What these are?

[4Texans]

Anybody know what these are?

The green looks to me like it could be "Chaetomorpha aerea", based on a
picture I saw of one. It seems to be a hair algae that has green translucent
tubes that form a dense "lawn" on rock. In my aquarium it looks like it has a
clumping habit.

The second one I really have no idea about. It is brown, translucent and
grows tightly along the surface of my live rock. It grows over whatever is in
its way. Any ideas on this one?

Here are some pictures of specimens I took from my tank today.

http://204.127.198.24/~fourtexans/algae1.jpg
http://204.127.198.24/~fourtexans/algae2.jpg

[Samala]

Very nice.. the brown looks a bit like Lobophora sp. to me. If it has obvious rings it might be a Padina sp. variant instead.

The green is neat, I like the lawn forming ones myself. Chaetomorpha aerea is a definite candidate.. is this alga kinda stiff out of water? Brittle? Do you see any small cells or dark green bands in the filaments or do they seem to be a continuous green? If brittle.. better ID of Chaetomorpha sp. If its not brittle you might want to look at Enteromorpha, Derbesia and Cladophoropsis sp. instead. Striped filaments (green bands or obvious small cells making up the filament) would also be a better ID for Chaetomorpha.. if not look at algaebase for images of the other three.

All that said.. could still be something else. :) Let us know if you find a good match through algaebase.org.

>Sarah

[4Texans]

Thank you!


Ok, the green does seem to be Chaetomorpha aerea. :-)

The dichotomous keys from http://www.botany.hawaii.edu were quite helpful.

The tubes were stiff and brittle. In situ the color is consistent along the
whole of each tube. The specimen was damaged during collection. As you
mentioned it was quite brittle. The transparent parts of the tubes are likely
damaged sections.

There were no obvious rings found on the brown specimen. Lobophora variegata
seems like a good guess at this point. I think I will need to let it grow out
a bit to get a better ID.

Thanks again.

[Samala]

Happy to help.. L. variegata has, as the name suggests, several forms. I think one of my books shows at least four different forms that you would hardly suspect to all be the same species. Because of the variations of several Lobophora's ID is haphazard down to species level.. but yours certainly does look like L. variegata pics to me. Nothing wrong with calling it that for us hobbyists.

Thanks for the link to the key! :D Nice page. If you ever mow the C. aerea carpet keep me in mind. I've been looking for starts of this for awhile now. All I can find for a lawn macro is Enteromorpha flexuosa, which is practically everywhere in the world in bay/estuary systems. And hard to keep from being grazed by Astreas too.

>Sarah

[4Texans]

:-)

I just trimmed the C. aerea way back, so it will be quite a while before I have much of anything that I can ship. I will try to grow some out for you.