picaso triger harrasing turbo snails

[papijames]

my cerith and Astraea nails have been dying one after another. I had my eyes on my picaso triger but since I couldn't prove he's guilty I went to wolf reef last night to buy 4 mexican turbo snails. I turned off the lights to add them on last night, and out of curiosity I went back and turned the lights by on just to check. BAM, Feo (the name my wife gave to my humuhumu) came from the other side of the tank where he sleeps and started taking nips at the snails.
Since now I know that Feo is the one behind my snails sudden death, what can I do to help me with algae? I use a scrapper and was hoping that an animal could do the work for me

[BigKGlen]

Once the trigger starts feeding on the snails, he won't stop. Does he have any tankmates, and how does he treat them?

[Kristy]

Hi James,
I can tell you that there is NO comparison between the job I can do diligently scraping (even with top of the line scrapers, etc.) and the job that a good clean up crew can do. Assuming that you have all the causes under control (initial diatom bloom, phosphate issues, excessive nutrients, whatever else might be causing your algae troubles) and we are talking about just the everyday unavoidable levels of algae, then you can expect to be struggling with the algae to the degree that you currently are if you are not going to be able to keep snails.

We recently upgraded from 100g to a 210g and when we did so we were already a little light on the CUC for the 100g. We failed to upgrade our CUC right away and were REALLY fighting the algae. There was always this persistent line of algae on the glass where it meets the sand, no matter how much I worked on it daily.

Once we got our order from Reefcleaners (we highly recommend, btw) in the tank, the CUC went to work and the algae all but disappeared in a day or two. Amazing. So much more effective than my scraper!

[papijames]

Bigklen I have a total of 5 fish Nemo(my false percula) Dory (hippo tang) Feo(humuhumu) Msthang(Yellow Tan), and Bully(bicolor pseudochromis). they all get along pretty well. I started having algae recently since I upgrated from a 20w PC to a 216w T5lighting. man is my room bright.

Kristi I think I killed the blue mushroom. since I was trying to glue it to a rock I got some glue on the edge, tried to scrape with nail and took a lil piece off keep me in mind for the pom pom xenia

[ErikH]

you need to put the mushroom in a low flow area and provide a rock for it to attach itself to. They are near impossible to glue due to their slime coat... Did you find those zoas?

[papijames]

man, the mushroom was in the bottom and I moved it higher earlier. that's when the whole glue thing happened. By the way Erik that piece of Pire & Ice Zoas never came around. with all the flow in the tank I think it got burried under the sand. never got to enjoy the little man for 24hrs. R.I.P

[ErikH]

I'll frag off some and let them heal over. I'll mount them to a rock or something... I am guessing that they are fire and ice, not totally sure, but they're close. I got them from Bernie awhileee back.

[papijames]

thank you erik, let me know when everything is ready