Christopher
Almost two months old with this little 12 gallon macroalgae tank! I have yet to add rock to it. No clean up crew because the coral banded shrimp just eats them I think.
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I love the macro algae! Definitely an under appreciated aspect of saltwater. Nice pictures as well
Thanks Ben! It’s a shame I can’t get my hands on any Caulerpa macroalgae as it’s banned in California, theres some stunning macros out there for sure.
How come they’re banned?
The entire genus is banned as they deemed it “invasive” but it’s really just this one species of it apparently. They are not native to California. There’s this one particular shrub that came from South Africa that’s absolutely plagued the entire shore of Cali, so I’m guessing that influenced the ban too. “ice plant” or Carpobrotus edulis.
It grows fast but no faster than my Xenia🤷♀️ sure it could be invasive if you ignored it but so can lots of things in this hobby. I must’ve accidentally introduced a tiny piece of some type of grape caulerpa months ago because I noticed it growing on my rockwork. I had recently added a refugium but didn’t have any chaeto on hand, so I pulled out most of it and threw it in there with some rocks to cling to; it’s been working great for the past couple months and is full of pods. There are tons of horror stories about it, but I don’t find it nearly as bad as people seem to indicate