Anyone has any info on turtle weed??

[loonz]

Hi,anyone of you has turtle weed in your tanks?Any idea what are their requirements to thrive in a reef tank - lighting,water current,water chemistry,etc?Thanks for any info...

 

[jmeader]

If you are talking about turtle grass, I think a couple of people are playing with it a bit right now. It needs a substrata for its roots and is fairly slow growing when compared to caulerpa. Normal tank parameters should suffice. Mine seems to be growing pretty well in crushed oyster shells under VHOs. I have to clean the blades once in awhile to keep them from becoming overgrown with algae or encrusting organisms.

 

[Anonymous]

Turtle Grass (Thalassia sp.) and Turtle Weed (Chlorodesmis fastigiata) are not the same. Not even close really. Turtle Weed is a fine green algae, it almost looks like hair but not quite. It's quite beautiful actually.

You can read a bit more about it by clicking here.

 

[loonz]

Yes,Turtle Weed (Chlorodesmis fastigiata) is what i was talking about and they are really beautiful.Has anyone tried to keep this in his/her tank?Any comments?

 

[MaryHM]

http://www.reefsource.com/Database/maidens.htm

 

[davelin315]

From Tom's picture, I am tentatively identifying the stuff growing in my overflow as turtle weed. It is a fine green algae, but definitely not hair algae. It is in the siphon box on the inside of my tank, and gets some indirect (very indirect) light from an actinic bulb. It seems to be growing pretty well in very high current, as all of the water from my tank passes through there, and it is an excellent host to many pods, as evidenced when I pull some of it out and toss it in my tank for feeding time. As far as I can tell, it really requires almost no lighting, as the siphon box is encrusted with coralline algae, and like I said, it only gets indirect light (whatever manages to filter through the coralline and also a tiny bit from about 1 cm of reflector that directs light towards it.