Sea Hare

Sorry for posting this message twice. I accidentally captioned my
last post with a mistake in the subject line and thought it might get
caught in sporge onslaught!

Recently I have been battling a hair algae problem.

I put in a sea hare and phosphate remover and within a couple of days
all was good. The sea hare was healthy, but after about a week, he
just seemed to dissappear. About a month later, I put another sea
hare in. He was there for approximately 2 months or more, moving all
over the tank, and then the same thing happened. One day, I didn't
notice thim there and that went onto several days, and it looks like
this one vanished into thin air.

Are these things hardy, do they die with the lack of hair algae to
feed on (He seemed to be feeding off the glass and the rocks).

"gaijin" wrote in message
...
Sorry for posting this message twice. I accidentally captioned my
last post with a mistake in the subject line and thought it might get
caught in sporge onslaught!

Recently I have been battling a hair algae problem.

I put in a sea hare and phosphate remover and within a couple of days
all was good. The sea hare was healthy, but after about a week, he
just seemed to dissappear. About a month later, I put another sea
hare in. He was there for approximately 2 months or more, moving all
over the tank, and then the same thing happened. One day, I didn't
notice thim there and that went onto several days, and it looks like
this one vanished into thin air.

Are these things hardy, do they die with the lack of hair algae to
feed on (He seemed to be feeding off the glass and the rocks).

That's the problem with sea hares. Once the bulk of the algae is gone, they
die unless you provide them with an alternate source of food.

Would they appear active and normal and then just dissappear one day.
If they were starving to death?

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:36:18 -0500, "Steve Heath"
wrote:

"gaijin" wrote in message
.. .
Sorry for posting this message twice. I accidentally captioned my
last post with a mistake in the subject line and thought it might get
caught in sporge onslaught!

Recently I have been battling a hair algae problem.

I put in a sea hare and phosphate remover and within a couple of days
all was good. The sea hare was healthy, but after about a week, he
just seemed to dissappear. About a month later, I put another sea
hare in. He was there for approximately 2 months or more, moving all
over the tank, and then the same thing happened. One day, I didn't
notice thim there and that went onto several days, and it looks like
this one vanished into thin air.

Are these things hardy, do they die with the lack of hair algae to
feed on (He seemed to be feeding off the glass and the rocks).

That's the problem with sea hares. Once the bulk of the algae is gone, they
die unless you provide them with an alternate source of food.

On Nov 14, 5:15 pm, gaijin wrote:
Would they appear active and normal and then just dissappear one day.
If they were starving to death?

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:36:18 -0500, "Steve Heath"



wrote:
"gaijin" wrote in message
.. .
Sorry for posting this message twice. I accidentally captioned my
last post with a mistake in the subject line and thought it might get
caught in sporge onslaught!

Recently I have been battling a hair algae problem.

I put in a sea hare and phosphate remover and within a couple of days
all was good. The sea hare was healthy, but after about a week, he
just seemed to dissappear. About a month later, I put another sea
hare in. He was there for approximately 2 months or more, moving all
over the tank, and then the same thing happened. One day, I didn't
notice thim there and that went onto several days, and it looks like
this one vanished into thin air.

Are these things hardy, do they die with the lack of hair algae to
feed on (He seemed to be feeding off the glass and the rocks).

That's the problem with sea hares. Once the bulk of the algae is gone, they
die unless you provide them with an alternate source of food.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I actually had a similar hair algae issue about 2 weeks ago, and was
chatting up the folks here about it, and got some solid advice between
here and the LFS...essentially was: add phosphate remover, and let
your clean up crew do their thing.
I have a 72 gallon tank and the thing was COATED with thick, green
hair algae. Well, virtually 2 weeks to the day after adding the
phosphate remover, the snails and crabs (8 snails, 5 crabs) have
virtually eliminated all of it. I'm actually to the point where I'm
considering removing some of the snails becaue I don't know if there's
going to be ENOUGH for them to eat...that phosphate remover really did
a number on the tank.

Here, the advice that I got, was rather than being too worried about
the algae itself and trying to add creatures to ditch it, figure out
why it's there and rectify that. Then, as long as you have a few
'clean up crew' crusties, the issue will resolve itself. Got
phosphates down to 0, the clean up crew was able to make headway and
voila, I have a clean tank.

Do you have some of those other guys in there? turbo snails, hermits
etc?

Mitch

Big Habeeb wrote:
Do you have some of those other guys in there? turbo snails, hermits
etc?

Good advice.

Yeah, I have all the usual suspects. But of course since they were
put in years ago, its hard to say how many of them are actually still
around!



On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:28:16 -0500, KurtG
wrote:

Big Habeeb wrote:
Do you have some of those other guys in there? turbo snails, hermits
etc?

Good advice.

On Nov 14, 7:28 pm, KurtG wrote:
Big Habeeb wrote:
Do you have some of those other guys in there? turbo snails, hermits
etc?

Good advice.

Kurt,

Thanks...I'm very new to the hobby, but trying to retain what I'm
learning.

Mitch

Big Habeeb wrote:
Thanks...I'm very new to the hobby, but trying to retain what I'm
learning.

Seems like you're doing fine. :-)

They often die even when there's plenty of algae.

Wayne Sallee



Steve Heath wrote on 11/14/2007 3:36 PM:
"gaijin" wrote in message
...
Sorry for posting this message twice. I accidentally captioned my
last post with a mistake in the subject line and thought it might get
caught in sporge onslaught!

Recently I have been battling a hair algae problem.

I put in a sea hare and phosphate remover and within a couple of days
all was good. The sea hare was healthy, but after about a week, he
just seemed to dissappear. About a month later, I put another sea
hare in. He was there for approximately 2 months or more, moving all
over the tank, and then the same thing happened. One day, I didn't
notice thim there and that went onto several days, and it looks like
this one vanished into thin air.

Are these things hardy, do they die with the lack of hair algae to
feed on (He seemed to be feeding off the glass and the rocks).

That's the problem with sea hares. Once the bulk of the algae is gone, they
die unless you provide them with an alternate source of food.