What’s goin on here?

[timmyrules]

My macro algae is squirting green stuff into the water and turning white. It’s made the water super cloudy. Anyone know why?

 

[timmyrules]

Another picture if it helps…


Should I pull the macro algae out? The water is getting cloudier by the second.

#reefsquad

 

[Red_Beard]

Sounds like it went asexual.

To quote @Subsea

Seaweed goes asexual when it is growing fast and a nutrient bottoms out.

All seaweed can go asexual, it’s a survival technique. The first time it happened to me was in a 150G display of Caulerpa Paspoidies & Caulerpa Prolifera being pushed with 1000W of 6500 kevin MH. When I woke up in morning, water was so cloudy that I couldn’t see the back glass. In that case, I used GAC and air stone to clean up tank. That was > 10yrs ago. Now, when this happens in my systems, I add ammonia because nitrogen was the missing nutrient.

Normally, a major event happens when lights are off. The day before the event, the water was stellar clear and the stems of C Paspoidies enlarged.

 

[timmyrules]

What should I do about it?

Sounds like it went asexual.

To quote @Subsea

 

[Red_Beard]

Add some ammonium? Dunno ive never had this specific probelm before, most peple pull it and add some GAC though fwiw. You dont want that extra 'stuff' fowling the water, so a water change would help too.

 

[Naso180!]

It has gone asexual for sure. It's usually trigger by something. Swing in temperature, salinity, lighting changes,nutrients being very high or low. I'd do as large a water change as possible. Because now all the nutrients that were being taken in by the algae during the period of growth is now being dumped out all at once. Mechanical and chemical filtration are a good idea as well.