Mangroves in a reef tank

[newreefer_59]

I was given a lovely mangrove from my lovely GF for my lovely reef tank. Has anyone ever experienced any ill effects of placeing a mangrove within their tank? Good or bad comments/suggestions??

Thanks

[Coleus]

if there is only one mangrove, i don't think it will do much if you have a big tank, maybe it can help reducing nitrate in some small nano tank.

[Stones]

I've kept mangrove pods both in a HOB style refugium and in a sump refugium. I never had much luck with them after I started using chaeto algae for nutrient export as the chaeto will remove any excess nitrates or phosphates much faster than the roots of the mangroves can uptake them. I believe you can either have the roots free floating in the water by suspending the mangrove pod in a styrofoam float or you can anchor the roots into a sand substrate.

They do make very effective nutrient export devices if used in large enough numbers and kept in the proper conditions. 1 mangrove likely won't help much with nutrient export but they sure are nice to look at once they fill out with some leaves.

Also, be sure to mist the leaves of the plant off with fresh water a few times per week or it will die. As a result of uptaking fresh water out of salt water, mangroves will precipitate a salt residue on their leaves that needs to be manually removed.

[corpusse]

I use more then 100 in my frag tank which has about 50 gallons of water. They work great in there. My little remora skimmer which I just ran because I had it lying around stopped skimming. There are no fish (although I will qt fish in there) and a minimal bioload, but they work great for filtration in there.

I also run 2 in my 2 gallon pico, they certainly help but are not quite as effective. IMO if you are running 1.5-2+ per gallon they make a hell of a difference, but if you're just putting a few in. Even say a dozen or 20 in a 100 gallon system you will not notice a difference.

I'm far from an expert on mangroves but I think the big reason people say they don't work as effectively as cheato or other macro algaes as nutrient export is they are using far too few of them. You need a lot of them and they will work.

[Funky_Fish14]

I agree about having to use many.

A lot of people say they need to be misted to do well or survive... They will do better this way... but I have had 4 mangroves for about a year(from 9" pods) and they are all 20-24" now and going strong, and I havent misted them once. But the misting will definitely make them more productive. Mine could certainly grow faster than they do(though I have a 71g fuge full of cheato and caulerpa that does 'compete' with the mangroves for nutrients)

Wont hurt to have it in there!

Cheers,

Chris