Ska's 28 Macro Algae Display

[skabooya]

I want to cry when I see how beautiful my tank was. I got a new teaching Job in Sept. With that new job, taking care of my son and husband as well as the regular chores my tanks got neglected. The macro took over EVERYTHING! well I shouldn't blame all the macro. The grape calpura is EVIL! Stunning if it is well kept but I didn't have the time to trim weekly. It smothered everything including other macro. It killed off a lot of my nice macro and some of my corals.
I went in and pulled EVERYTHING out of my tank. Including rocks. I pulled off every bit of macro I saw with tweezers and threw everything out except for the pretty macro that isint invasive. I cleaned EVERYTHING!
About 2 weeks later the grape calpura was back and worse than before. WHY!
I stopped dosing to starve the macro. It killed off nearly everything except the grape. I pretty much gave up.
I was looking for a tang to temporarily put into the tank to just clear it up.
Yesterday I pulled about half the macro again and today I will do the other half as well as a WC.
I can honestly say that it is finally starting to slow down. I do now have a lot of nuisance algae.
What I do like is how truly wild the tank looks now. It is very natural. Not man made natural, but coastal saltwater natural.
I am hoping that after this next big clean It will be under more control.

I noticed A LOT of snails, I didnt have before. NICE! and my mushrooms are COLOURFUL! They were in near complete darkness. Also, the green grape that was in the dark didnt really grow.

It gave me an idea. I now have enough lighting for sps. I want height in my tank as well as a lot of shade for my mushrooms.
MONTI CAPS! I tried a couple before, but I only had just enough light and the frags were constantly knocked over, so they didn't make it.
Now, I have a plan. Mount it DIRECTLY to the rock, right at the top of the tank instead of just waiting for them to stick, themselves They can completely shade the lower part of the tank making my mushrooms pretty and my keeping the green macro at bay. YAY!
Then for height, some very easy to keep sps like birds nest.
I really want some photosynthetic gorgs, but I still cant find any

This tank is going through a transition and I am actually getting excited about it. I hope it lasts.

[skabooya]

Alright, so the plan is to have something to control the grape caulpera. I would like to save my nicer macro algae.
I was reading around and a recommendation is emerald crabs. They are hit or miss, but at least its a chance. So, Im thinking one or two emerald crabs, and then when they get older I would trade them in. Although having crabs in the tank would just be so cool.
I'm going to do more research to see if it is worth the risk.
If that doesn't work, I will seriously consider a tang, but I really don't want one.
After that, Im going to tear everything down and sell or trade all my LR but keep my coral and just start over with normal LR and NO CALPURA.

Any advice ?

[hillegom]

If you got a tang, it would probably eat all the macro algae, or at least most of it. I had a yellow and he ate caulerpa.
The only thing I could suggest is get another tank, and keep the tang in there .
You would give him only the LR with the grape on it. After all the grape is gone, you could give the tang back to the LFS

[skabooya]

No chance on another tank. I dont have any room at all. As for the caulerpa ITS EVERYWHERE on every rock. If I put rocks in another tank one at a time and then replace, it will just spread onto the rock that was just cleaned.

[whatcaneyedo]

Hate to rub it in but...

Originally Posted by whatcaneyedo

Gracillaria is pretty non invasive and is a great source of red color. Thats the only one I would dare put into a display tank. Halimedia, chaeto, caulerpa, etc all have a way of taking over and are better suited to a refugium section of a sump.

Twice I've accidentally ended up with caulerpa in my display and it took a long time to get it out. Removing a few pieces of rock at a time and leaving them in a dark tub of water for a while worked alright. Some manual removal with tweezers was also necessary. There is no guarantee that a Tang will eat it either. They're hit and miss like most fish.

EDIT: J&L and Progressive Reef both have several varieties of photosynthetic gorgonians for sale right now.

[skabooya]

:P Yea I know. But I wanted and still would like a macro algae tank. Unfortunately it is much more management than I believed. You MUST trim weekly, no ifs and's or but's. Its gotta be religious trimming.

I can handle dosing and topping off no problem but weekly trimming took some time. I was in my tank for 30-45 min at least once a week trimming. Thats not including top offs and measuring the proper dosing amounts.

The grape weed just grows too fast. Everything else (except for pest algae) is pretty manageable. It grows slow enough or is strong enough where I could grab a chunk and rip it off the rock without much difficulty.

[MKLKT]

Foxface can also do massive clean-up of macro algae, any time I've had a frag or coral colony come in to my tank with any sort of macro hitchhiker it's gone within a day.

[skabooya]

Yup Ive been thinking about them but im worried about their poison as well as their ability to munch on lps and softies. I have some corals and I would like to keep what I have.

[skabooya]

The more I look at the tank, the more I just want to tear it down and start over. I have algae growing on everything and its not the pretty stuff either.
My husband does not want me to tear it down at all and just leave it as is because I did like it.
DID is the term to take note of. It depresses me now.

Im gonna see if the lfs will trade my rock for some of their rock and Im thinking of maybe getting all new sand as well to make sure there is no green grape in there at all. I just dont know.

The rocks I am almost positive on. I think it will be cheaper to trade it if I could.
Im also going to pick up another big jug of vinegar and soak my powerheads in it for a few hours to get rid of macro and such. Same thing with my skimmer.

So sad.

[skabooya]

Well, my stubborn side took over (that would be my dads genes). I am ordering 5 trocheus black foot snails, 1 emerald crab, 6 mexican red leg hermits and 2 more blue leg hermits. (to make 4 hermits) I will continue with manual removal, large water changes, no dosing any ferts, and only feeding two or three times a week and only a small amount. We shall see how this goes



On a side note I am also setting up a Hawaiian volcano shrimp species tank aka opae ula. Should I set up a separate thread/nano journal for this or just keep it here? hmmm ponder ponder ponder.