will the SAE eat my plants?
- Thread starter pennylinx
- Start date
i've heard of them eating marimo balls, but most likely if you feed them enough, they won't try and eat your plants.
Marimo balls are cladaphora algae, so an SAE would certainly go after that....otherwise, they are great with all other plants and will keep them squeaky clean~
thanks, I have a huge outbreak of hair algae from the dang java moss that I hurriedly added to my tank... what a mistake. The algae is taking over so fast that it has already made my anubias fuzzy and the covered the side of the tank with undulating strands. I am going to try to get a sae from my LFS but there are no promises from them. I was thinking about getting an oto, since the algae is relatively short and was wondering if the oto would be able to chow on this algae or not, and if so would they destroy any of my plants that I have listed including the marimo moss?
no...your hair algae is not because of the java moss you added.....you will never get algae outbreaks for adding plants. Since I saw your fert schedule in another thread, it is clearly because you are dosing too much Iron and no macros. If you feel the need to dose Iron and Flouish, drop down to once a month with the iron and add NO3 and PO4. Get the fert schedule up to par, clean out and prune, and spot treat with excel. You will continue to get it unless you get your dosing right.
In the meantime, the best hair eaters IMO are Amano shrimp. They do a number on it!
ooh, then Ill have to try to get some amanos. I think though the algae did come in on the moss since it was packed full of hairy filamentous strands that are very visible to the eye, I stupidly put the moss in thinking it was "baby" java moss... gosh what a stupid mistake.
heres a pic of what it looked like the first day when I put it in:
The darker green stuff that is located in the moss is definitely hairy and filamentous. It may be hard to see it in the pic and may appear to be mearly shadows, but in fact is thick clumps of hair algae.
heres a pic of what it looked like the first day when I put it in:
The darker green stuff that is located in the moss is definitely hairy and filamentous. It may be hard to see it in the pic and may appear to be mearly shadows, but in fact is thick clumps of hair algae.
true... but i've actually seem ghost shrimp do it, and they're a whole lot cheaper.