Halimeda crash (gone sexual)

[tdwyatt]

Pix for those who asked about the state of the frag system after this week's halimeda sexual crash.

A large number of the snails died (around 60 that I could find), The Siganus corallinus, the six line is still MIA, my [i]Fromia spp.[/i[ sea star, the skunk nudi (thought it died, then it recovered, now dead for sure), and about 1/3 of the coral frags (around 60 so far) are either bleaching or have totally bleached. This occurred in less than 6 hours, as the tank was great just before bed, but when Kelly came and convinced me in the middle of the night that "something is wrong with the tnk, Tom..." The water was the color and consistanccy of pea soup. The calcareous matrix of the algae wa intact, but the fleshy material was gone, and the algal skeleton was much heaver than water. Today is 3 dys post event and I am still finding casualties, although I am finding a few surprises as well.

Pix to follow, first the frag rack, the water is so turbid that I couldn't manually focus on the frags. This is under 750 watts of Iwasaki MH:

[tdwyatt]

Some of the Euphyliids being grown for division into separate colonies:

[tdwyatt]

An experimental Faviid propagation

[tdwyatt]

A purple Acro colony that was being rescued and had been doing extremely well, about 4 months into rescue.

[tdwyatt]

Many snail and mollusk casualties, surprisingly enough, the Clams seem to have all made it without damage.

[tdwyatt]

the nudi caught in the current by a dead snail shell

[tdwyatt]

a few plesant surprises, first, the clams, which had been clamped down so hard all you could see was the bright white of the edge of the shell, NO MANTLE, made if apparently unscathed, and I found a brittle star that I never purchased nor have I ever seen:

[tdwyatt]

while filling the carbon bags (the one pictured had actually been left in the sump without carbon), I found a volunteer clam of some sort:

[tdwyatt]

The offender after the event out in the yard (heh, by then it was daylight, I could go and find out what all I had dumped in the night.) Normally I pour the water changes into evaporating pans and scoop up the salt after 5 or 6 evaps, but they were full, soooo... ...hope it doesnt kill the grass.

All that was left of the thalli were the calcereous skeletal plates, very dense, and quite tough, no flesh at all, and quite white.

[tdwyatt]

This ios how the prop system tank looked after about 20 hours and 2 90% water changes (heh, takes a while even with a fast RO/DI unit to make emergency changes), skimming with two MR@ skimmers at a heavy wet skimmate (made 2 IO buckets of thin skimmate full of tons of suspended junk), about 3 lbs of carbon in 4 bags in the drain lines and some polyester filter floss for a day.

I am not looking for sympathy, I just want people to be aware of what can happen. I have been using Halimeda since I first was able to acuire some from a LFS while working in Rosewood, MI around 1995, and I've NEVER had this hapen before, although I have been familiar with Caulera spp. doing this when allowed to reach maturity without pruning. This was a large amount of Halimeda that went sexual all at once (enough to fill a 20 gal rubbermaid container), and I cannot determine what made it trigger, although the day before I had done some normal maintenance (10% water change every 2 weeks, clean the glass, blast the rocks and suction detritus, clean the skimmer, check salnity, normal temps with no change in routine). When I got out of bed and went to check on it, the kimmer was going absolutely nuts and you couldnt even see into the water column. The first pix in this series were AFTER the first 90% water change.

[Spanky]

Tom

You realize the more you hook up to a system and the more you make that system dependent on all those things - the greater your chances are of having a "woops".

KISS

[Alice]

Aarrgghh; what a mess, Tom. I don't think I've ever seen Halimeda go sexual. No temp spikes?

[Doug1]

Ouch thats got to hurt, cant you grind up the calcerous skeletons( picturing tom with mortar and pestle , grinding gleefully) and recycle it as substrate

[cath]

Tom!!! I didn't know this had happened to your system! What a nightmare.

Thanks for the illustrated lesson. I didn't know what a tank would look like when something had gone sexual.

[tdwyatt]

Originally posted by Alice
I don't think I've ever seen Halimeda go sexual. No temp spikes?

Me either, the Halimeda I have had reached quite a large mass, none of the normal triggers (temp, ph, salinity change, photoperiod, mass trauma, competative alleopathy, etc.) have occurred, in fact, the status quo has been maintained for years with the system with the exception of the move last year. I kept the stuff in masses like this for years now, I dunno what to say.

Spanks, I have to say I agree with your POV on this, but as a consequence of the DSB, I would not think that I can maintain the DSB for years without the ability to take phosphate out of the system at every opportunity. I will still use some type of algal export, but it will most likely be either Gracilaria or some other related specie of algae that doesn't take up so much calcium/alk and is still relatively stable.

I still cannot believe this happened.

btw Doug, I am not removing the remaining seaweed from the place it is in the yard, I get a little satisfaction knowing that it is baking in the SC sun every day now... ...anthropomorphism runs deep here