actually worked as a cleanup crew... but I really want to try not to have any more tangs if possible...
 
Lots of Trochus snails and a few Turbos is where I would start.
A fun thought is a fuzzy Chiton or two. May scratch acrylic, but it is a sump, right?

Fish in a sump means another place you have to feed. May or may not be an issue.
 
Well it's not a sump it's an anemfuge! :D Seriously though, viewable "pretty" sump :)

And there will be fish there anyways, as I will have clownfish there.
 
Hmmm, could be dinoflagellates, that never occurred to me.

Photoperiod is violet LEDs, on 12(ish) hours, blue channel 10.5hours, royal blue 9.5 hours, white channel 7 hours (I think... I forget the exact settings on the controller).
 
i've noticed that anytime i put in any CUC, the hermits always eat snails that are equal in size. I try to go now with hermits and turbos, and as few as possible so they don't all die and poo so much, creating more work for me to clean up.
 
yeah I grabbed one turbo from the top and put him below and the SOB decided to climb over the overflow partition and the way the foot was laying out figured he got partially sucked by the return pump, so tossed it outside for the wildlife to feast on.

As to the photoperiod, would be an issue because it's tied into the same controller board, so the photoperiods are synced up for now. I could unplug say the white channel from that LED so there'd be less intensity, although I do know that algae does love blue light as well. The rocks I grab from there and put int he tank though, they get cleaned within 24 hours... I just don't want to put any anemones up there, which unfortunately one ended up there by riding the reverse water slide, I'm not quite sure how they are getting to the return pump either as I did put up a plastic barrier that I thought should keep them in check.
 
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