Thread: Ats
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  #30  
Old 10/05/2001, 11:29 PM
Mark Mark is offline
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Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Posts: 2,046
Quote:
Mark:
No, those are the long filamentous turfs - they are efficient, but a PITA. The turfs I am talking about that become the climax community are short short short....like artificial turf short at their longest. those are the ones you want. If you see them start to develop, work extra hard to prune away the longer types at their borders and help them fill in....you'll be happy you did.
Ah, I see. Thank you. Since this system is in other ways fairly low maintenance, I will be quite diligent in trying to culture the short turfy stuff.

Btw, your description regarding nutrient competition with macroalgae was excellent. It's funny how so many people on this board and others preach the use of Caulerpa as a form of nutrient export. This includes me. But yet, algae turfs are so much more competitive/productive at assimilating undesirable nutrients. It's a bit surprising the ATS hasn't already caught on. I mean, look at protein skimmer trends. reefers are constantly driven to develop more powerful skimmers like the bullet, and we constantly thrive for more powerful lights(both, imho being counterproductive to some degree). With all these desires to go for bigger,better, more powerful; Why not go for the most productive algae? I consider the ATS to be the supercharged algae export. Plus, it's efficiency benefits the reefer by needing less surface area to get the job done. What I mean by that is, you'd have to have a fairly large sump full of Caulerpa to get the equivalent productivity of a small turf screen.

The only aspects that I can think of why Caulerpa is still the favored choice is that:

1. It's much easier to throw a light over your sump and dump some Caulerpa in, than incorporate an intertidal system to encourage Turfs to grow.

2. Most of us realize the benefit of a refugium. By setting up a separate tank or sump to grow Caulerpa, we not only establish a form of algal export but also the benefits of a refugium.
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