Marine Conch Info Please.

[sandfire]

My local fish shop has marine conch for sale, they are quite big about 3inches and very chunky, they appear to graze on the glass and they are in with the inverts.

Has any ever kept one and know if they are totally reef safe.

Plus any chance they eat Bryopsis, which is appearing in-between my corals despite me manually removing it and constantly using Nitrate and Phosphate removal media it still keeps growing!

I can’t detect any Nitrate or Phosphate in the tank at all so I can't tell what it's feeding on to grow. I don't have any fish so I don’t add food either. The only live stock in the tank are corals 2 red leg hermits a lazy emerald crab and about 16 small turbo snails. They will not touch it.. Driving me insane!

 

[Lynden]

The way to deal with this in my experience is to harvest it daily while reducing phosphate, silicates and nitrate. This will prevent it's growth cycle from continuing. Another way is with a predator, such as a lawnmower blenny or sea hare. Conches won't eat it as far as I know, but are good to have nonetheless, being scavengers if I'm not mistaken.

The other, and still controversial, way to kill bryopsis is to raise your magnesium levels. This apparently is it's "kryptonite". I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong here.

 

[SkiFletch]

Nope, you're right Lynden, a lot of people have tried and succeeded in eliminating byropsis with excessive magnesium levels. We're talking 1500-1600ppm and higher (seawater has 1280ppm). It appears that at least in the short term, this does not harm corals/fish/inverts but does wipe out the byropsis within a day or two. It'll turn white and die, so it will still need to be removed from the tank, but it's been done for sure.

 

[sandfire]

Nope, you're right Lynden, a lot of people have tried and succeeded in eliminating byropsis with excessive magnesium levels. We're talking 1500-1600ppm and higher (seawater has 1280ppm). It appears that at least in the short term, this does not harm corals/fish/inverts but does wipe out the byropsis within a day or two. It'll turn white and die, so it will still need to be removed from the tank, but it's been done for sure.

I removed a load of it out last night, stuff is right in-between my yellow star corals. Some of it is transparent and some of it annoyingly bright green.

I refreshed my Phosphate and Nitrate remover, phos test result was not as clear as it can be but it was not quite blue either. Nitrates are also undetectable and I used two different test kits to double check. But this stuff has got to be feeding on something.

I will also try raising the magnesium, I have a beautiful Lagoon area at either end of the tank with Feather Caulerpa, will this be affected by the magnesium?

The Feather Caulerpa sometimes produces white 'leaves' which can either die of or slowly colour up, could this be due to something like magnesium. I use the RED SEA CALCIUM +3 REEF SUCCESS which contains Contains calcium, iodine, strontium and molybdenum, but no magnesium.

I thought about a lawnmover blenny, but I don’t have any other algae in the tank and I thought it only liked fine, diatom and hair algae which I don’t have. I don’t want it to starve the sea hair sounds perfect.

 

[Donya]

Has any ever kept one and know if they are totally reef safe.

Conches are "reef safe" in the sense that no, they won't go eat anything you don't want them to (unless you have some prized macroalgae in the tank). But, they are a bit like adding a loose cannon to your tank. Even though they're primarily substrate dwellers, conches can and will find their ways up on top of improbably high objects and then launch themselves off the edge. Smaller individuals in particular can be deceptively good climbrs; for a while I had my 5g tank open topped until I walked by to see one of my Strombus luhuanus perched on the tank rim. When they make it up to someplace high, watever's below should beware.

Plus any chance they eat Bryopsis

Depending on the conch species, they may.

 

[sandfire]

This morning when I turned the lights on in the aquarium I noticed that the Feather Caulerpa in the tank has lost its colour 80% of it has gone white or clear.

This seems to co-inside with the phosphate removal granules I packed into an external filter a couple of days ago.

What should I do?

 

[Lynden]

Should have warned you about that... the Caulerpa is reacting to the nutrient loss. It should recover, provided your conditions are otherwise good.

 

[Donya]

the Feather Caulerpa in the tank has lost its colour 80% of it has gone white or clear.

Remove the white/clear sections asap, they'll just decompose and turn into muck or clog up powerheads.

 

[SkiFletch]

Agreed, prune the death and read on, sounds like we need a quick lesson on nutrients and algaes

First step is to think of the fishtank as a closed ecosystem. When you add food to the system, you are adding nutrients. Now most of these nutrients are consumed by fish/corals and used for their growth. Some however decomposes and ecomes end-products of phosphate and nitrate. Then, photosynthetic organisms get a shot at these nutrients for them to grow. The more photosynthetic organisms, the faster they can absorb nutrients. If nutrients enter the system faster than the rate of photosynthesis, they will build up in the water column and you will be able to test for them.

However, if the rate of photosynthesis is higher than that of the rate of nutrient addition, you will NOT be able to test for them.

Then, if you add a phosphate/nitrate remover, you are artificially removing nutrients from the system, creating a situation where the tank is very nutrient poor. There is then not enough nutrients to sustain the level of photosynthesis, and something's got to give. In this case, the culerpa is being out-competed for nutrients and its dieing.

That all makes sense?

 

[sandfire]

Agreed, prune the death and read on, sounds like we need a quick lesson on nutrients and algaes

First step is to think of the fishtank as a closed ecosystem. When you add food to the system, you are adding nutrients. Now most of these nutrients are consumed by fish/corals and used for their growth. Some however decomposes and ecomes end-products of phosphate and nitrate. Then, photosynthetic organisms get a shot at these nutrients for them to grow. The more photosynthetic organisms, the faster they can absorb nutrients. If nutrients enter the system faster than the rate of photosynthesis, they will build up in the water column and you will be able to test for them.

However, if the rate of photosynthesis is higher than that of the rate of nutrient addition, you will NOT be able to test for them.

Then, if you add a phosphate/nitrate remover, you are artificially removing nutrients from the system, creating a situation where the tank is very nutrient poor. There is then not enough nutrients to sustain the level of photosynthesis, and something's got to give. In this case, the culerpa is being out-competed for nutrients and its dieing.

That all makes sense?

Perfect sense, thank you

I was not expecting such a fast reaction in just a 48 hour period, I have freshwater tanks and never had it happen with them, but then freshwater plants are totally different.
I spent 2 hours last night painstakingly removing every bit of algae from almost every rock, in the end I have had a 99.9% die off, the tank seem completely void of algae now. I off to buy more Nitrate and Phosphate remover today as the tank no longer has the algae in it and anything left over will add to the bio load once it decomposes.
Thanks everyone...just need the bryopsis gone now but admittedly there is very little left (at the moment )

 

[Lynden]

Heh, that caulerpa will probably be back.

 

[Donya]

was not expecting such a fast reaction in just a 48 hour period

IME if there's a Caulerpa that will react insanely fast to something, it's feather Caulerpa. It's really pretty fragile compared to some of the other Caulerpa species that will react much more slowly. Feather Caulerpa will also react to very small amounts of physical damage by dying out like that, while other species seem more able to handle it, etc...it will probably grow back, but may take some special care if there's not much left and it's still in a nutrient-poor environment.

in the end I have had a 99.9% die off, the tank seem completely void of algae now.

If you have much in the way of a CUC in there you may need to compensate for that until it bounces back.