I hope that wasn't my grape going sexual.

So my fuge is 5 weeks. Put some grape caulerpa in about 3 weeks ago. Some is growing. A couple of pieces are not. Go to look in today and a branch is pumping out green stuff. I yanked it out real quick cause it wasn't doing that great anyway. Thought it was spores.

I'm on a reverse photo period with 12 hours. I have two two tangs and a hippo. Hopefully I didn't just seed my tank with grape.

 

No worries my friend. If it's Caulerpa, your SPS are gonna be ticked so put some new carbon in but that is not there primary source of reproduction. Very rarely does a new macroalgae develop after caulerpa goes asexual.

 

Sweet. I knew the pros and cons, I was just surprised to see it. Luckily I don't have SPS at this time. Maybe down the road when I get more stable and understand what I'm doing.

 

Less is more with Caulerpa.

It goes sexual because it's not getting enough of something and as a survival mechanism, it releases it's gametes. Well, by the time it hits our protein skimmers, mechanical filtration, chemical filtration, they are pretty much toast.

Don't ever put Caulerpa in the position where it is nutrient limited. I.e., if you have low Nitrates, phosphates, Iron, or lighting, make sure you keep the amount of Caulerpa you have low. If you have a lot of nutrients, export often so you don't get some huge ball where some of it is starved of light.

 

I've seen huge balls of cheato, but even I was wondering how much macro I could sustain. Before the fuge I always had very low nitrates, and I've never detected PO4 on my tests. When my fuge is more established, I am going to remove some of my live rock to open up the tank more. So there will go some nitrate reduction. I am feeding more now too since I added the fuge, removed all my mechanicals, and turned up the temp 2 degrees. (It is at 80 now.)