Acropora granulosa RTN after trimming Caulerpa

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Acropora granulosa TRN after trimming Caulerpa

I pulled out a bunch of Caulerpa from my SPS dominated BioCube 29 and the next day a beautiful colony of Acropora granulosa started to RTN. Has anyone seen this before? I did water change and started carbon when I noticed the RTN. The coral is looking better but still lot's of white.....
 
I can tell you I would never use caulerpa in any tank I have. Especially with sps corals and the fact there are other macro algae as good as caulerpa for use in refugiums. And do not have the potential to cause the major problems that caulerpa can.
Here is a quote from Eric Borneman from his Aquarium Corals book, Quote"Caulerpa species and other forms of macroalgae may also cause problems when grown in proximity to corals, especially stony corals. Many produce anti-predatory compounds. Caulerpa, Laurencia, and Halimeda species, in particular, may produce volatile organics, terpens, and phenols that can cause the demise of stony corals."Unquote.

I would suspect myself that the process of you trimming the caulerpa in the refugium released a major amounts of these compounds into the tank, and you have witnessed the results with your granulosa
 
The caulerpa is not in a refugium, it grew from a piece of live rock in the display. Thanks for the insight about the toxins,
 
@Rick wrote:
I can tell you I would never use caulerpa in any tank I have. Especially with sps corals and the fact there are other macro algae as good as caulerpa for use in refugiums. And do not have the potential to cause the major problems that caulerpa can. Here is a quote from Eric Borneman from his Aquarium Corals book said:
I do not totally agree. I have Caulerpa in the sumps of both our aquariums and never had any problems. One tank is a 200 gal SPS tank and the other is a 75 gal LPS/soft coral tank. The corals in the SPS tank have shown tremendous growth over the two years. I would never place it into the main display however. The 75 gal tank has been setup for seven years now and almost two years for the 200 gal. By the way the light is on 24/7 on both tanks to keep it from going sexual as this will cause chemicals to be released into the tank.

By the way the Caulerpa is trimmed once a month on both tanks and when doing so you should cut not tear or rip it.
Click to expand...
 
I dont know much about macro algea.. but after reading this post it made me wanna learn.

I currently have bubble caulerpa or whatever its called, in my refugium. I have the light on 24/7. I never trim it.. is that a problem? It grows like crazy but once it filled up the refugium section it stopped growing.. tons of pods and bristle worms are in the forest, and seemss to help the tank out. Just making sure that if there were dangers with using that type of caulerpa, i should know about it.

Thanx

Evan
 
Here is basically how Caulerpa in your fuge works. It grows because it is pulling the nutrients (organics or waste) out of the water which is a good thing. When you trim it back you are exporting the final waste product out of your tank. But remember that when trimming it should be done with scissors cutting not tearing as this would allow some of the nutrients and other chemicals back into the water. The light is on 24/7 to prevent Caulerpa from going sexual that would release gametes into water turning it yellow and is harmful to many corals. This is the reason why many people don?t want to use it. There are other macro algae that can be used such as Chaetomorpha (chaeto) but not quite as effective as Caulerpa when removing organics from the system which is why some people use Caulerpa. I am using C. prolifera-Caulerpa, Blade grass or razor in both my sump/fuges.

Another real bad side to Caulerpa is that it has been release into the wild in coastal areas such as California where it is taking over and killing the local algae so you need to be careful how you dispose it. In fact it is banned in California. So I would say, know what you are doing before you use Caulerpa, and you should be OK knowledge is the key.

For more information there are a lot of websites and in books that cover the topic which is where I got my information.
 
Thanx for the info..

I know basically what it does and which types are good and stuff... just didnt know what to do since after it grows soo much.. i never trim it, as it stopped growin since it filled up the whole refugium..

Ive heard before how it is illegal in Cali..thats crazy how it is takin over...
kinda like those crazy thorn starfish takin over

Once it stops growing im gueesing it dosent take out the nutrients like it should.. therefore i guees i should prob tim a lot of it out..
 
Definitely.. one other thing that some suspect leads to caulerpa 'going sexual' is getting too tightly packed.
 
I would carefully cut it back using scissors. Also there are always people in the club that are looking for some so I would post at the time that you cut it letting them know that it is available if you like rather than just throw it away.
 
Hi,

You can also trade it in for store credit at many LFS's. Before the fire Fish Gallery always gave top dollar for the stuff.

Cheers,
 
Well i officialy cut out a gallon or more bag of it.. ive never felt the need to do it.. It makes totall sense though that it needs to be.. just never saw any bad affects.

Anybody need free calupera!
 
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