Live Red Hair Algae Removal
February 27th, 2012 Tags: 
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Many kinds of unwanted algae can overtake a saltwater aquarium when left unchecked. Mainly I see a lot of green hair algae, bryopsis, but recently I had the opportunity to work with a reef covered in red hair algae. The first photo shows just one area of the aquarium with red hair algae. But I can assure you it was spread throughout the entire aquarium.
This reef has a refugium, some blue and red leg hermit crabs, astraea and nassarius snails. The refugium and invertebrates are great at helping keeping in check most algae but they did nothing to rid the aquarium of the unsightly red hair algae! I prefer to use natural solutions rather than adding chemicals, so, in this case I called on the Pacific Coast Mexican Turbo snails (Turbo fluctuosus) to the rescue.
Three and a half weeks after adding 12 Mexican Turbo snails to this 120 reef there were no more visible traces of the red hair algae. There is one concern when adding these Turbo snails – they are large, which means they can knock down unsecured rock and corals as they hunt for their next meal.
Once the algae was under control I removed the majority of the snails to another aquarium to munch on some algae there. If you have nowhere else to move the turbo snails you can supplement their diet with dried algae.