Ska's 28 Macro Algae Display

[skabooya]

Macro is going NUTS! gonna send out a few packages now and hope that helps. I may have more up for sale soon too. Im going to be very generous to those that did order

Anyway I put my order in for 7 yes 7 sexy shrimp. I cant wait. I do already have a peppermint shrimp who is in LOVE with the macro in my tank. I see him out all the time in my red halymenia. Camouflage I guess. Pretty cool stuff.

[skabooya]

I want to cry when I see how beautiful my tank was. I got a new teaching Job in Sept. With that new job, taking care of my son and husband as well as the regular chores my tanks got neglected. The macro took over EVERYTHING! well I shouldn't blame all the macro. The grape calpura is EVIL! Stunning if it is well kept but I didn't have the time to trim weekly. It smothered everything including other macro. It killed off a lot of my nice macro and some of my corals.
I went in and pulled EVERYTHING out of my tank. Including rocks. I pulled off every bit of macro I saw with tweezers and threw everything out except for the pretty macro that isint invasive. I cleaned EVERYTHING!
About 2 weeks later the grape calpura was back and worse than before. WHY!
I stopped dosing to starve the macro. It killed off nearly everything except the grape. I pretty much gave up.
I was looking for a tang to temporarily put into the tank to just clear it up.
Yesterday I pulled about half the macro again and today I will do the other half as well as a WC.
I can honestly say that it is finally starting to slow down. I do now have a lot of nuisance algae.
What I do like is how truly wild the tank looks now. It is very natural. Not man made natural, but coastal saltwater natural.
I am hoping that after this next big clean It will be under more control.

I noticed A LOT of snails, I didnt have before. NICE! and my mushrooms are COLOURFUL! They were in near complete darkness. Also, the green grape that was in the dark didnt really grow.

It gave me an idea. I now have enough lighting for sps. I want height in my tank as well as a lot of shade for my mushrooms.
MONTI CAPS! I tried a couple before, but I only had just enough light and the frags were constantly knocked over, so they didn't make it.
Now, I have a plan. Mount it DIRECTLY to the rock, right at the top of the tank instead of just waiting for them to stick, themselves They can completely shade the lower part of the tank making my mushrooms pretty and my keeping the green macro at bay. YAY!
Then for height, some very easy to keep sps like birds nest.
I really want some photosynthetic gorgs, but I still cant find any

This tank is going through a transition and I am actually getting excited about it. I hope it lasts.

[skabooya]

Alright, so the plan is to have something to control the grape caulpera. I would like to save my nicer macro algae.
I was reading around and a recommendation is emerald crabs. They are hit or miss, but at least its a chance. So, Im thinking one or two emerald crabs, and then when they get older I would trade them in. Although having crabs in the tank would just be so cool.
I'm going to do more research to see if it is worth the risk.
If that doesn't work, I will seriously consider a tang, but I really don't want one.
After that, Im going to tear everything down and sell or trade all my LR but keep my coral and just start over with normal LR and NO CALPURA.

Any advice ?

[hillegom]

If you got a tang, it would probably eat all the macro algae, or at least most of it. I had a yellow and he ate caulerpa.
The only thing I could suggest is get another tank, and keep the tang in there .
You would give him only the LR with the grape on it. After all the grape is gone, you could give the tang back to the LFS

[skabooya]

No chance on another tank. I dont have any room at all. As for the caulerpa ITS EVERYWHERE on every rock. If I put rocks in another tank one at a time and then replace, it will just spread onto the rock that was just cleaned.