Saltwater plant

I was thinking of getting a couple of shaving brush plants for my tank. is this a good idea or not. If it is is there anywhere that has shipping rates lower than 30 to 35 dollars. Not enough people around here for group orders.

 

You wont find shipping for under 30 just saying. Shaving brush are calcerous algaes so you need to stay on top of alk, mag and calc, other than that they're excellent at reducing nitrates and phosphates.

 

Thought so on the shipping but never hurts to ask. Is it ok to put them in the display? I have a lot of algae in the display and hoping these will help starve it along with some cheato i'm going to get for the fuge. Plus would regular water changes be enough to maintain proper levels for the plant.

 

If you're trying to starve out nuisance algae, all you really need is chaeto and some mangroves. Most other macros will be out competed by the nuisance algae, that's why they're a nuisance.

It's impossible to say about the water changes. If you're using red sea pro mix and don't keep much in the way of hard corals or clams, your levels can be maintained through water changes.

 

I use instant ocean. All I have as far as corals go is a zoa frag. Is mangrove a type of plant or the actual name of the plant and should it be in the fuge or DT. Plus I have a marineland reef capable led (capable?). Would that be enough light? Sorry for all the questions but plants and fuge are new for me. Thanks for all the good info.

 

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-12/ac/feature/index.php
Mangroves are actually trees, sounds weird, but read the article, it will tell you ALL you need to know on mangroves.

You'd need to keep your Mag levels around 1300 for either mangroves or brush plant. I found that an incandescent 65w 6,500*K flood light grew my cheato best. Mangroves like this spectrum but watch out for the heat put off by this bulb. I found that most of those LEDs are too blue for ideal conditions for macros.

 

great thanks for the info.

 

My chaeto exploded (quadrupled in 2 weeks) when I put my Chinese LED over it. I couldn't grow it under a 6500 K for some reason, which is very, very unusual.

Stripped my water of phosphate (0 on Hanna checker). Unfortunately, coral lost color, but that will be rectified in time.

 

Hannah checkers are great. Keep in mind corals are a symbiotic relationship with algae and algae do need phosphates to grow, .2 ppm of PO4 is ideal.

Any dramatic change in parameter is bad for corals, even if you're adjusting to an ideal level, if it's too quickly, you'll know.

 

I bought a marineland led for my fuge. A guy at work was suppose to bring me some cheato this last Friday but he forgot. Now I have to wait another week and a half to get it. Hopefully the light will be sufficient.