marine plants

[jlm]

Saltwater newbie here. Tank stats: 125 gallons, one month old, 100 lbs fiji LR, 3" live sand, 6 blue-green chromis, 2 emerald crabs, one cleaner shrimp, one bubble anemone, 1 green hammer coral, 5 individual polyps of zoanthids, lots of *pods, lots of feather dusters, plus other misc. live rock hitchhikers, 596 watts of 50/50 10k/actinic lights, skimmer, canister filter rated for 400 gallons. Ammonia=0, Nitrites=0, Nitrates=0, sg=1.024

The brown diatom algae is gone, the hair algae is all but gone, and now a slightly higher form of algae is appearing, but no worries there. I have a cleaner crew scheduled to arrive today. LR has a lot of red, purple, and pink coralline algae.

Some of the live rock has many, many plant sprouts beginning to grow, with at least 3 different varieties. So far, they aren't much taller than an inch or so. I've read lots of posts, but haven't seen anything about these sprouts. Rarely do I see a photo of a reef tank with any sort of plants in it. All this makes me wonder if these plants are a bad thing. I keep plants in all my freshwater tanks and really like the look.

Should I be trying to get rid of these plants? Won't they behave like freshwater plants by removing excess nutrients from the water?

 

[Len]

What you're describing is macroalgae and it's a good thing. They provide a food source and a habitat for many organisms. The reason why you don't see much of them is they tend to die off or be consumed by grazers over time. It's rare to see mature tanks with lots of macroalgae diversity/growth, but that doesn't mean they aren't a good thing . Natural reefs are abundant with them.