Macro algae's for sump

Hi all,
As I mentioned at the meeting last week, after an unfortunate few months of bad luck, I have pulled down my tank and have put it all back together again and it is currently cycling and although I'm sure this has been asked a thousand times, I am looking for some advice and direction on where to get and what type of macro/s would be best for my sump after it has completed it's initial cycle.

I read liquidg's post "Algae for nutrient control and all algae/caulerpa/coraline information." which noted that chaeto may suffer during the maturing cylcle of a tank, so although I have only ever used chaeto, perhaps it's not the best choice for a newly cycled tank. Does anyone know if Caulerpa would do ok in a newly cycled tank. Also, long term, do these two algae work well when both are kept in the same sump chamber?

Although I am still a few weeks away from adding any macros, I thought I'd get some advice early so any advice on what type/s are best and where to get it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

It really depends on what you want the algae to accomplish as to which way to go.

In some new systems chaeto seems to sit dormant for some people or die off and others don’t have those problems at all.

It is also totally non invasive.

Chaeto seems more suited to nitrate reduction then nutrient reduction, so if your bio filtering is weak and can not oxidise nitrate at a reasonable volume to get 0 test results at any given time, it be would then good to have.

You see it’s the volume of healthy algae and it’s bulbus forms that gets the best results with importing and converting unwanted substances-nutrients.

I have found that the equivalent to near seventy percent of equivalent surface area of your tank is needed to import all substances, proteins, toxins, phosphates etc, everything beyond the nitrite cycles oxidised gases.

If you have any of the nitrite cycle left over as these gases reach the algae, it will not achieve anywhere near as well at importing over all nutrients and toxins.

The strongest over all algae is the surge zone taxifolia and this one can handle near anything thrown at it.

Pet city use that one as their nutrient importer under that display tank, quite a lot is there as well.

This one is extremely invasive and carries out around one third of what the race mosa can do!

My last glass tank I was using it as well, found out a lot about it with in that time.

It does excrete a small amount of toxic sap when culled, but it then imports this quite quickly with hopefully not to many detrimental affects to sps corals, from my use of it the affects are there but skimmers remove it any way.

With out the removal of this sap over time, it can be attributed to many minute problems yet most have no idea it is the problem, so it is an issue most don’t realise its going on and blame other possible issues.

Turtle weed is semi useless at nutrient importing, as are most other small form algae, but any algae does something, even diatoms and cyano import nutrients.

There are immense amounts of life forms working away in the deep sand bed-a dead spot style area that if kept clean, then combined with other algae’s, these two things contribute heaps to neutralising any affects by this sap and many other toxins, helping to render them harmless.

No algae that you get or buy will perform at its best unless it is kept in temps between 22c to 24c,all functions seem to perform at their best in this range.

Racemosa forms will not handle 25c or above for that long, taxifolia can handle up to 30c for a time before going sexual-it dies.

Chaeto can handle virtually any temperature thrown at it, but it’s cellular structure is nothing like caulerpa algae; it is more complex, robust and advanced on the evolutionary line.

If you can keep your water temps under control, I would use mainly the local racemosa with surge zone taxifolia and several other caulerpa forms to get good over all nutrient importing and conversion results.

Whichever caulerpa takes over is the one achieving the best results for you.

The racemosa rules in mine.

With the use of these algae and very substantial areas of anaerobic dead spots, its very hard to not have pristine waters.

Thanks mate. I'll have a chat with you at the next meeting about where to come by those and how to get the best results. Its good to have someone with an extensive knowledge of the algaes as well as filtration and nutrient issues.

Cheers