Red cotton algae, the curse is over!

Okay, so the point of this blog is education... well, education and pretty pictures. ...but the reason I started this blog is to help the newbies who are reading it from repeating newbie mistakes.

I don't remember if I've mentioned this already but recently after purchasing some LR from one of the LFS, I was struck with the red cotton algae plague. I'm not sure if this is the same thing as the red tide they are experiencing down in FL coasts, but this thing was nasty. Even with optimal water parameters, the red cotton algae grows like crazy. It seems like their growth is encouraged by light but other than that, not much is known about them. All I know is that the algae takes over tanks in a relatively short period, its bits and pieces float in the water and grows wherever it lands and it seems to choke out any kind of corals and algae that sits underneath it. In the picture, you can see three large pieces of rock that have been affected by this plague.


After a tid bit of research on Reef Central, I came across a thread that talked about this issue. Advanced reefers were worried and panties were all up in a bunch everywhere. Luckily, by the time I was reading this, someone had found a cure for the problem. While it seemed too good to be true; (everyone I talked to said to take the rocks out and scrub it by hand or with a toothbrush), I knew nature MUST HAVE provided a natural solution for this problem.

The cure not too surprisingly are snails. Now, I don't mean stock up on your clean-up crew by 3x load and I don't mean just any snails... what you need to get are the Mexican turbo snails. Not too many clean-up crew includes this kind but they are easily recognizable as they are HUGE and fat and luckily not lazy. I ended up dropping two of these snails in my 29 gallon and within a day or so, I could already see a difference and seeing trails of clean rock where they had grazed.

Last week, I went to Maryland for a week to a friend's wedding and by the time I got back the main tank was spic-and-span clean except for a couple of tiny patches.

The picture below shows the tank today (in actinic) and I can happily say that the main tank is now fully free of the red cotton algae. My HOB fuge is another story seeing how the chaeto is now infused with the red cotton algae. I dropped one of the Mexican turbos back there to see if he can help clean up but that's another story in itself... (yes, actually more newbie mistakes and lessons for you all). That will be in the next post though.