ReefLady
Aquarium Advice FINatic
I'm about at the end of my wits here.
I had this pesky patch of Caulerpa crop up in my display tank (180g sps tank) a few weeks back. No idea where it came from, but suddenly it's just *there*. To the best of my knowledge, it's feather caulerpa (Caulerpa sertularioides).
I kalk pasted the heck out of it, it turned yellow, seemed to die off a bit, and within a day or so was back in it's full glory. I've tried to manually remove it, but it breaks off easily, and I'm nervous about sending little shoots all over the tank. At least right now it's only in one spot.
Over the past weekend, it decided to take up home in, and totally engulf one of my favorite sps - my Anacropora sp. It has almost killed the coral completely.
I'm going to be breaking the coral off it's rock tonight, placing it in a bucket, and manually removing all of the macro. Hopefully the coral will recover, but I know there are at least a few healthy branches I can frag if need be.
Unfortunately, the Caulerpa isn't confined to this coral. It's gotten pretty intertwined in the entire rock structure, and is heading for a couple other corals. I've toyed with the idea of removing the entire rock and scrubbing - but that's kind of a "last choice" - the rock is huge - probably 25lbs, and about 1/2 the left side of my tank, with several corals on it.
Any suggestions at all? None of my three Tangs (Hippo, Yellow, and Purple) touch the stuff. I'm not really one for adding a fish just to solve one problem.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Here's a side view of the Coral & Caulerpa ... you can see how the coral is bleaching...
I had this pesky patch of Caulerpa crop up in my display tank (180g sps tank) a few weeks back. No idea where it came from, but suddenly it's just *there*. To the best of my knowledge, it's feather caulerpa (Caulerpa sertularioides).
I kalk pasted the heck out of it, it turned yellow, seemed to die off a bit, and within a day or so was back in it's full glory. I've tried to manually remove it, but it breaks off easily, and I'm nervous about sending little shoots all over the tank. At least right now it's only in one spot.
Over the past weekend, it decided to take up home in, and totally engulf one of my favorite sps - my Anacropora sp. It has almost killed the coral completely.
I'm going to be breaking the coral off it's rock tonight, placing it in a bucket, and manually removing all of the macro. Hopefully the coral will recover, but I know there are at least a few healthy branches I can frag if need be.
Unfortunately, the Caulerpa isn't confined to this coral. It's gotten pretty intertwined in the entire rock structure, and is heading for a couple other corals. I've toyed with the idea of removing the entire rock and scrubbing - but that's kind of a "last choice" - the rock is huge - probably 25lbs, and about 1/2 the left side of my tank, with several corals on it.
Any suggestions at all? None of my three Tangs (Hippo, Yellow, and Purple) touch the stuff. I'm not really one for adding a fish just to solve one problem.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Here's a side view of the Coral & Caulerpa ... you can see how the coral is bleaching...