[wrenbird]

My 55g s/w tank is *overcome* with grape algae. I've tried pulling it out by the handfuls and it seems to grow back even stronger. I mean it is everywhere! Entangled on every rock (90 lbs of it) and every coral. I have 2 tangs that eat it, but not nearly fast enough. Any ideas? Is there anything else that eats this stuff? How can I get rid of/kill it? It's driving me insane! I curse the fish store that sold a small piece of brown polyps with some of this stuff on it.

[Elmo18]

Originally Posted by wrenbird

My 55g s/w tank is *overcome* with grape algae. I've tried pulling it out by the handfuls and it seems to grow back even stronger. I mean it is everywhere! Entangled on every rock (90 lbs of it) and every coral. I have 2 tangs that eat it, but not nearly fast enough. Any ideas? Is there anything else that eats this stuff? How can I get rid of/kill it? It's driving me insane! I curse the fish store that sold a small piece of brown polyps with some of this stuff on it.

HI Wren, I also have grape caulerpa in my main tank, and actually like the more natural nature it gives. However, here's what i did to so that mine hardly even grows. I prune only a little every once in 3 weeks.

First, remove the clumps you see. Try to not let the little pieces get blown away. Turn off Powerheads before doing this one. I'm not sure if you havea refugium, but if you grow your macroalgae there and support it with some lights, it will share the growth with the ones in the main display tank, and as a result, in my case, slowed down the growth.

I also have a Foxface rabbitfish that eats and grazes all day long. So if you let them compete for the nitrates/phosphates and if you grow it somewehre else other than the display tank, then you should be ok

- Elmo

[Reefland]

Hi wrenbird, Welcome to Reefland!

Boy it sure is aggrivating that you have a macro algae growing in your diplay that you don't want, beleive me when I say I know what your feeling.

There isn't a whole lot you can do other than:

1. Try to manually remove it which in the case of most algae, there will always be some remenance of it that will grow back.

2. Remove all the rock from the tank and replace it.

Typically the response is that there is a nutrient problem that needs to be addressed but I am convinced that if it is introduced into the aquarium, regardless of how prestine your water quality is it will continue to grow. I have addresses every issue imaginable from poor water at introduction to water changes and nothing has stopped or even slowed the growth of a red macro algae that was introduced into our aqaurium. We did replace a portion of our live rock with new rock and cleaned the rest very good but now some is starting to pop up on it (the old rock that was cleaned). Tomorrow I am expecting another batch of new rock which will replace the rest of our old and the red algae for good.

[kevinpo]

Is it the large grape or the tiny grape? Here is a picture of the large grape.

Regards,
Kevin

[Elmo18]

Originally Posted by kevinpo

Is it the large grape or the tiny grape? Here is a picture of the large grape.

Regards,
Kevin

I'm going to say that he probably has the smaller grape version. I think the bigger one doesn't seem to grow as fast.

- Elmo

[kevinpo]

The smaller stuff will be devoured by a Siganus virgatus (Virgate rabbitfish). It is quite common. It get too large for most tanks but is very hardy and peaceful. It can be returned after it mows down the algae. It will even pull the roots up from the sand and eat them.

The tiny grape algae is one of the hardest to remove manually. It really takes persistance by picking a section clean every 3 days or so. Zebrasoma sp. tangs will also eat it as will the Naso tang. The Acanthurus sp. will only pick at it less than it grows.

Regards,
Kevin

[Minh Nguyen]

I have the same problem several years back in my 100 g tank. I just finally have to take the tank apart rock by rock and use a forcept to remove all the magcro algae. I have to watch the rock very carefully for the next several weeks and remove every little piece that grew back. After about 6 weeks, I then put the rock scape back to where I wanted.
Minh

[CaptainK]

I currently have the same problem in my 29G tank. Here is what I have recently experimented with.
I figure the algae is probably growing sooooo well because of excess nutrients in the water. So I cut back a little on the frozen food feedings and the soaking of food aditives. I also added another small powerhead in my tank to an area that does not get a lot of flow.
Well after adding the additional powerhead I noticed that my skimmer was pulling out a lot more stuff than usual. And I also noticed that the grape algae was not growing as fast as it was. It is still growing but at least I am getting somewhere with this battle....I think.

Hope this helps,
CaptK