"William Marsh" wrote on Sun, 02 Jul 2006:
Hi Don: I beleive the hitchhiker pic you have is a bubble algea that will
overtake your tank and is not a good thing.

Yes, quite right, these hitchhikers:
http://reef.geddis.org/a/Hitchhikers/p/dsc05384.jpg
definitely are Valonia, aka Bubble Algae.

(I haven't finished my web site yet, so I didn't yet get around to adding
the ID for those.)

And yes, in some sense they already have taken over my tank. I'm "slowly"
dealing with them. Some my manual removal. I've also added four small
emerald crabs. And a handful of Queen Conchs, which I was told might help too.

Hard to tell. They aren't really dangerous, but they do grow everywhere and
get in the way sometimes. Still, not too tough to remove the worst ones by
hand.

Although look at my seahorse section:
http://reef.geddis.org/a/Tank%20-%20...p/dsc05516.jpg
There are two artifical orange corals that I put in the center, and the back
right. They're almost completely covered with valonia, as are the live rocks
on that side. But it doesn't really hurt, and the seahorses just use the
valonia themselves as hitching posts, instead of the artificial coral.

Mostly an aesthetic thing. I agree it would be more pretty with less bubble
algae.

I could be wrong but thats just
my 2 cents other then that its cool tank.

Thanks!

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://reef.geddis.org/
Sometimes it's hard to tell if something is actually a memory, or you just
dreamed it. So I asked my boss if I called him a lying, stinking thief, or if
I just dreamed it, and he said I just dreamed it. Whew, that was close.
-- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey [1999]