+Grog Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Ever wonder what macro going sexual looks like? I thought about posting that in the full tank shot thread but decided against it. My tank looks like the 'artists rendition' of the 400 gallon drop-off tank! Tank looked good when I went to bed at 10. Wife woke me up at midnight to this disaster. In my cleaning frenzy, I broke a tab off of my filter, dumped lights in the sump, and spilled a few gallons of water too. It looks really bad but I think it will be OK with water changes. 95% of the macro blew up. I have around 6 strands left. It was perfect this morning. Don't know if it was a density thing, the weather change, or something else. It was a very rapid change. Yeah, it needed pruning and the first of the month was when I was going to harvest, Probably need to keep on that. This is all I manually removed. The rest is in my water column right now! Sump shot tonight. I cleaned out my eheim and added carbon. Mixing water now for a water change tomorrow AM. Yay me! I'll take some pics in the AM. I think it will clear up with the filter running and water changes. Looks worse than it is IMO but I've been wrong before. Totally a bad thing to wake up to at midnight.... Am I keeping the caulerpa bed? Absolutely! It will regrow. I think I need to be more agressive with pruning and do some experiments to see what causes this sexual response. (and no I'm not going to fondle my caulerpa) Everything has a good side. Carol said, "Why don't you set up another tank so you can try to find out what causes this response." Who would have thought that this would pave the way for another tank in the house? I think my eheim canister filter is going to earn it's keep tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Long Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Hope everything will be ok, good side is it happen during the weekend. If you find out what cause/avoid this please share. Will try to avoid this if I can. Does this harm SPS and LPS in the tank? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 Insult to injury! Went to bed at 4 AM with things clearing up. Between 7 and 4, don't know when, the return from the UV sterilizer popped out of the sump and spewed water all over the floor. 15 gallons. Good thing I was mixing water for a water change! Mopped that back up. No real damage except for the ballast for the UV sterilizer is fried. The water I was mixing was cold, way so I kicked on my halides early to warm things up. All of the inhabitants seem OK, other than the caulerpa. I can't see every nook and cranny but I have found no bodies yet. Looks a lot clearer than last night. So at least one good thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 The macro that you removed looks brown. Was it Prolifera or Paspaloides? Two years ago, with my 135G lagoon, a tankful of both Prolifera and Paspaloides went sexual, technically asexual. No dates involved. The water cleared up with normal filtration and aggressive carbon use within 16 hours. Prior to event, the water column was exceptionally clean. None of this macro came back. Since the event, I have reintroduced macro to this tank and I feed it heavy. Recently, I got an opportunity to identify more details in process of Caulerpa Paspaloides going asexual. In this case, my apprentice noticed a white stringy paste ozing from enlarged stems prior to event. As it was a 20G tank, it was easy to remove all of the macro and to put it in a tank with higher nutrients. The macro cleared up in a few hours with no other visible symptoms. In further questioning my tennent about his tank, several things became apparent. A week in advance, the macro had slowed down its rate of growth. White spots showed up in various spots several days in advance. This happened two weeks ago. The tank now has the same macro in it with heavy feeding to the tank. Because I am a commercial macro grower, I have implemented a nutrient enrichment program using calcium nitrate on all of my production tanks. I have also opted to supplement my display tanks with the same fertilizer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 Paspaloides, and it was white, the picture was not color corrected and it was late at night. LOL Carol and I were discussing ideas as to what caused the event: Density, but how does the plant know it close to others Lack of nutrient, low possibility, I feed heavy Weather change, the cold snap Time of year, you say two weeks ago.. Maybe in January this stuff decides to explode? We want to try to replicate the event in a separate tank so we can control. It needed to be harvested and the plan was on the first. Future, I will harvest every month during water changes, not every other month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Lights dropped in sump and fried ballast on UV sterilizer. Two opportunities to be electrocuted. Be careful of the third strike. Be careful with the good times. Patrick 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 Lights dropped in sump and fried ballast on UV sterilizer. Two opportunities to be electrocuted. Be careful of the third strike. Be careful with the good times. Patrick I'm not driving the car anywhere today! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Even when you feed heavy, so does the macro. Unless you had tested prior to event, you cannot be assured that very low nutrients were not the problem. Considering the large volume of macro that you had, I can easily believe that the nutrients were used up. If you wish to prove this hypothesis, then set up a tank with fast growing Caulerpa using intense light and high nutrients. Once you have established fast growth and high nutrient level, stop feeding the tank. Measure nutrients and observe tank. Whenever you need macro, come get what you need. Patrick I can easily add this paradyne into biofiltration test study as I have one tank that is not committed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 Even when you feed heavy, so does the macro. Unless you had tested prior to event, you cannot be assured that very low nutrients were not the problem. Considering the large volume of macro that you had, I can easily believe that the nutrients were used up. You may very well be correct. Now, thinking back, I've been feeding with Rod's and supplementing with ROE every day. I ran out of ROE last week so the tank has been getting only Rod's. The fish didn't mind but the macro could have consumed everything that was available. I've commented to visitors at our home that I believe that quantity of sand and macro could have supported a much larger DT, and that I wasn't concerned about my heavy feeding. So, maybe it did clean the tank out and decide to move onto a better spot. Also odd is that 95% dissolved. I have about 2 pints left, which is what I started with. I'm going to let the tank recover, it is looking better now (thank you canister filter!), but I have a spare 20g in the garage. Next harvest I'll try what we are discussing and make that tank into a macro experiment. If nothing else it allows me to sneak another tank into the house. Now I wonder if the caulerpa will appear in my DT after this event.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Couldn't help it: 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 This is looking OK! 30 gallons total water change and adding carbon to my canister filter. The mess is clearing up a lot quicker than expected. So much better than at midnight. Sump Before: This picture is three weeks old, it was thicker last night. Sump After: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Looking good compared to Armageddon. It is good you have some survivors. When I had my event, I was pushing 135G tank with a 1000W MH. There were no macro survivors. Also, aside for cloudy water for 24 hours there were no adverse effects to tank inhabitants. I did zero water change. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 Thanks Patrick, I think a key part of this thread is that macro events are not a total disaster. There are a lot of worse things that can happen in our hobby. This one is a manageable situation. I got to say though, at midnight it looked pretty gloomy.... I'd agree the water change was unnecessary from the standpoint of the macro explosion. I needed to do a water change anyway, so I figured I'd get it all done at once. The macro survivors, are all one strand. Half of it has rooted to one of the pieces of live rock that has two oysters on it. I wonder if being attached to that rock had any impact on it not exploding. The eheim filter I'm running is sized for 60g tank. It did a heck of a job in less than a day. I'm impressed with its performance. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 i noticed my feather calurpa was turning white and starting to get stringy yesterday. i pulled it out and it was actually kinda slimey at the stems. i'm not sure if it was randy or just dying. sadly, i don't have a backup stash of that anywhere, so it's time to go back to patrick's. the prolifera seems to be doing fine in the sump. too bad i didn't take a picture of it before i pulled it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 "Randy or dying", cute. In this case, they at both the same. Consider the male Black Widow spider. After sex, the female will kill and eat the male. I think I will stay celibate. Patrick PS. Come get some feather, it is on the house. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 That's why I don't date spiders. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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