Caulerpa prolifera

Re: mellen, I'm glad you found this thread

Re: mellen, I'm glad you found this thread

FloridaPets said:
I do find it strange that I had my signature removed because it contained a link, but a retailer can use a retail name as a mod.???!!!

So does that mean we shouldn't allow retailers such as yourself to use the business name as a screen name? ;) You will notice I do not, and have not, used a link to my business in my sig. I am held to the same rules as you, so all is well :)

BTW the problem with making it sound like using straight tap or untreated well water is just fine and dandy in all circumstances is that it just isn't. I have lived in areas were the city water or the well water was quite fine to use untreated. I've also lived in areas where that aproach would be deadly to any inverts and sometimes even the fish :eek2: While most advanced hobbyiest know they need to take some of those issue's on a case by case basis, most newbies don't have a clue. It's the newbies that we need to watch for. In my area for example, the well water can vary tremendously depending the exact area and depth of the well. Some people have pesticide contaminated wells that just aren't usable without considerable treatment. In some areas the water is so soft and acidic that the copper is leached out of the plumbing at an incredable rate that even a heavily planted tank couldn't bind it up fast enough to prevent death of inverts. My current house and deep well comes up almost dead neutral in pH and has a high iron content has the only "problem", not a bad "problem" to have for a guy in the plant business :D

M'ellen,

Several years ago I used to maintain a FW plant tank in a store I had worked in. I fed lots of blackworms and got a nice population going in the substrate ;) I also encouraged the growth of small Malaysian pond snails and trumpet snails. The only thing that kept me from going to a local pond was fear of predatory insect larvae :eek1: If was do a tank like that again today, I would likely go collect some mud from a pond :D
 
Your absolutly right

Your absolutly right

My current house and deep well comes up almost dead neutral in pH and has a high iron content has the only "problem", not a bad "problem" to have for a guy in the plant business

Bill,
I agree with you on the tap water issue. I believe most areas can use tap water especially for top offs and partial water changes with no problems what so ever. I do think it should be used with caution and a good conditioner should be used. I too have been fortunate that the areas I've lived in the water quality has been great. And like you said, even if there is some higher amounts of some minerals and/or iron, not too bad for the plant business.
Ididn't mean to get snippy with the business name thing. I've had a couple of close calls with some mods over some of my posts on Reef Club Forum threads that we are sponsors of.

Mellen,
You can just keep on talking. It's great to read intelligent common sense.
John
 
OK I'm coming into this thread late, but I'm a big fan of Prolifera.
I first bought a bag from Florida Pets to put in the refugium on my 125 FOWLR. It just flourished immediately and I harvest a bunch daily and feed to my 8" foxface. He scarfs it so fast it's unbelievable! He can suck an entire blade down in one shot! It never even thought about going sexual!
I added a 'fuge on my 90 surfline reef, and started it off with some of the prolifera from my original purchase. Same thing, in no time it had expanded into a nice growth. Some of the "leaves had broken off while handling, and had flowed back into the tank. I just left them there, and now they have rooted and are growing also.
My wife and I liked this macro, so much that we just bought a new 29 setup and are doing it strictly as a macro tank. I of course started it with more of the prolifera, and several other macros that we also got from John and Shelley. We also got some interesting macros growing on the live rock we got from Dale at Gulf-view. If you get rock from him in the early summer, it is covered with macros!
So my experience with prolifera, it is probably my favorite, it is very sturdy, attractive, and my herbivores prefer it above all others!
 
Hope Dale is gonna be o.k., what with the big blow hitting his area right now. Anybody know off hand if he's in Charlotte County or further north?:confused:
 
I always thought he was near Tampa, but I'm not sure. If so he should be OK. The right side of the hurricane is always the worst side, and it went in further south around Sanibel.
I'm in Myrtle Beach, SC, and they just issued a mandatory evacuation on the Ocean side of our main highway. I guess they are expecting it to cross Florida, and head our way. I just gassed up the generator.
 
Skune, how fast does it grow? and how much do you get from floridapets? I got some graciliaria from them and still got a ton of it left. I'm going to be stocking a 50g macro-fuge I'd like to use as a growout tank, and just wondered how bare the tank would be with 1 order of prolifera. (also plan on tossing in some various sea grasses).

Great to hear about the foxface, mine (which is about 2.5" long) loves the graciliaria, tossed a spring in the other day and he went nibbling on it, stopped for a while, and this morning its completely gone..mmmm roughage! With some prolifera he'll have some mix up in his diet now (along with the mysis).
 
I guess how fast it grows depends on your conditions, lighting, nutrients available to algae, etc. They give you a ton of Prolifera
in a bag. I was amazed at how much there was! I recommend getting a portion of their Chaetomorph also, I have both in my 'fuges. The Chaeto comes with some good hitchhikers which are good to have in a 'fuge.
 
I heard my name somewhere:)
I see many of you are talking FW plants, well, it is easier than Marine plants:)

I agree with Skune.

C. prolifera is great and perhaps one of the best Caulerpas. It's very tough, does not melt easily. It's also quite attractive and does not get too tall. Nice darker colored blades.
It's a weed indeed.
It's found further north than many of the other species.

It's fairly easy to deal with when aquascaping also, vs say C racemosa. It prunes well and replants well making it one of the fewer macros that you can do this with.

The darker color accent well with neon colors of the fish vs other neon colors.

Basically the darker colors accent the "bright colored actors"(the fish, or "bait" as I call them) better than brighter colored plants/corals etc.

A fine dissected balde with bright colors will look nice against this macro.

I just moved from Gainesville about a week ago. My friends in Tampa were going to have a "Hurricane party", bet they are leaving after seeing it a 4 instead of the wimpy 2:)

Mysis shrimp can be caught at some lakes very early in the morning for Seahorses, use these live and then after 3-4 weeks, they will accept the frozen. Work other vitamins in with.
Several folks here bred and raised the larger yellow Brazilians this way.

Bill,

If you use CO2 or not is a big issue for FW planted tanks, I do not think it has much application in SW personally, heavy aeration does seem to do the trick. All SW plants/macros have no trouble using HCO3 anyway.

Most plants that are Ag crops actually prefer NO3, wheat , corn etc, Rice is an exception. Some submersed FW aquatic plants prefer NH4, they also grow just as well without any sources of NH4 and NO3 instead.

Attempting to keep a very low stable residual of NH4 is very tough/impractical, you ulitmately are left with supplementing with NO3 for both a dedicated macro tank or a FW tank using CO2.

This is good since the plant(macros) will develop good enzymatic transporters for NO3 if you keep a relatively moderate amount of NO3 present. If the NO3 is low or absent and it's all dependent on NH4, you can crash the plant and macros are sensitive to nutrient levels and might die off and sporulate.

The key is stability of these nutrients and finding a practical method to foster this.

This is why your Caulperas melt and go sexual after a peroid of vigorous growth in refugiums.

If you maintain a stable biomass by pruning often, and not letting the biomass get 2-3x the starting size when growth was fast, then the main reef tank will be able to supply enough for good growth.
The pruning maintains stabilty of export and the reef tank maintains the stabilty of import.

You can do this in isolated system using NH4Cl, (NH4)2 SO4 or KNO3 if you want to see about NO3 vs NH4 specifically in Marine macro and Seagrasses.

I've never found significant difference between NH4 and NO3 in a practical tank when adding CO2 was done in FW with many plants.

Most micro algae just love NH4 in FW, I have not worked much with NH4 in marine systems, but I have added larger amounts of NO3. It does help macros and does not encourage micro algaes.

NH4 and PO4 are fire in marine tanks I would say, any NH4 should only come from fish/critter waste only and not much, you should never be able to measure any.

Another issue is the conversion of NH4=> NO3 and also the DBS's, that NO3=>N2 gas.

You need ro remove these elements to isolate the questions you hope to address.

I've done this with FW plants, I suspect a similar patterm exist with macros/marine systems.

Most FW rooted plants are not PO4 or Fe limited, many Marine systems are.

Adding overdoses of Fe and Mn did not encourage microalgae.
PO4 did.

I think the line with PO4 is very low, but dosing may work, NH4? I tend to doubt it has any use other than from dosing from the critters.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
Bill, organic material should be added to any substrate, not too much(eg more is not better) but not too little depending on which approach you chose.
I've done this long before many did, perhaps because I've always done this, this is what folks did back in the 1970's and 1980's, "dirty sand" was what you used.

Suddenly someone says it's "new" and it's all the rage:) hahaha.

Not, not even.

This applies broadly to both soft sediment macros/plants and FW rooted plants.

I add some form organic material, some mulm(Vacuumed detrius that settles on a the bottom of a bucket or filter sponge squeezings) to the bottom of every substrate.

This provides reducing power until the bacterial colonies are fully developed and then wears off after a month or two, the mulm is the bacteria, live and adds precisely what is missing from an established substrate.

You only need a moderate amount of soil, mud, manure, Worm castings, etc, I prefer peat, if you use things with NH4, you can let it soak for 2-3 weeks to leech out the NH4/urea components.

Any OM(organic matter) will do, all you need is a carbon source for the bacteria to gobble up the O2 down there.

This last for awhile till it's all used up. Adding more causes a mess when you replant or uproot.

You can add more if you use non CO2 approaches, but it's not required either.

Marine systems go after the water column primarly for uptake.

The best growth is from the water column also in FW systems.
Not roots. There are several papers that clearly showed this. Even with the roots cut off, the plants grew at the same growth rates......but if you limit the water column, then they will switch to the substrate as a back up.

Some soft sediment macros certainly take some in from the substrate and export it to the blade regions.

Generally FW substrates do not gain anything from substrate burrowing. It's just an O2 drain.

Plant roots take care of all the O2 and substrate cycling issues.

A thriving seagrass mat can do this also.

There are some distinct differences between FW and SW wetland soils, but over all, many of the processes are similar.


I've discussed substrates at length on FW boards.

Mellen,

There are many things that need to be done yet with macro's, I am by no means willing to share too much yet. It takes time and trials and messing things up to figure out the mechanisms. In some ways it's good few folks have kept them for long, less myths, FW plant folks had a cow when I said to add PO4. But it took awhile but now it's fairly common in CO2 enriched tanks.
Same went for RO water or FW plants prefer soft water etc.

But.............

I do get my stuff right when I do finish. I also have a nasty crotchety habit of critcal attacks on ideas, rather than people.
This applies to my own self too:) I do not like to eat crow.
Some misinterpt it, and feel I'm pushing __MY method__, I do not give a crap about that, I am interested in the plants and algae.

Just make sure you look at everything, question everything, try backdoor methods, etc if something does not seem right or might make you assume something.

Also, having a good baseline to compare something against is critical also. Isolating the iisue i question is also critical, you must have control of the dependent and independent variables.

Too many arm chair aquarist and not enough folks willing to destroy their own tanks in search of why:)

Come on, can you blame them?:)
Hehe, not even.

So compassion for them is in order I feel. Even when they fight you about it. That does not matter when you are right.

As far as CO2, all plants/algae use CO2 in order to fix it, but around 99.2-5% marine algae use HCO3 when the CO2 runs low and possess the enzyme Carbonic anhydrase to remove an OH group.

I have never found better growth using CO2 in a marine macro/seagrass tank. Aeration did the same thing and is much easier. I think the Carbon needs of marine macro's is far less than that or FW plants.

Most of the support materials of many macro's is CaCO3. Not cellulose/cell wall materials.

Look at the dry weights of these two.

So the CO2 need is much less relative to FW weeds and aeration seems to be enough to address the needs in a densely planted Macro tank.

I want to go back and do it again and compare some specific plants/macro's using CO2 though. I do not like to use just one study. There are at least 4 to perhaps 30 different things(PO4, CO2, O2 dosing, NH4) I need yet to do to figure out some nagging questions.

So adding CaCO3 for the macro's is critical, perhaps as much if not more so than enough CO2. Many of the macro's I like are heavily calcified. If the CO2 is lowered, HCO3 is still there.

Hope this helps,

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
Does anyone know if prolifera will out compete Racemosa? I have been having a problem with Racemosa overtaking the display tank. It came in as a hitchiker and I cant get rid of it. I pull out as much as I can, but it grows so fast I have trouble keeping up with it. It covers the rock and corals. It also grows fast in the refugium and is out competing the chaeto that I originally put in. Is there any way to get rid of the Racemosa?:confused:
 
...I've always liked prolifera in my main tank. It's all but gone now, just ordered some more, should be here friday. Anyhow it's always a happy day when I get new macro from floridapets. I tried a different place awhile back and the macros came with small green seaslugs I didn't notice at first. They reproduced in no time and took out all my caulerpa. I think i've got the last of them, haven't seen one in like a week, I should have tried to remove them immediately, but I didn't know what they were, thought maybe they were some cool nudis or something. I like having prolifera in my main tank, and i'm still using a wet/dry, so fuge isn't an option for it right now. But I have shrimpfish, and 4 types of pipefish, so i'm sure they'll love it even more than me. Would like to try codium too. I'll never get mexicana again, and i'm trying the palap... one for the 1st time and i'm welcoming some halimeda back.
 
C prolifera is wonderful plant.
C racemosa is damn weed.

I'd kill it as best you can.
Might take awhile to pick the tank clean and respond to new infestations.

Alk, Ca, and NO3 and traces will help these plants all do well.
Too low NO3 will cause the plants not to grow as well.
But low NO3 does not impact prolifera nearly as much as the racemosa.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
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