Keeping grape calurpa from going sexual?

[Drae]

Anyway to keep grape from milking up a tank? My display somehow got grape calurpa in it and I'm thinking of using the rocks in a fuge.

 

[Shane C.]

With most of the caluerpa, try to avoid excessive temp swings and trim it regularly. That generally minimizes your risk for it crashing. If its spread through the tank, you may have to introduce a fish to help eliminate it.

 

[Plantbrain]

Trimming and not letting the NO3 bottom out, which leads back to trimming regularly. If the biomass increases 5X fold and then your tank's N is stabilized and optimal, then that's where you will want to keep the biomass at in the fuge.

If you allow the biomass to continue to grow and you do not trim it and it's 8-10X larger, and the NO3 go to near zero...........then the macro alga will go sexual in an attempt to find new and better nutrients elsewhere(in nature or in the main tank) or form a resting stage till the good conditions return again. But good low levels are what you want, so manage the macro's biomass and trim it good.

Do not do boom and bust, there's many examples on Rc where folks had improving conditions as their macros grew out and then it got so dense and growth was so intense that it literally eats itself out of house and home.
If they had trimmed it back earlier, then the crash would have never happened. But many are scared to trim plants, macro algae etc.

Use about 50% of the volume in the macro fuge as a good rule, more than this, trim it every so often. once every 1-4 weeks range is a good routine for most fuges.

Sell to the LFS and get some trade

 

[Drae]

Thanks for the imformative post! I really appreciate it.