[AdeDunn]

Nope, no brown. Just a tiny bit of green growing on the back of the tank, and some cyano growing on the substrate. Yeah, I'm the kind of nutter who tries to get a macro pic of a tiny bit of green algae...

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[AdeDunn]

It's one of those good news/bad news posts.

The good news is brown algae (diatoms) has finally shown itself.

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The bad news is the Caulerpa I was keeping in full sea water to acclimatise was rotting away, so what was left I've chucked in the Opae tank. It'll either do ok or it won't. The stuff already in has signs of going sexual (you can probably see in the pic), but at least wasn't rotting to slime like the stuff in the tub was, and the rhizomes/hold fasts are still firm and healthy looking so there's a chance it can come back still. I'll try again once I have a larger vessel available with a better light rigged up for it.

[odin]

Wahoo brown algae! You will be well on the way to getting some shrimp in it. (I've added shrimp at this time and they survived fine just a FYI)

[opae ula related]

good job

[AdeDunn]

Thanks bud, certainly looks like the "innoculation" did the job, with the brown at least.

[AdeDunn]

Just posting to give a quick update on the macro algaes (feel free to move this thread to tank owners if you with by the way Odin, possibly belongs in there really, I probably posted it in the wrong place. lol).

First up, the Caulerpa prolifera is a total fail. Died off/went sexual quite rapidly even before I moved it to brackish. Maybe one to try if you have a proper sized tank to acclimate it in. Even the rhizomes died, so no chance of a come back.

Next, the Caulerpa taxifolia is a partial success. Some died off/went sexual, however still lots looking nice and alive AND there's new growth appearing now. This one comes with a caveat though, it is HIGHLY invasive causing problems in ocean habitats worldwide. So be very careful what you do with it. It's also toxic to many marine herbivores. http://www.rimeis.org/species/caulerpa.html It's a very popular species in the aquarium hobby though BECAUSE it is so hardy and undemanding.

Last, but not least, the Chaetomorpha. I say not least, as this stuff has gone MAD in my tank!!! Serious growth, no die off at all, bonkers. Guess I fell lucky on the variety I received.

Next step for me is to manually remove the dead plant material. After this I'm going to experiment with how effective the bio-digest is at reducing nitrates etc, if not then I'll be doing a few partial water changes to bring these down. On the plus side, the release of nutrients from the prolifera is feeding algae growth. lol

Still fighting the temptation to add a small sponge filter to the tank...... Years of aquarium keeping (since I was 11 years old, I'm 42 now... lol) it's hard to move away from using filters.

[odin]

Nice update and interesting results with the plants, you can add a sponged filter if you wish but its really not needed Ive moved your thread as requested too. I tried normal Chaeto in my tank a while back but its didn't do very well at all so you must of got a good plant.

[AdeDunn]

Cheers for moving it bud, I should have put it in here in the first place, but wasn't sure if I was going to journal the tank as I have.

Yeah, I suspect that adding a filter will just create salt creep on the lid, so I'll continue to resist for now. lol

The Chaeto I have is rather thick and feels like plastic scourer. If it hadn't grown I would have suspected that it WAS plastic scourer. It's not the most attractive of plants, but if it helps to keep nitrogenous wastes down then I'm happy to give it tank space. Hopefully the taxifolia continues to do ok too, as it's much more attractive. If my Chaeto continues to do grow, I'll maybe be able to sort you a bit out to try. If I remember correctly your salinity is pretty similar to mine, so I can't see why this stuff I have would fail for you, unless it got destroyed in the post (so common a problem with RM!!). I still think that if we can find a way to get something set up providing brackish grown macros to fellow Opae hobbyists it would be a good thing.

Thought it might be useful to add, I got my Chaeto from this seller on ebay. He doesn't have any listed at the moment, but I'm sure he'll put more up eventually, if anybody else wants to try some.

[odin]

Any updates? have you got some good algae growth yet?

[AdeDunn]

Depends upon how you look at it, Chaeto is algae and that's growing like crazy....... Not much on the rocks etc though.