jgreen1025
New member
The rapid growth and calcification rates of Halimeda... indicates these algae could be every bit as effective as an instrument of nutrient export as the more popular Caulerpa. Regular harvesting of any algae will export nitrogen, phosphorus, and other organic compounds... After sporulation, the remaining Halimeda can be left in the aquarium, as they are essentially nothing but aragonite and can become part of the natural substrate.
I just found this article on halimeda yesterday. I've been trying to get my chaeto and gracillaria algae to grow better to export nutrients, but strangely without much success. All the while the halimeda has been growing like a weed! It never occurred to me that I had a great export medium in the halimeda, probably because it's also exporting calcium.
But the article has gotten me thinking - the "dead" leaves are a good aragonite substrate as mentioned above, and I often siphon them out of my tank into my refugium when cleaning. But since they're also good at taking up nitrates and phosphates, are those nutrients bound within the chlorophyll? If so, when the chlorophyll is expelled during sporulation it means those undesireable nutrients have been released back into the tank. But would that also mean that if I harvested some halimeda and allowed it to dry out and then crushed it up to add back to the refugium as substrate, those undesireable nutrients would still be in the leaves?
John