[tkg]

I recently broke down my 75 gallon reef tank to relocate it to another room. I now have a red algae growing of a type I've never seen before. It looks essentially like green hair algae, only perhaps a bit finer, and is growing unabated on the rock. Any thoughts on critters that might like to work on it?
Thanks
Tom G.

[leebca]

I think I know the culprit of which you write.

I keep a lot of red macro algae in my refugium of the Gracilaria species.

When I was stocking my last refugium in crept this extremely thin version of Gracilaria. I looked like hair algae, but it was red. I harvested clumps of it and tried to see if my tangs would eat it, but they seemed to care less about it.

It was very invasive. It was taking over my refugium. When I returned from a business trip (10 days) it was all gone. Not a single 'hair' remained. I'm not sure why it went away but I will say this:

At about the same time there was some red slime algae growing. Sea Hares eat red slime, so I put two in my 70g refugium. They ate the slime algae in a couple of weeks just before my trip. Also, before my trip, I loaded the refugium with many so-called 'red-algae' eating snails along with a variety of others.

Like I said, when I returned the red hair algae was gone. Snails and Hares were there and doing fine. I'm glad it's gone but why it disappeared is a bit of a mystery. I tried to get other macro algae to override it and even put shade on it, but it always climbed above it and covered the other macros!