[eses]

I've got an odd occurance that has happened 3 times now in my tank. In my tank I have had feather caulerpa growing for some time, I had it grown to the point it was covering the entire right side of my tank from top to bottom and it came away from the wall about 5". About 1/4 of the tank was covered; and it was looking really good. Well. Yesterday morning I come down and my tank looks much like it is full of milk. The water is very cloudy, and my plant is mostly dead; all white and stringy and breaking apart. The night before I know it was healthy looking.

The weird thing is that I had the plant also growing in the sump, as well as a small piece growing on the left of the tank. Parts of both of these plants also died; the one in the sump is really weird as it was growing super-well.

This has happened 3 times. After several months of really good growth the plant just nukes. The only thing had been noticing this last time was my skimmer wasn't working anymore. It was trying to skim, but nothing was coming up. As soon as I do a water change though; it starts skimming like mad.

Perhapes I starved the plant? Its weird that some of it dies while other parts of it have no problem. My PH also jumped to 8.6-8.8, but ammonia, nitrates, and alkalinity all remained fine.

Second part of this question is ... my newly added mushroom corals are turning white. A couple of them are anyway. What should I be doing first to try to save them? Iodine levels were a bit low. I have tried putting in more microvert for feeding, and I added some more iodine. Does increasing the length of the light cycle help any? I did have my lights turned on less for awhile in attempts to kill the hair algae I was having a problem with earlier.

Thanks for any thoughts you may have.

[saltjunkie]

Actually I believe that your calurpa went sexual on you. This will happen in most tanks with a day/night cycle and when it happens the tank usually crashes. That is why alot of people keep the calurpa in a 24/7 lit refugium. Doing this will keep it from going sexual and allow it to grow for nutrient export. Sorry to hear that this has happened to you..... 3 times, good luck getting it back together.
Rick
Also if any of what i said is incorrect, somebody will let us know, haha

[hcp28]

Another way to prevent your caluepra sp? I still don't know how to spell that... anyways.. another way to prevent it from doing that is to trim it back every few weeks. Or to trim it back when it gets past a predesignated growth. This will keep the plant in the growth cycle of it life rather than switch to the sexual cycle. The reason it goes sexual is that it has run out of nutrients in the water, hence why there is nothing skimming from your skimmer, or it has run out of room to grow. I'd say try to trim it back, this will be a really good nutrient export as well. HTH

Henry

P.S. Try moving your mushrooms further down in the tank or under some cover they may be receiving too much light and are bleaching.

[eses]

I was thinking that perhapes it was something with the plant reproducing, but it nuking the tank just seemed..well...counter productive. It also makes sense why it happened, all of the parts of the plant that did die off were in areas where it had no room to go.

This is sort of good news for me, as my intention was to grow the plant as large as possible and move it to the sump. Well, just need to re-grow it now.

hcp: i will try moving them down some, as i do have them up rather high. hopefully this will help.

thanks for your input.