Maricultured Coral Base

Labridaedicted · Mar 25, 2018

I know myself along with many others always advise people to remove the bases off of any maricultured pieces of coral we get. I also realize that there is little evidence as to why we suggest this. I decided I would do an experiment to really drill home the point.

My refugium is already a nuisance algae haven being full of hair algae and bryopsis, but no other algaes to note (other than a few straggler strands of chaeto) so I plunked one of the bases off of a Bali maricultured Acropora and observed what grew. What I found was a literal smorgasbord of the worst algaes...

Its tough to see everything in the pic, but there is for sure nemesis, bubble algae, some kind of ulva, and a type of course algae that looks like chaeto but its anchored.

So, just a friendly PSA to break off that concrete before you glue those maricultured pieces in. Just stick the sticks in new epoxy.

Tahoe61 · Mar 26, 2018

Nice documentation!

I imagine in the wild fish and inverts probably keep the algae cut back, in a closed system it is some algae types haven indeed.

Labridaedicted · Mar 26, 2018

Tahoe61 said:
Nice documentation!

I imagine in the wild fish and inverts probably keep the algae cut back, in a closed system it is some algae types haven indeed.

Exactly my thoughts, kinda wish I knew what was keeping Neomeris clipped in the wild because that stuff can be awful.

I would imagine in a well stocked display, several of these would be kept in check (ulva and chaeto-y looking stuff), but neo or bubble algae can really be a nasty problem.