Kessil

Sandbed in refugium?

Thanks. I see the bill 655 banned the entire genus this summer.

My view is caulerpa is cool if that's what you are growing in like a sand flat display. Where legal. But a pain in a reef, as well as ulva. They will escape and grow everywhere you don't want it, and the big tangs can't get it. Like the teeth of your overflow, just before you have an overflow.
 
Ok, thanks for all that input. Since we are on this subject, can anyone ID this - it was on the Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock and has been growing 'nicely' in the past two weeks...

Should I remove this?

IMG_6230.jpeg
 
My 2c on ulva @Alexander1312 -
It does grow fast and you don’t need a lot of movement-in fact I hardly had any at all and it grew. That being said -it was not powerful enough to bring down my phosphate to where I wanted (it would be around .6) so I ended up going the carbon dosing route. Granted I didn’t give it full rein of the sump so it was somewhat limited.

Make sure you have a good containment system though. It did escape into my DT and was a menace for 6 months before I got something that liked it (can’t recall which invertebrate).
 
Even with manual removal and attempting to pick and brush off what’s there....
I would pull the rock and allow it to dry in the sun until bleached white to ensure complete removal
 
I have never had calurpa and so don't have a negative experience with it. Because i don't have the negative experience, I might try hydrogen peroxide to kill what i can see (without killing entire rock) and then hope herbivores handle what eventually pops up. That would either work or be my new bad experience with calurpa. Mostly because it is nice living rock jetted across the country.

counter argument to myself lol - @Kensington Reefer knows more than I do.
 
I skipped the sand (and most of the extra rock) in my fuge because Jake Adams said all that extra respirating bacteria puts downward pressure on PH. I don’t know if this is true or not but it makes a lot of sense and is something that has stuck with me.

There are a lot of successful tanks these days with minimal rock and sand. Leonardo’s Reef doesn’t run a single piece of live rock in his acro farm, FWIW. ‍
currently running with no rock or sand, tank's doing fine. ph is 8-8.30
 
I have never had calurpa and so don't have a negative experience with it. Because i don't have the negative experience, I might try hydrogen peroxide to kill what i can see (without killing entire rock) and then hope herbivores handle what eventually pops up. That would either work or be my new bad experience with calurpa. Mostly because it is nice living rock jetted across the country.

counter argument to myself lol - @Kensington Reefer knows more than I do.
HOPE is the important word...it’s invasive
But,
If you like it and can keep it under control
You can achieve some nutrient export

Be aware that caulerpa can have complete overnight die off
 
I'm in the -1 on caulpera crew. My tank back in the early 2000s I had grape caulpera get into it from somewhere. I thought it was cool looking. "why do people complain so much?".

Then it spread. Then I realized it's impossible to get it out of the inside of the rock where all its roots go. Then I couldn't get it under control.

Never again.

---
On the piece getting into your display on the live rock you bought. It'd be unfortunate to nuke a piece of live rock you paid a bunch of money to have seeded into your tank.

It'd be really really unfortunate to have to tear down an entire tank because something spread and you couldn't get it under control.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, literally, in that a couple ounces of rock being dealt with may prevent many pounds of tank being infected.

Middle grounds:
* peroxide the shit out of it -- though IMO even hair algae can sometimes survive that
* take it out and chisel that area away -- keep the core or obviously clean pieces, nuke the rest
* scrub the crap out of it, rinse it, toss it into a container of saltwater, put the container in the dark for a week or two, then re-add after a secondary scrub and rinse
 
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