Guaranteed to eat caulerpa?

[Anonymous]

I have the little bunches of grapes and the tiny doll parasols up the yin yang. Is there any invertebrate that will eat this stuff? I have mithrax and a tuxedo urchin, they don't do it.

Fish then? My mimic tang isn't interested....

 

[Anonymous]

My purple tang isn't interested either. You best bet is to find a good Taoist priest...

 

[Anonymous]

I prefer a small concussion grenade :lol:

The only thing I ever found that helped was removing what I could and trying to keep ahead of the stuff. FWIW, I also noticed an increase in the stuff when my lights needed replacing.

 

[Anonymous]

Although I've never had it get loose in my tank Dan, all the posts I've ever seen on the subject both here and elswhere pretty much concur with Tracy.

 

[Anonymous]

There must be something. Its all intertwined with the sps, which is getting pretty dense. Its impossible to get in there and remove it all.

 

[Anonymous]

In a nutrient-rich environment, the macroalgae are meant to overrun the coral.

Yours best bet is to manually remove them as much as possible, and keep the nutrient in the water as low as possible to slow down the growth.

Once they start to smother the coral, you are in deep trouble. Caulerpa win every single time.

 

[ChrisRD]

Not sure if this helps but check out this link

From the link: "In choice experiments they found that E. crispata would eat a number of species of siphonaceous green algae including Batophora oerstedi, Bryopsis plumosa, Halimeda spp, Penicillus spp, Caulerpa paspaloides and Caulerpa racemosa.


Try Googling "caulerpa eating nudibranch" for more information.

I doubt that helps but it's all I got!!

 

[jjboods]

I put a few pieces in my tank to help fight microalage and my yellow tang devoured it in about 2 days.

 

[Anonymous]

The crispata lays egg masses in my tank, and after about a week, it just disappeared totally... I guess I have no luck with nudis.... YMMV.

 

[liquid]

My scopas tang goes after Caulerpa...

Shane

 

[Anonymous]

The grape variety?

 

[Anonymous]

Keep the nutrients in check, and be wary, because caulerpa has such potent monoterpenes that it will not just overgrow corals, but it will kill other macros in the tank and take over. Most people don't take that into account when they add caulerpa.

 

[liquid]

The grape variety?

Dunno. Mine eats the leafy kind. I have no grape caulerpa in my system. However a friend of mine had and his tangs seemed to eat it...

Shane

 

[Anonymous]

>..My scopas tang goes after Caulerpa...

Well, your scopas is either pretty dumb, or it was very hungry...

 

[liquid]

I feed him 1x per day and he's fat and happy and my macroalgae's trimmed back nicely.

Shane

 

[Anonymous]

I never added the stuff, and it didn't choose to grow out until 6 months ago.

Some people have used big sea-hares from Blowfish aquatics; looking into that.

How about rabbitfish?

 

[Anonymous]

The issue with tangs and tang-related fish (e.g. rabbitfish, foxface) is that people often have different success with them. See liquid's comment, for example. You want a "Guaranteed" solution, so I don't know who can give you that.

 

[Anonymous]

I seriously doubt a rabbit fish would eat grape caulerpa. Mine never did anyway when I offered it to him.

 

[Anonymous]

My figi foxface (S. uspi) has eaten every kind of caulerpa I have thrown at him.

Including two different types of caulerpa that have the "ball like" growth form. I don't know which is technically grape, but I have two kinds that *I* call grape caulerpa. I have quite a few growth forms of caulerpa in my 'fuge and he has not turned his nose up at one yet.

I bought him because I had sawblade caulerpa taking over the tank, in and out of all my sps, and I just couldn't get it all out. Neither of my tangs would touch it.

He ate it all right up. Don't know how much room you have, but he is a very nice fish, I like him a bunch.

 

[Anonymous]

I had a yellow tang that ate C. racemosa, but only the new growth. He just kept it in check, and wouldn't eat all of it.