How to kill grape calapara

B Pierce

New member
I got a few pieces of grape calapara on my lr and at first i thought it would be cool but now 1year later i have a lot of it. I try to pull it out but it is attached to lr and some always remains. Does anyone know a reef safe fish that could live in my 29gal that will eat all my calapara?
 
Some large herbivores like caulerpa but I can't think of anything for a 29 gallon. Perhaps a Diadema urchin would eat it? Caulerpa seems so easy to pull out.
 
You could harvest some & sell it to your LFS. I had trouble growing bubble but I have plenty of the other kinds. Dont kill all of it because its good for nitrates. If I lived close I would pick some up.
 
Well, the reason I bumped it before is because I have a similar problem. I have a fuge anyways, so I dont need the extra grape macro...but the stuff grows so fast in the display that it gets impossible to completely remove. I have a tuxedo urchin in the fuge anyways to combat cyano and slime algae, and let me tell ya....he doesnt touch macro unless it's the tender red kind. FWIW, I am considering removing the fuge (or downsizing it) because I want to produce some nitrates (for the dozen clams I have in the display). If it wasnt for the phosphate removal, I would prolly remove the macro all together and let the GSP, xenia, shrooms, and clams filter the water.

Is there a fish that likes to eat grape macro?
 
Its not a fish but my emeral crab used to eat some of mine, it didn't seem to be his perference though. He seemed to enjoy some of my red macro's more. Anyway you can give on a shot and they are cheap. But I know mexican turbo snails will eat it like its candy. 3 golf ball sized turbo's cleaned out a large handfull of caulerpa's in 2 nights in my tank. But grape has a tendency to drop the grapes when its eaten, so I doubt anything will completely remove it by eating it alone.
 
sell it
i have gotten rid of some f mine cuz it grows so fast. it ships well. also a lfs in my area sells a small live rock rubble piece with a a small portion of macro attached to it for $ 24
i would not buy it for that price but i know people do
 
well, harvest some and get them to the LFS. I used to do this in my early days ( before I had any corals to harvest ;-) ) and my LFS give me credit for that, was rather nice.

Or you can send some to Portugal, I would welcome it very much now that my tank crashed and its cycling again and my refugium is empty ;-)
 
My coral beauty will not eat it, as a matter of fact I've not seen him eat any of my caulerpa's and I have 3 different varieties in my tank. Err actually I've never seen him eat any macro's at all, he picks at my gracillaria but I think he's just after the micro algae that seems to acumulate on my tank heaven not the macro itself.

But it doesn't matter as I don't think either a cherub or a coral beauty can go in a 29. I still say I would go with hand removal and mexican turbos.
 
A coral beauty can go in a 29, im not sure about a cherub though. My roomate has a coral beauty in a 30 gal and he does fine in there, but he also had grape growing in his tank, and the beauty never touched the stuff.
 
Why wouldn't a cherub or a coral beauty go in a 29? They only get 3" & 4" long, respectively! So long as they have plenty of rocks to zip around and some algae or dried seaweed to graze from they're happy, hardy fish. As to coral beauties eating macro, I guess it just depends on the personality of the fish. I know for a fact that mine eats razor and grape caulerpa.
 
Im sure it's an individual fish dependant situation. Just like peppermint shrimp eating rock anemones. If there is enough other tasty stuff being fed, no reason to eat the surroundings...

I do have another question then. If I were to get a pygmy angel, would that do it? And in that case, dont the smaller angels nip at certain inverts as well?

This is my tank's stocking, let me know if you see a problem:
Fire shrimps
6-line wrasse
tiger jawfish
red serpent star
multiple reproducing cocos and dusters
almost every type of SPS around (ok, thats pretty far fetched, but over 30 types), some LPS (open brain, galaxea, hammer), softies (shrooms, yumas, xenia, GSP, cloves).
Porcelain crabs
Emerald crabs
coral banded shrimp
lettuce slugs
velvet slugs
 
Herbert T. Kornfeld said:
Im sure it's an individual fish dependant situation. Just like peppermint shrimp eating rock anemones. If there is enough other tasty stuff being fed, no reason to eat the surroundings...

I do have another question then. If I were to get a pygmy angel, would that do it? And in that case, dont the smaller angels nip at certain inverts as well?

This is my tank's stocking, let me know if you see a problem:
Fire shrimps
6-line wrasse
tiger jawfish
red serpent star
multiple reproducing cocos and dusters
almost every type of SPS around (ok, thats pretty far fetched, but over 30 types), some LPS (open brain, galaxea, hammer), softies (shrooms, yumas, xenia, GSP, cloves).
Porcelain crabs
Emerald crabs
coral banded shrimp
lettuce slugs
velvet slugs
If you were to get a pygmy angel, it could do the trick. As for smaller angels nipping at inverts, I've never seen mine nip at any coral, shrimp, crab, starfish, or featherduster--but that's probably going to depend on the personality of the individual fish as well.
 
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