horny caluerpa?

[rskibum]

I've had a chunk of green grape calurepa in my newish tank for a couple of weeks now, it had been growing quite rapidly. But last eve noticed the tips getting whitish on some parts. I have seen posts saying that means it's going 'sexual'.

Can someone explain what's so bad about that, and how to avoid this in the future.


thanks,

Ryan

 

[randy holmes-farley]

The growing tips of of some types of caulerpa (such as caulerpa racemosa) are often white, or at least much paler than older parts. There is nothing wrong with that.

When the plant undergoes sexual reproduction, the entire plant often dies, turning white, and falling apart (and polluting the water).

 

[Philippe Dor]

The paler tips on your caulerpa is a sign it's growing very well, nothing to worry about; just watch the older parts, and if they become brownish green you are in trouble because it will crash. Crashing caulerpa is not a mode of reproduction like many believe, it happens when a benthic micro algae settles on the caulerpa and then one day decides to release itself from the caulerpa; it always happens at the change from night to daylight, and when the micro algae "swarms" it kills the caulerpa instantly, like if it was burned by acid, in 1-2 seconds only. I saw it happen in front of my eyes when I was farming the stuff, and the only way to prevent this from occuring regularly is having many (thousands) of bristle worms in your gravel, as these come out at night and climb in the caulerpa to eat the micro algae. With a bit of experience you can recognise the stems that are clean (dark green) from the stems that are infected (brownish green)
If you don't have enough worms yet, remove manually the infected stems, to prevent them from crashing and infecting other parts of your caulerpa. In good conditions caulerpa can double it's biomass weekly, so be prepared to do a lot of culling. Good luck, Phil