The Opae ula shrimp Forum and online store

Just wondering here if all the algae the same? Meaning if I bring water from Hawaii will the algae from there be any different then a salt mix from my LFS that has Pacific ocean water? My rocks in some tanks are heavily covered in it.

Interesting question. Where is your algae from?

My guess would be yes and no: Yes in the sense that the various types will pretty much occur around the globe...?! No because the many types may not be spread 100% equally?!

Lookie here: https://www.thoughtco.com/major-types-of-algae-373409

But what am I writing here In reality I have absolutely no clue

I'm more or less debating the algae that covers the tank walls and rocks. Some of mine came from Hawaii and other tanks just developed algae probably from the salt water that the LFS sells. Just a thought.

This is an interesting subject to me since it seems that we're all concerned with growing algae in the tank to feed our opae. Over time one way or another algae will form in a tank no matter what. I can understand why some have more do to different water types used, or less. I know one of my jars I started has very little visible algae in it. A good amount of biofilm is present. The lava rocks were clean and not from an established tank. The salt mix used was mixed with distilled water. Feeding was only a few times. You can see the waste created by the opae so I wasn't concerned whether or not they were getting enough food.

As you can see from the pics below there's very little visible algae on the rocks. There's more than enough waste to support it. The jar does get both direct and indirect light. I did remove the macroalgae since it seemed to not get enough nutrients to grow and keep a dark green color. I assume it's lacking iron.

My thoughts: What algae do occur in brackish water in the first place and what algae may only "tolerate" brackish water. I guess anchialine pools may have a unique algae composition?

I have all kind of brown and green algae growing in my tank since I used "live" water from the Atlantic Ocean, I guess they are very adaptable marine species who lives in a very harsh enviroment like the tidal pools and can handle brackish conditions

Arnold wrote: ↑03 Jan 2019 17:08 I have all kind of brown and green algae growing in my tank since I used "live" water from the Atlantic Ocean, I guess they are very adaptable marine species who lives in a very harsh enviroment like the tidal pools and can handle brackish conditions

Interesting! Today I noticed my own algae growing. It took some time but they seem to come now. It is mostly visible on the glass tho.

@Vorteil Love the snails!

i've not managed to acclimate MTS (if that is what yours are) to brackish water over here in the UK. Do they breed as prolifically as the fresh water ones?

Just put the snails in brakish water. You don't need to acclimate MTS to brakish water. To begin with their brackish tolerance is 1.000-1.010, and I've seem them tolerate even higher. One thing to consider is they are extremely prolific breeders. Since I had all that algae in my tank the snails went to town on it. Way too many babies.