Algae Question

[Morel]

I'm starting to get brown and green Algae growing in my saltwater tank. Also starting to get that purple stuff growing on my dead coral too (From the seeder live rock I put in. YAY it's working!)

What do I get to keep it under control (especially the stuff thats growing on the sand). I know what fish to control it in FW tanks, but SW is new to me =p

Also, The local fish store has "Chocolate chip Starfish" for 4 dollars, what type of stars are these and would they be good for my tank? (55 Gallon, 2 clowns, and 2 damsels)

thanks!

[mogurnda]

In FW tanks, you use fish. In SW, snails and hermits are your friends. For the sand, I have found scarlet hermits to be good grazers. A lot of people avoid hermits, because they have a somewhat deserved reputation for attacking snails. Although I don't have room for them, I hear good things about fighting conchs for the sandbed.
For the rocks and glass, I use astreas, little strombus maculatus snails, plus the small herd of limpets that rode in on my live rock. However, people have trouble with astreas falling on the sandbed and being unable to turn themselves over. Trochus get rave reviews as grazers, I just haven't tried them. Nerites are also good grazers, but I have yet to find any that will stay in the tank, because most are intertidal snails.
Chocolate chip stars are predatory, and should be avoided if you want to keep corals.

[kreblak]

Brown Algae (diatoms) can be controlled very easily by a number of critters. Turbo, Astrea, and Trochus snails do good work getting the brown stuff off the glass, rocks, and sand. Red legged hermit crabs also do a great job on the sand. Blue legged hermit crabs will help with the brown, but are great at getting the green algae. Candy Stripe Cleaner shrimp are also great are removing green algae. Emerald Mithrax crabs are good for cleaning various types of algae.

For fish, tangs and butterflies love to graze on algae, and will spend all day picking at your glass and rock. One word of caution on the blue legged hermits, though: they can be real buttheads when it come to your snails. Sometimes they will kill a snail if they are able to, just to check out the housing potential of its shell.

[Morel]

Be eaiser to ask this question..

I have had my tank running for 2 months. I have one peice of live rock with purple stuff on it, and a few other types of life (it's still too small for me to really know what they are yet) I have 2 damsels and 2 Clowns..

What do I put in now? Now that the algae is growing, and I only have about 100watts of light. Should I run my filter? (I've seen posts on people who do, and some who don't) I have a powerhead going also, should I just stick with that on? I'm kinda confused on what to do next.. =p

Thanks for the input!

[kreblak]

The purple stuff is corraline algae. It is your friend. The bad algaes are the brown and the green hair algaes. Very ugly, very annoying. If it were me, the next step would be the addition of hermits. In a 55 gallon, I'd start off with 10 red legged and 5 blue legged, and maybe a few snails. The hermits will also help out with scavaging any leftover food bits before it can decompose and become dissolved organic material in the water, which will only increase your algae problem.

[Morel]

The Purple stuff is being taken over by the brown stuff.. Epp, Ok, run to the LFS and get some of those critters! Thanks!