plants directly in tank

[Landshark18]

What type macroalgae is suitable for adding directly to my tank? If there are any types, what works best with crushed coral?

 

[graveyardworm]

Depends on how much maintenance you can provide. Species like gracillaria and cheato are fairly low maintenance and are least likely to become a nuisance, or you could go with some of the various species of caulerpa which are much more attractive IMO, but are going to require more maintenance to keep their growth manageable. This may also depend upon other livestock, and what your overall plans are for the display.

 

[Sk8r]

One of the drawbacks is floating cheato shades corals, and things with roots get into the rocks or under them and cause headaches, entangling corals again. If you have a plant-eater, they cycle the stuff into fish poo and pretty soon you have microalgae, as you have to replace the macro to keep your vegetarian alive.

 

[Samala]

Do you want macros to look pretty in the display, to serve mostly as neat accents? Or.. do you need them to help with nutrient exporting, or to create more pod habitat?

The calcerous macros - Udotea, Avrainvillea (both mermaid's fan), Penicillus (shaving brush) and the very likeable Halimeda (cactus macro) are all fairly well suited to life in a reef as display tank accents. Noninvasive, nonaggressive, and herbivores usually leave them alone. They will soak up alk and Ca, so you may need to add more once these start to take off.

These guys will not make a huge dent in your nutrient levels though, and probably wont provide a lot of pod habitat. The best candidate for this is Chaetomorpha, as Graveyard suggested. But.. this species seems to do the best in a refugium setup.

If we can help more Shark let us know! Hope we havent overwhelmed you.

>Sarah

 

[reefnewbie54321]

I saw feather caulerpa in a display (finding nemos) it looked awesome, it probably requires a lot of pruning but it also serves as pod habitat and nutrient export. I also plan to add seagrass in the corner of my tank but that's just for looks and nothing more.

For red varieties kelp on a rock is pretty cool, it wont do well with fish nipping at it so if you have a tang or a foxface its probably a no no

 

[Jordan55]

I bought some of Finding Nemo's feather caulerpa. It looks very cool.

In my display, I have halimeda, feather caulerpa, and codium. I am still looking for prolifera and maybe one other type. So far, I think it looks really neat. I like my planted tank just as much as coral tanks

 

[dalbrecht]

It grows like a weed but I like peltata as a fore-ground plant. You need to prune constantly (read semi-weekly) but it's a good alternative to star grass & it does fine in coarse substrates.

 

[Landshark18]

ive added some cheato to my tank and everything seems to be working out nicely. My nitrates are in check and it looks nice with everything else. Thanks for all of your advice!

 

[Cody Ray]

many of the red algae are slow growers and would look very nice.