tank's a mess, fish happy

[sassyfrassy]

My tank, on one side particularly, is over-run w/caulerpa which looks kinda like a jungle, and I have some dark green velvet looking algae in places, and I have about 5 of those bad anemones, but my fish seem to be fat & happy. Other than appearance is there a downside to the caulerpa? Does anyone else w/FOWLR let caulerpa or some other macro algae grow in tank?

 

[namxas]

We use macro algae in almost all of our setups. It looks nice, aids with water quality, and harbors pods...kind of a win-win IMHO.

Just prune it back to where you like it, freeze the prunings 24 hrs (if you don't use them in another system) and toss them. Freezing the pruned material insures that the cells are dead.

Get rid of those appies (Aiptasia 'nems) now before they take hold.

 

[rayn]

Only downside to calupera is it going sexual on you. If you keep it pruned back you should be okay though.

Namxas, why freeze them? If they are tossed in the garbage wont they die anyway?

 

[namxas]

Not necessarily...freezing is the best way to be sure.

As far as it going sexual, the only time we've had it go sexual on us was because we let it go on purpose to see what it did. No losses, just cloudy water and dead macro. Manual removal of the dead stuff and running carbon did the trick. Keeping it pruned is the trick. IME, it's usually just the fast growers that will tend to "go" on you because they kinda smother themselves (C. taxifolia and C. racemosa are the worst, but very contollable).