Okay mistakes made by reefers using algae.

[liquidg]

Please remember that where the piece of caulerpa starts and finishes, not matter how long that seemingly vine is,that is all one cell!!!

If water is deeper then 8 inches above attachments/roots, the algae will always be sparse and somewhat ineffective at importing so that you can export the many coral produced toxins and common nutrients that your algae is handling for your tank.

At best the algae may weaken at the base if lighting can not reach it through what you could cal the canopy and break off and float.

Lighting should be close to the water level and of diverse imbedded colours, algae lives best in the wild in shallow waters.

There should not be a substrate in with the your algae, in that algae there will develop many shedding plankton species and their shells are prone to clogging substrate media, also algae sheds constantly and this will clog that media as well and is one of the best at encouraging hydrogen sulphide via obligate anaerobes.

Mixing commonly used caulerpa alae species will create fights amongst them and that will result in adverse excreted caulerpenyne that will slowly harm your corals algae clades species.

24 hour lighting for algae is madness, sooner or later it will go to spore due to the stress of this action, no more then 20 hours per 24 hour cycle is best.

Always use lights on for your importing algae while tank lights are off!!!! I have lights on algae importers from 2 pm through to 10 am and tank lights on from 7 am to 10 pm.

Caulerpa and with most algae species are of a high calcium content as with magnesium as well, so when you export it you are throwing away these and more, dosing when using algae is essential!

The more algae the worse your KH will be, this has to be watched and kept in check.

The more active and highly functional your bio system is, the more nitrogen it will make available, this will inspire all algae species and to a degree, sicken symbiotic algae species leaving some coral species not doing so well.

All algae function at their best with temperatures between 22c and 24c.

Algae, whether symbiotic or independent, they all produce oxygen as a bi product that they use while lights are on and when lights are off, they use available oxygen in the water and the bi-product is co2, just like everything else.

There is more but I am having a cuppa, lol

Edited March 24, 2015 by liquidg