Cleaning Fuge - How much green should I remove

[b_james]

Every time I do a water change I'm never sure how much algae to clean out of the fuge. I have lots of cheato and grape cellurpa. Recently my sump has been developing lots of what looks like clumps of reddish (rust) color balls of algae that looks like cotton. Its quite dificult to remove as its all tangled up within the good algae. Lighting is on 24/7. Should I try to remove all but a small amount of macro algae or leave as much as I can in the fuge? Is the red cotton like algae bad?

[Funky_Fish14]

Howdy Bryan,

I remember talking about the red cotton-like algae clumps. I would try to remove more of it than the other algaes, however would not worry too much about picking out every last chunk. Is it floating loosely, or attached to the surfaces, or other algaes? If floating loosely I would be careful as you dont want it to end up in the main tank, as well as during general removal, be careful of stirring too much up.

When pulling the rest of the green stuff out, pending your growth rates and size of the clump/s, I wouldnt see a problem with trimming back as much as half of what is there. Cheato is not really of concern when trimming, infact I might leave more cheato when trimming back as it will have more body to start more growth from, but with caulerpa, due to the cell structure(long and thin cells), it is best to try to make as few breaks as possible, and concentrate them where the stalks stem from others(the 'forks'). I know this may sound somewhat anal, but because of the way the cells are made, if they are pulled apart in the middle, etc... they can release toxins, as well as kill cells and release more nutrients into the system.

Hope this helps?

Cheers,

Chris