toxic caulerpas

[waterwolf]

Overtime my tank started to become overrun with caulerpas. I decided to cut back so I thinned out approx. half of it. Well now all of it seems to be dying off and some nasty smear algae has developed. Water parameters were perfect prior to this. Also after I cut back the caulerpa my protein skimmer began filling up rather quickly. The species is Caulerpa peltata macrodisca. I have heard that some caulerpas release a toxin when cut. Is this what has happened? Anyone else ever experience this?

 

[krishj39]

Yes! I experienced exactly that. I pulled out a handful of caulerpa for a friend to put in his tank, after a day or two, all of my caulerpa started dying off. Thankfully, a small fraction wasn't affected and so it is now growing back. This was from my refugium, but it was the first time I'd pulled caulerpa out of it since the fuge was still fairly new. Now, I'm going to be very scared the next time I have to thin out the caulerpa in my fuge, because I don't want it to have massive die off like last time. The worst of the die-off was to my mini-grape, but my feather was also affected. I would also like to know what caused this.

 

[beaslbob]

Originally posted by Waterwolf
Overtime my tank started to become overrun with caulerpas. I decided to cut back so I thinned out approx. half of it. Well now all of it seems to be dying off and some nasty smear algae has developed. Water parameters were perfect prior to this. Also after I cut back the caulerpa my protein skimmer began filling up rather quickly. The species is Caulerpa peltata macrodisca. I have heard that some caulerpas release a toxin when cut. Is this what has happened? Anyone else ever experience this?
I haven't had this happen, yet. From what I hear is that Caulerpa's are some of the largest single celled life. If you seperate a section then you may be actually cutting a cell in half. And the remaining section may die. I always try to remove (or tranport to my 55g) an entire section instead of cutting a section off. Hopefully more experienced people will answer this one.

 

[bang guy]

I don't have an answer but I have observations.
When I cut and remove new sections of Caulerpa it takes a week for the Caulerpa to start growing again. I believe that it is vulnerable to sporulation during this week.
When I remove the older parts of the algae the growth on the young section left behind doesn't even slow down.
When Caulerpa is cut fluid begins to leak from the stem. This fluid coagulates pretty quick for me and stops leaking within minutes.