Home Built

I built a refugium for a 90gal reef. It's a 20gal split in 4 chambers. First chamber has bio balls from top to bottom with the intake from the overflow. Second chamber has 20lbs of live sand, macroalgae, and copeapods. The third chamber has a filter pad NO carbon and bio balls. The fourth chamber has a rio 2100 for the return. It also has a SeaClone Skimmer 100. The question is do I leave both the 10,000k daylight and the actinic light on 24hr? The reason I ask is it looks as if my macroalgae is not going to make it.

 

I dont know for sure. But I thought people used a 6500 bulb for growing plants. Did you buy a aquarium bulbs for growing corals? It sounds like you have a nice light for growing algea.

 

K+ 6500k is all you will need for your fuge lighting. Most macros dont like 10000k too much. Been trying to grow calerpa under 10000k/acnictic for awhile now and its not working for me very well.

 

Ok thanks I will try a smaller light.

 

I am using 6000k cf from Home Depot and my macro is in great shape. What kind of macro do you have? I found out the hard way that caulerpa is sensitive to water conditions and drastic changes in SG, PH or other stuff. Some will die off and it need to be removed as soon as it start looking see-through or it will release phosphates back into your tank.

 

I agree with all. Lower K bulbs are better. Plus Caulerpa is touchy stuff. It can go sexual and dump large amounts of nitrates back into the water. I've have great success with Chato (spelling)

 

How will I know when it dies? What will it look like?

 

It will start looking transparent. Trust me, dont wait until it is fully transparent or you will probably get a huge cyano outbreak (it happened to me). If mine even start to look faded I cut them back. Have you have a rise or drop in SG or PH lately? It could be the light also. The nice thing is when you get the correct light and your tank is nice and balanced they grow back real quick.

 

No PH is good but some of it looks transparent. I think the lights are to much. But I know my nitrate and nitrite are high.

 

If it looks transparent then cut that part off asap. Nitrites should be 0 as you probably know. Your tank is still cycling right? Since macroalgae likes nitrates then somewhat high levels arent a bad thing. How high are they?

Mine had die-off because I had plumbing problems and my ATO filled my sump with R/O and my SG dropped from 1.025 to 1.022 in a few minutes and it took a while to get them back up. I lost about 1/4 of my caulerpa floridana.