should I get rid of my feather caulerpa?

[bigevill1]

please give me some good reasons to rid my fuge of this stuff. I have both it and cheato growing. why should I just go cheato? I have done some research, but I am still not sure.....I am running this stuff in a FOWLR tank just so you know....

 

[reef_freak_hou]

These are personal points of view so use them as you wish!

Caulerpa uses rhizomes (roots) to trap and extract sediments, so each time you harvest, you are disturbing the substrate of your refugium and it runs through your main tank.

Caulerpa can go sexual and release toxins back into the tank.

Caulerpa can be very invasive, so if a portion made to your main tank and settled and started to grow, you could have the problem of trying to maintain it in your main tank.

As you probably have noticed already, the chaeto does not attached to anything, so when you harvest the overgrowth, you are not disturbing much.

Chaeto also has not been proven to go sexual.

 

[JoeMack]

im still haveing problems getting rid of my feather calurpa from my fuge. I had the lights off for over a week and it all started coming back. I put all the rocks in the sump so it would die off and im getting some growing from the sand of my fuge!!!. Im using speghetii macro now and I love it. Tons of pods and mini brittle stars love that stuff!

 

[bigevill1]

well I did my best to pull out all of the caulerpa last night and left just the cheato in. we will see how well that stuff grows now that it is not competeing with the caulerpa.

 

[reef_freak_hou]

Good luck!

I've sat on the floor for hours picking the caulerpa out of the refugium, thinking that I had only chaeto left.

I'll be darned if that horrid stuff started popping up again. It's no wonder there ecological battles going on with this stuff.

 

[bigevill1]

well I actually pulled the cheato out at first to get all of the caulerpa out of it too. I will be diligent.

 

[David M]

If you are talking about C. taxifolia I suggest you get rid of it asap. The longer you let it stay the harder it will be to eradicate. That stuff is really tenacious, I spent weeks with tweezers trying to get it all out