I have a number of Keys species doing well.
Generally you need to have enough nutrients for these planmts to do well, many reefs might be too "lean" to get good growth or they might support peroids of good growth, then run out of nutrients that were present, then the plants melt.
Yes, they suck Ca, (perhaps) much faster than Coral.
You can add macros to the refuge easy by adding a light back there. But iof your tank is already too lean, that will just have macro's removing nutrients from macro's in the tank.
That's fine if... you have a lot of nutrients that you need to remove.
There's a few cases where folks have too many nutrients or have a big spike were something dies, rots, over fed, they reworked their substrate etc, and this will cause a melt down.
But it seems to me that a lack of nutrients is often the issue.
NO3 and Ca/alkalinity in particular. If the plants run out of NO3 for long, they have trouble and this effects their biochemistry dramatically.
So feed your fish more.
Focus on the plant's needs. Fe can be added also.
Although not a FT fan, I'd rather play, the mood was subdued here at UF after the other game
I bet ya'll were happy
Regards,
Tom Barr
