How to attach macroalgae to substrate/rock?

[samnaz]

What methods have you tried? What works best?

 

[TriggerFinger]

I can tell you codium does not stick with super glue to a rock; lightly buried in sand worked best for me.
Red flat branch gracilaria does stick with superglue to rock but my crabs and blenny have wiped it out three times now.
I have a small bit of caulerpa racemosa that has anchored to the rock in a bare bottom.

 

[F i s h y]

I've stuck to the varieties that root in the past. Mostly caulerpas....

 

[ichthyogeek]

Hypnea in a large enough clump will eventually just develop holdfasts on rocks if the flow is low enough to keep it from blowing around.

I've had success with rubber banding Dragon's Breath(? or tongue? I always get the two confused) to live rock as long as the clump was big enough (a single frond won't cut it).

I'm still unsure if the stringy tough stuff on live rock was from Chaeto dying back and regrowing on it, or hair algae....

I've never had success with ulva, even after rubber banding it for months.

Botryocladia is still an experiment, but it seems to be handling being rubber banded to a rock quite well.

Caulerpa prolifera (my love), is fairly easy to get "rooting" onto the finer substrates (smaller pea gravel size or smaller).

 

[ichthyogeek]

Throughout, the only thing that has remained constant in my success, is having a large enough mass of macroalgae. You don't need more than a fist sized clump of anything really, but anything less than golfball size is probably pushing it. Except Hypnea. Get as big a clump as you can afford with that stuff.

 

[fishguy242]

agree with rubber band to rubble piece method ,by time band breaks should be secured

 

[AlgaeBarn]

You can do the rubberband, or a piece of fishing line on rubble. Tied loosely enough it does not damage the macro, but tight enough it does not come off. ~Shaun K.