Toxic effects of wounding Caulerpa

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

Now I am also hopeing that other might have witnessed results like i have or maby others and have more to add to this descussion. maby some fool proof ways of removing this? To me a small rabit fish is looking better all the time

I'm with you on this one, I once considered a rabbitfish as a cure to my situation, but opted against it thinking that my tank is too small, now once again I'm considering it because I just can't keep up with pulling this stuff out. If something eats this stuff, then I want it to live in my tank for a while. I guess I'll just have to be prepared to deal with a growing fish. Either hope that a good home can be found when he gets too big, or be able to whine loud enough to be allowed to set up a bigger tank.

In general I don't really have a whole lot to add to your observations there, Steve. ... I've come to more or less the same conclusion. I'm not fully against keeping caulerpa in a refugium, but not keen on it in a main tank with lots of nooks and crannies that are a complete impossibility to access properly.

One other thing, it's been noted before than when pruning caulerpa, sometimes the entire colony crashes. Seems to not happen that often, but I think it does illustrate that there is "stuff" that gets released when it's pruned. Running carbon and polyfilter is probably a sage thing to if going to do some extensive pruning.

I'd really be keen on a eelgrass refugium, but since I don't have any of that, I'm more or less stuck with the caulerpa for now. I also grow some cyanaria (sp.?) - spaghetti algae, some sargassum, and some halimeda. Halimeda is kind of cool, but like caulerpa it does sporulate periodically. Don't know what risk of toxins or allelopathic inhibition each species has though -- I just live with the risk and hope that I'm doing enough to keep it under control.