Pods and dKH/Calcium or Caulerpa prolifera?

[BeachWater2]

Have any of you noticed a relationship between pod populations and dKH and Ca? I used to have tons of amphipods all the time, and sometimes blooms of different kinds of copepods. They all disappeared. I know they're not all getting eaten, because they had places to hide in the filter and so on. Water is very clean. However I noticed that dKH used to be around 11, and Ca 420, with SG at 37+ppt. I thought I should be better with top-offs. I got the SG down to 35ppt. dKH is now 10, and Ca 400. pH is 8.0, with no detectable nutrients. I use natural saltwater, and RO/DI top off.

Is it possible that the reduction in hardness is the cause for their disappearance (either directly or indirectly)?

For a while I had problems with detectable traces of ammonia, but no Nitrite or Nitrate. That's gone now. I have plenty of filtration.

The other change is that I've got quite a bit of C. prolifera growing. I can't say I've ever seen the pods on C. prolifera and I wonder if it has protective chemicals that are killing them.

 

[lapin]

My pods in the fuge come and go. To me it has more to do with the amount of phyto and oyster feast I feed my NPS. More feed more pods. My alk is 10 to 11. Has hit 12.5 but no change in pod population
My tank has no pods. The wrasse eats them all.
I see more algae growth with lower Mag levels

 

[BeachWater2]

Hmmmm.. I started using floss. I used to run my Biocube 16 open, with no floss. I had chaeto in the back. I used to have mini starfish, the occasional mini feather duster, and tons of pods, little sponges, and at one time a little oyster. Duh. That makes sense. My chaeto also probably stopped growing when I started running floss. I wanted to run it open, but then I got two fish, and then algae everywhere, and then..... I'm trying to get rid of hair algae so I'm running floss and more filtration. I bet it's the floss. I'll try running it half open or something. Thanks!

I was thinking of running higher alkalinity on account of the hair algae, but I want my macros to grow. Maybe I should raise Ca and Mg and dKH a bit and wait to get rid of the nuisance algae. Then I can worry about the macros. Maybe then I can use a little less filtering and my macros will out compete the hair.

 

[Jay'sReefBugs]

Hmmmm.. I started using floss. I used to run my Biocube 16 open, with no floss. I had chaeto in the back. I used to have mini starfish, the occasional mini feather duster, and tons of pods, little sponges, and at one time a little oyster. Duh. That makes sense. My chaeto also probably stopped growing when I started running floss. I wanted to run it open, but then I got two fish, and then algae everywhere, and then..... I'm trying to get rid of hair algae so I'm running floss and more filtration. I bet it's the floss. I'll try running it half open or something. Thanks!

I was thinking of running higher alkalinity on account of the hair algae, but I want my macros to grow. Maybe I should raise Ca and Mg and dKH a bit and wait to get rid of the nuisance algae. Then I can worry about the macros. Maybe then I can use a little less filtering and my macros will out compete the hair.

As Lapin stated this is more of feed issue . I culture theses things and they can survive and thrive is a wide variety of parameters. I dose phyto daily and I always tend to over feed so my amthipods and copepods get their share . I also seen you said your tank is very clean ....let it get a little dirty let some film algea grow on the glass copepods love it and it will give you a better view of how many you have in your system . As far as your hair algea goes I manually removed mine and started up a turf scrubber and haven't had a issue since . Happy reefing