someone is eating my caulerpa

[starsbravo]

i have a 10 gal tank with caulerpa and brillo pad algae, all i have in there is 3 turbos and a couple of blue legged hermits. my caulerpa is slowly disappearing, its not going sexual and i have adequate lighting. will any of these critters eat it????

 

[hmott]

Turbo's eat the heck out of macro. I know mine did, I had four about the size of a golf ball and they ate a handfull a night.

 

[beaslbob]

Had the same problem with my first caulpera. In my case anemone crabs were eating it.

What I did was set up an old 20g to culture the macros in. (any container would do) And transfer some each week to the display. Eventually the new grow was equal to or greater than what they were eating.

BTW Everything was much better in the display once the macros were there.

 

[romunov]

>>BTW Everything was much better in the display once the macros were there.

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[beaslbob]

>>BTW Everything was much better in the display once the macros were there.

Can you elaborate on this?

I can give more details in an email or pm but what I had done was reach a situation where after 4 months of operation, daytime ph was 7.4 or lower, and any new fish would either die in a day or slowly deteriorate over a three week period, develop white spots, start breathing heavy and die. After adding macros the daytime ph rose and has stayed at 8.4 (without any buffering). My yellow tang has tripled in size, overcome ich, and been in there for 15 months or so. The other fish are all 6 months or older and not signs of any distress.

I also did not have corals in there during that time. So that could be a consideration. Obviously you don't want the macros blocking the light for corals for instance.