Caulerpa out off water

[tasos]

Hello, everybody!!
A question for you, especially Anthony:
A friend of mine almost had a heart attack when he got his foot wet at noon today ......150G of water from the sump/refugium found their way to the office floor due to a skimmer malfunction!!!!!!!
The problem is that the huge culture of caulerpa got out of water ,we estimate for about 18 hours........The plants seem OK, but the skimmer produced a watery greenish stuff when we set it on.......
Do you think the algae will survive?Must he take any actions to prevent disaster(massive die off )?Thank you!

 

[wrightme43]

I would remove the calupera and just keep a start of it.
I would run carbon, lots of it, of course the water change that will replace the 150 gallons
Have you ever left calupera in a closed area and let it dry? If not dont, and dont smell it. It seems to me like it makes some kind of chemical. It gave me a headache and made me light headed. I cant imagine that anything good could come from it in a reef tank.

 

[Anthony Calfo]

I doubt much of the Caulerpa will survive in this case... sounds like it went vegetative.

FWIW, if you do not know clearly why you should not have Caulerpa, then you should not be keeping Caulerpa It IS a fab nutrient export mechanism, but without knowing its life cycle (3-6 month maturity and potentially tragic vegetative events unless put into stasis or harvested VERY systematically (thinned, never cut or pruned) to interup its maturity), then you REALLY should reconsider keeping large quantities of this algae Please do consider the less noxious, less toxic and far more stable (multicellular) algae Chaetomorpha instead. Please

See more comments on these two genera of algae in the links under discussions in the sticky atop this forum called "Fav links..."

 

[tasos]

Thank you for your answer!In this case, caulerpa seems to do fine 10 days after the disaster.......I don't know if it is going to go vegetative in the future.
My friend has this caulerpa over two years now and it is fabulus(keeps many types of corals-hermatypic and ahermatypic- alive and flourishing),as you said!!
He uses to harvest it the way you said,and didn't have a single proble apart from electricity bills!!!The above case was an accident,he didn't intent to leave the algae out of water.... thanks again!