Over Populated Snails

[Vorteil]

I had major hair algae on my sea fan. Tried to remove it by hand but it came back. Ended up taking it out. Maybe I'll put it back in but it needs to be thoroughly cleaned.

[graphit3]

I'm having tons of snail reproduction in my tank, too, and I have noticed the algae (hair or whatever it is) causing some problems. I also bought my algae from the PetShrimp website. Mustafa, could you please clarify on whether or not you recommend removing this algae that you sold us?

[MrsT]

Hair algae are not from seafan. I can confirm this because I never put seafan . Mine grew on lava rock. These lava rock I washed it with brush prior to setting up my tank. I can only assumed hair algae is normal in brackish tank.
Dimmer light won't cause this problem but if expose to the type of light similar with sunlight power, the hair algae grow uncontrollably.

[mike.d]

Other forums I've been on say that hair algae comes from tap water.

[JoanToBa]

Hair algae can also come from live rocks or live sand, those will always have some spores or something in the most unreachable places. It's quite unevitable unless you've used some bacteria starter to cycle your tank, then you'll have less possibilities to have it. But still, there's always the chance to get it.

[Mustafa]

Mustafa you might be right about there being hair algae in my tank. I certainly did not put it there but now that I’ve looked closer at the mass on the right of the rock it does look like it has small hairs coming out of it. Maybe it came from my seafan? Someone else in this foreum posted about hair algae growing from their seafan. Not quite sure how to remove it all since it’s everywhere but I ordered some long tweezers and will try to remove as much as I can with those when they arrive

It's best to remove hair algae carefully by pulling the strings (the type with the long trings) or holding the entire mass against a light source to pick out any entangled shrimp. There's always a chance that baby shrimp are still stuck in there, but that's the risk one has to take. That's also the reason why I don't recommend hair algae...so hard to deal with in every aspect.

[Mustafa]

I'm having tons of snail reproduction in my tank, too, and I have noticed the algae (hair or whatever it is) causing some problems. I also bought my algae from the PetShrimp website. Mustafa, could you please clarify on whether or not you recommend removing this algae that you sold us?

You didn't buy hair algae from me. What you bought were macroalgae and those don't cause any problems. You don't have to remove it unless it needs to be thinned out. The hair algae could have come from anywhere...who knows. I haven't had hair algae in my tanks for years, so it sure isn't from me. So, yes..I recommend removing the hair algae.