macroalgea

[m3rcury]

i probably spelled that wrong. anyway, i'm pretty new to reef keeping and i see people talking about macro for nitrate reduction. can someone tell me what macros are and what i need to do with them?

btw, i can't to any kind of sump or hang-on-back refugium. can i grow them in-tank?

i'm interested because my nitrates are a pretty constant 25ppm and water changes don't seem to help much. brown algea isn't much of a problem, but it is present.

-david

 

[L and L]

There are many different types of macro algae. Caulerpa (many differents species) and Halimeda are commonly used.

I have green grape and needle(also called spaghetti i think) caulerpa in my refugium.

If you do add some macro algae.... if you have tangs.... they will MOW it down!

Halimeda also consumes Calcium. It just popped up in my tank... and I pull it from time to time. The tangs never did eat that.

 

[m3rcury]

i only have a flame hawkfish and a coral beauty that i just got and who will be in QT for the next 3 weeks. i only have a 40gallon, so i won't be putting tangs in there. i would ultimately like to have the flame, coral, royal gramma, maybe a blenny of some type. that kind of thing.

 

[aquawolf]

There is no problem growing it in your main tank if you will not have hebivores mowing it faster than it can grow. Caulerpa is good, although some species can go sexual and cause problems. A very popular macro that I would recommend is Chaetomorphia. It works very well and is fairly easy to prune as it grows. It also serves as an excellent place for pods to hide out.

You can always find some on the livestock selling forums here for less than $20 shipped.

 

[m3rcury]

while we are talking about that, what are pods?

there should be a glossary somewhere on this site. lol

 

[Blown 346]

Pods are translucent looking bugs, they uselive rock and macro algae to hide and reproduce in. That gives them security of not being eaten. Fish, inverts, and mandarins use them as live food, they are also good as clean up critters.

 

[m3rcury]

so, i noticed at night that there were very small almost shrimp looking things running around. there were also very tiny centipeded looking stuff. are those pods? i saw them on my sea cucumber (which i have since given back to the LFS). were they "hurting" it?

so much to learn

 

[bertoni]

The shrimp-like animals were likely amphipods. The centipede-like animals might have been bristleworms? Neither are likely to hurt a sea cucumber.