Description
Clean Sea Lettuce
A fast-growing nutrient sponge!
Sea lettuce is commonly found on shallow, rocky reefs worldwide from the tropics to the arctic. This delicate green algae prefers brightly lit waters with high nutrient levels. So long as illumination is intense, it is extremely hardy and adaptable. It can quickly reduce concentrations of dissolved nutrients such as nitrate and phosphate in marine aquarium systems. It is regarded as one of the more nutritious macroalgae and is readily accepted by many herbivorous fishes and invertebrates. And therein lies the real value of this species; instead of just throwing away the harvested portions, an aquarist may offer it to various aquarium animals as a very tasty and wholesome treat!
This alga is a great candidate for refugia chambers that “tumble” the seaweed (e.g. kreisel styles). Used in this manner, relatively huge amounts of plant mass can be fully and equally illuminated. And, because it grows loosely, harvest is as easy as reaching in the refugium and grabbing a big wad or two.
Clean Sea Lettuce, or similar macroalgae, such as our Clean Chaeto or Pom Pom Macro, is an essential part of any refugium set up! If you’re looking for everything you need to get a new refugium all set up and functioning beautifully, check out our Ultimate Refugium Starter Pack!
Clean Sea Lettuce Size:
-
- Golf Ball: Approx. 1/16 lb (29 grams)
- Tennis Ball: Approx. 1/8 lb (57 grams)
- Soft Ball: Approx. 1/4 lb (114 grams)
PLEASE NOTE: We go to great lengths to treat, quarantine and remove any unwanted parasites, hitchhikers, and other organisms from our Sea Lettuce. However, we do not guarantee that this item is completely and totally free of anything unwanted. This is because sometimes spores, eggs, etc can remain viable but not visible, despite our strict quarantine procedure. As a result, we always recommend that you properly quarantine anything new that you are adding to your tank.
rfbroadhead (verified owner) –
I’m using a light in my refugium specifically for growing algae and this sea lettuce grew 10x it’s weight in 2 weeks. I can not believe how fast this grows and how well it’s doing at removing nutrients from my tank. Not sure if it’s a co-incidence, but I battled a diatom outbreak for months and nothing stopped it expect for adding this to my refugium. The diatoms disappeared from my display tank in 2 weeks! Also, my refugium would fill up with hair algae in about a week, but once I added this to it it’s the only thing growing in their now. It really turned my tank around. Other changes I noticed to the tank after adding this is no hair algae in the display tank, PH raises nicely when I turn on the refugium light, less glass cleaning, and I have been able to remove my filter socks. Only downside (if you’re struggling to find one!) is that my fish won’t eat it.
poofernut (verified owner) –
I’m converting my tank to Triton so I needed to add a decent sized refugium. I have a mix of algae and added ulva to see if it could serve double duty by feeding to my fish. I typically feed dry seaweed on a clip and I changed to feeding ulva. They seem to like it. The yellow tang especially, but my powder blue tang, flametail blenny, and diamond goby like it too. However not as much as the dry seaweed. I must say, this algae is incredibly fast growing. I ordered a golf ball size and it’s massive now… I only put in my tank less than a week ago. I’m going to need to keep this ulva under control and be sure I harvest it often.
Deanna Smith (verified owner) –
This arrived as described, well packaged, and is doing well in my tank! It looks great and appears to be growing already.
Mike (verified owner) –
I couldn’t get any growth of LFS cheato in my fuge under 24 hour Par 32 lighting. No growth in 4 weeks. I purchased your tennis ball sized cheato and sea lettuce; in two weeks it has more than doubled in size under the same conditions. I can’t really account for the change in growth, other than perhaps the health of the sample to begin with, but I can say that Algae barn cheato is growing like mad and significantly reduced my nitrates! Thanks!
Jonathan Sacks (verified owner) –
I had minimal success removing nitrates from my tanks using the Clean Sea Lettuce. It basically made a mess in my refugium. The tangs in my tank didn’t care for it. I finally threw in the towel and converted to an Algae Scrubber.
Timminy Moore –
This was the biggest mistake in my tank so far. As the sea lettuce broke down in my fuge, it made its way into my tank and now is growing all over everything! My tangs, blenny, and other worker fish don’t like it at all, so it just grows on all my live rock in the display.
I tried switching to chaeto, but that doesn’t seem to have thrived either. Looking to try something else before I go a different direction.
Brooke Lovell (verified owner) –
Very great. Clean and no pest. I had no issues once so ever even trying to grow this in my sump. It’s been at least 5 weeks and this stuff is doing amazing! Its really helped bring down my parameters even further. I actually had bought some cheato and failed with that and this was a total hit!
matthew.k.wyatt (verified owner) –
Overall, really great just got a lot of small pieces that ultimately got eaten by a fox face and two tangs
matthew.k.wyatt (verified owner) –
Overall, really great just got a lot of small pieces that ultimately got eaten by a fox face and two tangs.