Help with macro control

[sticky]

I am having a macro algae outbreak in my main tank. Here are the specs.
75 gallon
30 gallon sump
79 degrees
1.026 refractometer
425 ca
11dkh
0 phos
0 trite
0 trate

two seio 820's
three maxijets 900
return quiet one 3000
asm g-2 skimmer with mods
lighting is 2 de hqi 250 14k phoenix bulbs
running phosban for 1 1-2 months

two clowns/rbta
sps and softies

feed tank once every two weeks special mush.

Lights run 8 hours per day, refugium lit 24/7 with chaeto.

I am looking for a natural predator to consume different species of caulpera. I have grape, razor, feather and some others. There is no cyano or diatoms only the macros.

Looking for ideas before I decide to pull the rock.

Thanks

[dc_909]

Harvest what you can on a daily basis, and throw in a tang. My purple tang doesn't eat alot of it, but it eats the new tips of the grape variety which in turn kills that growing "arm"

[Davenandez]

sea hares eat grape caulerpa--at least mine did

[Anthony Calfo]

flourishing growths of algae are also nutrient driven... they exist for it and will stall and die back when they cross the threshold of mass/need versus availability.

In laymans terms: you can starve it into submission.

- confirm that your feeding habits are tidy
- be diligent about nutrient export via water changes (small weekly is better than large monthly
- confirm that your source water (evap and new seawater) is not contaminated
- skim aggressively!

In fact, skimming alone can usually put any nuisance algae in check in a matter ofweeks iuf you can just tune your skimmer to produce daily skimmate (see the Skimmer Production thread stickied atop this forum)

[Samala]

With Caulerpa, I would harvest aggressively while employing the starve-into-submission route Calfo has so nicely detailed for you. I would not just starve the tank while leaving all the macros in their current colony size. Why not? Nutrient depletion is my only current working theory of why Caulerpas (in specific) 'go sexual' or sporulate. It would be a nightmare to starve the algae, and have the whole mass sporulate on you. Both methods together should give you the wanted outcome, along with perhaps a predator. I think rabbitfish are reported to like Caulerpa as well. Though I am not sure the seventy-five is big enough long term.

>Sarah