Having trouble growing sea lettuce

[Mike7744]

Hi , everyone I seem to be having some trouble growing sea lettuce in my external refugium. I might have possibly found the problem, but I am not sure. To start off, here are my parameters.
This is a Fowler tank.
125 gal display, 165 Total gal
Ph - 8.2
Ammonia- 0
Nitrite- 0
Nitrate- 50
Alkalinity- 5.5
Phosphate- 2.5
Calcium- 512
Magnesium- 1470
Salinity- 1.030
About A month ago I decided to plumb in to my sump, an external refugium.15 gal I have high phosphates and nitrates. I want to get these under control, i do have some algae issues, but not worried about it. I plan on getting a clean up crew.
I ordered some sea lettuce from corals, anonymous. It came home looking great, nice, dark green. Good size. I attached it to some live rock in the refugium, and turned on the lights. This is where I think I went wrong. I just bought a grow light off of Amazon thinking it would work just fine but I don't think that is the case. After doing some research, I have upgraded my light to a 100 W. Refugium, light that works perfectly with sea Lettuce. It will use the correct spectrum wavelengths for this to grow.
My only concern now is that the sea lettuce has become very holy and is not looking too good. It is still all green. There is no Brown, so I don't think it is. Dying. But not sure why it looks as it does.
Does anyone have any ideas of what might be going on?

 

[Dan_P]

Hi , everyone I seem to be having some trouble growing sea lettuce in my external refugium. I might have possibly found the problem, but I am not sure. To start off, here are my parameters.
This is a Fowler tank.
125 gal display, 165 Total gal
Ph - 8.2
Ammonia- 0
Nitrite- 0
Nitrate- 50
Alkalinity- 5.5
Phosphate- 2.5
Calcium- 512
Magnesium- 1470
Salinity- 1.030
About A month ago I decided to plumb in to my sump, an external refugium.15 gal I have high phosphates and nitrates. I want to get these under control, i do have some algae issues, but not worried about it. I plan on getting a clean up crew.
I ordered some sea lettuce from corals, anonymous. It came home looking great, nice, dark green. Good size. I attached it to some live rock in the refugium, and turned on the lights. This is where I think I went wrong. I just bought a grow light off of Amazon thinking it would work just fine but I don't think that is the case. After doing some research, I have upgraded my light to a 100 W. Refugium, light that works perfectly with sea Lettuce. It will use the correct spectrum wavelengths for this to grow.
My only concern now is that the sea lettuce has become very holy and is not looking too good. It is still all green. There is no Brown, so I don't think it is. Dying. But not sure why it looks as it does.
Does anyone have any ideas of what might be going on?

My sea lettuce grows very well with a 5500 K spotlight from Home Depot. It isn’t fussy about light.

Not sure about holes. The plant looks fine. If it goes limp like boiled spinach that’s probably the end of it. Ulva will need a boost of trace elements when it starts growing like crazy. I use ChaetGro.

 

[Mike7744]

My sea lettuce grows very well with a 5500 K spotlight from Home Depot. It isn’t fussy about light.

Not sure about holes. The plant looks fine. If it goes limp like boiled spinach that’s probably the end of it. Ulva will need a boost of trace elements when it starts growing like crazy. I use ChaetGro.

Thanks, I'm dosing that already

 

[Subsea]

Consider that pods may be grazing on sea lettuce.

 

[Mike7744]

Update: things have changed for the better, I now have a refugium full of Sea lettuce. This stuff is growing like crazy , I made a earlier post with a video. I'm loving this stuff