Salt water Part 2?

Question

Ok i am reading all this stuff about Microalge and Sumps and Refugiums and i am wondering something. Why not Put the Microalge into the tank itself? i mean in the Ocean they dont have a separate place for Microalge. Has anyone done this? and if so to what Success? i really don't want all the fancy or not so fancy pipes going in and out of my tank. I am thinking a 29 gallon tank with two 30 to 60 gallon filters one on each end. this will provide water movement cause they are the "waterfall" type filters meaning the water is pumped out into the filter and "falls" back in.

Answer 1

It's fine to add the macroalgae to the tank itself, as long as you keep it trimmed so it doesn't create a jungle.

The main macroalgae that can become a problem are the vasious species of Caulerpa. If you don't have any fish that will eat this and keep it under control, it will completely overgrow a tank in a matter of a few weeks. If you keep corals, anemones, or other photosynthetic organisms, this can become a problem for them, as well as a problem for itself. If the lower portions of the plants are shaded from the light, the lower leaves can die and create a problem as they decay - they'll release the nutrients they have absorbed back into the water, and the decay itself uses dissolved oxygen required by your fish and other organisms.

I personally have a little macroalgae in all of my tanks - some have Caulerpa (I have 5 varieties including wineglass, grape, sawtooth, and others), Chaetomorpha, Botryocladia (red grape algae), Codium, Gracillaria, and Avrainvillea nigricens. Apart from the Caulerpa, I don't have to do much trimming, and I like the appearance of some of the other algaes - some are as interesting as some of the corals in the tanks. They also give the algae-eating organisms something to nibble on.

Depending on your tank maintenence, you may find some algaes easier to grow than others - since these technically have the same needs as plants, they will need good lighting, a source of CO2 (your fish and other organisms will provide this), and nutrients (nitrate, phosphate, potassium, iron, and others). While this will help maintain your water quality by removing some of the nitrate, the levels of nutrients needed by many of these algaes will not be found in the same levels needed to provide good water quality for corals (these do live in separate areas of the ocean, with corals living in reefs which are much poorer in nutrients than near-shore areas with higher nutrients).