What causes macro algae to melt?

[LMSquire]

I started a fuge in my Reeder 350, about four small jars of chaeto, a Pom Pom, and a sea lettuce jar.

Had a well recommended tunze submersible fuge light and had a power head moving water beyond that created by my reefmat. I was dosing ocean magic phyto as instructed daily.

Within about 2 months all the macro was gone, just some hair algae remaining.

I’m a bit discouraged. Aside from slightly low calc and mag, and very high po4 (which I am correcting skowly) my params were ok.

Any idea what caused macro algae to melt in a refifium?

 

[Patx]

In my case cheato melt if no NO3....

 

[LMSquire]

In my case cheato melt if no NO3....

No shortage of that. I run between 15-25

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Sometimes certain macros just don’t do well. When I started, I couldn’t keep chaeto alive to save my life but caulerpa grew great. If this is a new tank, there may have been too much algae for the nutrients available. Were you pruning it?

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Some people add iron to help grow macros.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Phyto are not nutrients for your Macro's Sea lettuce does not like too much movement, Pom it depends. Cheato can tumble. While it sounds like you had sufficient PO4 other things can compete for the nutrients. Like Phyto, or GHA. You could also be lacking in other nutrients like Iron

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Phyto are not nutrients for your Macro's Sea lettuce does not like too much movement, Pom it depends. Cheato can tumble. While it sounds like you had sufficient PO4 other things can compete for the nutrients. Like Phyto, or GHA. You could also be lacking in other nutrients like Iron

Good catch on the phyto… I kind of overlooked that.

 

[Patx]

plenty of no3...
Could be iron or light... im not use to tunze light.

My cheato turn to a dark green when start dosing AFR. (Iron)
Before melting are they yellowish/ pale green ?

 

[LMSquire]

Sometimes certain macros just don’t do well. When I started, I couldn’t keep chaeto alive to save my life but caulerpa grew great. If this is a new tank, there may have been too much algae for the nutrients available. Were you pruning it?

Tank is about 7 months old but has developed pretty quickly.

It didn’t even get to the point where I needed to prune it.

 

[LMSquire]

plenty of no3...
Could be iron or light... im not use to tunze light.

My cheato turn to a dark green when start dosing AFR. (Iron)
Before melting are they yellowish/ pale green ?

Didn’t even see it melt. Just went to check the little diy box I made to keep it from going into my skimmer chamber and it was basically gone

Think I’m gonna give it another go with cbaeto only and see what happens. First I gotta get my parameters in check. Went to the Philippines for two weeks and lost a bunch of coral including a Walt Disney acro colony. I learned that .64 is where the Hanna po4 checked maxes out and thought that was just my high level but things looked good so let it be. God knows how high it actually was. Also had a Cyano outbreak so I’m just finishing a chemiclean cycle so just water changes and crossed fingers that my euohylkka hangs on for now.

This is all great info though.