Algae Eater

[CrashingWaves]

My girlfriend has a 20 gallon saltwater fish tank. I keep freshwater myself so I know next to nothing about what I'm doing. I know in freshwater tanks the common choices for fish to take care of algae are plecos, or otos. What is the best choices to help take care of algae in a saltwater tank though?

She has a chocolate chip star fish, and she hoped he would help some, but it doesn't seem like he's really doing anything to help the algae problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated .

God Bless,
Joshua

 

[chrissaysyes]

snails...I prefer astrea and nassarius.

 

[steelhealr]

Clean up crew..snails....crabs....hermits. See the recent posts on Chocolate chip stars or ask chrissayes about keeping them. SH

 

[chrissaysyes]

Link right there in my signature to my thread on keeping mine. They will eat algae but they're not very helpful in keeping the aquarium clear of it at all. Your problem lies in that they will slowly pick off and devour any snails they happen to crawl over on the glass. Asrea may be safe. I have had luck in keeping mine with blue legged hermits, also the rate at which mine consumes snails is so slow that I can keep up with purchasing new ones, as well the snails still having time to keep the subtrate and glass clean. My personal "recipe" for the cleanliness of my CCS tank is purchasing about 25x small Nassarius snails every two months, and keeping 5 blue legged hermits. Keep in mind this is for a 14 gallon tank. Good luck!

Btw, the best bet for buying that many snails at once is usually ebay.

 

[SkiFletch]

But wait, what kind of algae are we talking about here? Macro Algae, Diatoms, Cyanobacteria, Hair Algae, or the dreaded Dinoflagellates? Certain organisms eat certain algae more than others. Also what size tank is this? If it's over 75gallons you could consider a foxface or tang...

 

[chrissaysyes]

Good point Ski. Since this is coming from a Freshy, and he's not flipping out about the stuff taking over, I just assumed it was diatoms or maybe slight cyano growth. It would be best to describe the algae as best as possible to diagnose the proper critter for the job

 

[Lynden]

He mentions in the first post it's twenty gallon tank. In my opinion, the best cleanup crew for tanks with choco chip stars (which as mentioned will outrun and consume snails) are fast moving crustaceans such as hermit or true crabs. If the algae is one the walls, just scrape it off, either by hand or with a magnet or stick (with attached razor blade).

 

[chrissaysyes]

Yup, my mag float does a way better job on the walls than any snail does

 

[Lynden]

I keep snails and hermits for their interest, not their "cleaning" abilities. The snails do rove the walls but they leave these weird tracks.