calurpa emergency??

[jharring]

I was looking into my FOWLR and I noticed it was starting to get cloudy, so I looked into my sumpfugium and noticed my calurpa was giving off some sort of a green cloud. It almost looked like it was spawning. I've had it in there for about 6 weeks and it has never really started to grow. It looked healthy this morning, but when it was "spawning" it looked very transparent and sick. I pulled it out just to be safe. Does anybody know why it is doing this and is it normal/ok for the fish? I also added a clean up crew 2 days ago.
72 g with 20g sumpfugium
150 lbs southdown
120 lbs live rock
Excalibur protein skimmer
Assorted damsels
1 Clown
H20 Parameters
Ammonia-0
Nitrates-0
Nitrates-30
PH-7.8
(I've never been able to fix the PH and trates. Ive tried everything, but the fish don't seem unhappy.

 

[bang guy]

In a way it is spawning. For Algae it's sporulation. It is converting most of its mass to gametes and will die. The gametes are free swimming and in large quantities they can consume most of the oxygen in the system. Watch your fish closely for a few hours. Do you have a skimmer? This will help.
Caulerpa does this when it is in a hostile environment.

 

[leboeuf]

I am by no means an expert on caulerpa, but I have been utilizing its benefits for about 5 months now. When I initially introduced it to my sump it looked pathetic at best. It didn't grow for over a month. It slowly started to take root and spread. Not long after it all turned whitish color and started to fall apart. Why I am not sure...... But my LFS, who I have a lot of trust in suggested two possibilites for the problem.
1. the caulerpa competes for nutrients in the water with the LR. Sounds odd, but makes sense. Well established LR processes much of the same waste from fish and feeding that the macro needs.
2. Lack of iron in the water.
Solution: I added some small snails, dozen very small hermits, and one tiny emerald crab to the sump(in the hopes that they would stir things up and provide a little waste product to the source). I also started supplementing the sump with iron once a week. Also introduced two new varities of macro.
Results: (2 months) Caulerpa is not growing at an outrageous rate, but has grown to cover most of the space in the sump substrate and is starting to grow vertical, meaning it will soon need to be trimmed.
Good luck, I hope this helps. I know there are a lot of people out there who will read this and object, but keep in mind it WORKS. so chill with all the negative comments!

 

[bang guy]

Here's some of my Caulerpa. The chunk in the upper right is enough to fill a 200 gallon tank.