Caulerpa

Hey guys I've recently had tons of caulerpa pop up in my tank. A while back I asked what I could put in to eat it and got yelled at for asking... I trim it back everyday, but it's gotten way out of hand. Could I add a big snail to help me with my problem? Thanks in advance.

 

The snails won't eat it. Do you have a picture of it? What you need to do is star reducing your feedings and increase water changes to get the nutrients in the water under control. Do you have nitrate and phosphate tests? Also, do you use an Ro/Di unit?

 

my dad has had two sprouts in the middle of a zoa patch that we watch very closely for reproduction... but the angelfish keeps them in check for us

 

Paro6k, i am sure that whoever 'yelled' at you didnt mean to offend you but was only trying to help. alot of stuff, emotion, gets mixed up when trying to type something rather than express it face to face. ok, now caulerpa. how big is ur tank, whats in it, how often do you feed, what do you feed..... thanx!

 

It's a 55gallon with some clowns a mandarin some chromis and a baby clown tang. I've got a bunch of corals too. I have a 3 gallon fuge with cheato. I have a ro unit but I haven't had the time to set it up. My fish only eat mysis with the exception of the chromis sometimes eating flakes. They eat about a cube of frozen mysis everyday. Nothing makes it to the bottom. If any shrimp somehow escape the fish it quickly gets caught by my giant seabae.

I thought the more robust snails ate some leafy algae, but I haven't found too much info on it. My tang won't touch anything other than mysis. It's a shame, really. I've tried everything to get it to eat some veggies or seaweed but it won't touch anything else.

 

I have calupera in my fuge, and have had it somehow creep up into my main tank before. That being said, it is very hard to completely get it out once it has been sitting there for awhile. The calupera seems to have a knack for entwining itself throughout the rockwork and being rather difficult to remove.

You can try to manually remove it, the best way seems to be grabbing the stem and trying to gently rip it off the rocks. This can get rather frustrating though, and its hard to completely get all of the calupera out. Even the tiniest bit that you miss will start to grow and you'll be back to square one.

After trying this method over and over and having little success, I took some drastic action. Each rock that had calupera on it was removed from the tank and sat on my porch for a few days. After doing this with each rock the calupera battle was finally over. Additionally, if you have a sump/fuge, you can just take the calupera rocks and shove them in the fuge. There the algae will help to filter your water and reduce nitrates.

Good luck!

 

Every one of my rocks is covered. There's no hope of manually removing it and my fuge is already full of LR and I couldn't possibly fit 75lbs of LR in there. I had a DIY sump but it wasn't my favorite thing and i've had much more success without it. Does anything eat caulerpa other than maybe a lawnmower blenny? I was thinking maybe some kind of urchin... Thoughts?

 

From what I understand, some tangs will munch on it. However, the 55gal would be a little small for tang...the only possibility would be to borrow one for a few days and see if he does any work on the calupera, then take him out. Thats a risky move though, and certainly does not guarantee success. Apparently crabs/snails are hit or miss as well, although throwing in some hermit crabs might help a bit. I'm afraid manual removal is going to be your best bet....

My suggestion would be to take all of the rocks out and scrub the calupera off. You can put them in buckets with water, scrub off all of the algae, and put them back, one at a time. This certainly will be a time consuming process, but I think it may be the only way. After all the rocks are cleaned and put back in, you will have a nice, clean looking tank. However, you probably won't get 100% of the calupera on the first try, so monitor the tank closely for a few days after and look for little green sprouts. If you see any, rip them out ASAP to prevent another outbreak. I had to go through the same process (albeit with far less rock...), and it is certainly not fun, but hopefully you will be happy with the results.

I hope someone can chime in with a better way to do this, but as far as I know, this is the best option. Live and learn...good luck..

EDIT - You can also go the "reduce nutrients' route. However, this might be difficult to do considering the amount you have. Also, and I'm not sure on this, but I think they have the ability to grow via photosynthesis, which would prevent the nutrient reduction method from working. But I'm not sure. Hopefully someone can elaborate on this more.

 

Idk how to fix it cept rippiing it out but thats ridiculously time consuming and with the amounts in the tank, oy, wat a situation. I say get a baby hippo and then rehome it. (i'm sure the tang nazi's are gonna get me for that suggestion but oh well) i have no idea how to fix it

bumpage.

 

Manual removal and reducing phosphate and nitrates would be my suggestion, failing that a sea urchin will probably eat it although they can be very destructive.