Live seaweed in a marine aquarium? Help/advice

[Timmy35]

Morning all. I've been struggling to get seaweed to survive in an aquarium, the water clarity is good as is salinity and PH. The tank is well lit, but it's a low energy LED bulb. Everytime I've introduced some seaweed it eventually seems to rot and die, even though sometimes there is some fresh growth first.

I'm getting the seaweed from rockpools where presumably it's always submerged so I thought continued submersion shouldn't be an issue ( it is with some species )and I'm being careful to keep the holdfast intact etc.

Does anyone have any ideas? Or sucess in keeping marine seaweed? Maybe the lighting is wrong?

[Timmy35]

I think the lighting should be ok, it's daylight LED, pretty bright, and the tank is in the window too ( doesn't get direct sun though ). The critters in there shrimps, anemone, snails, zoo-plankton are all thriving.

I think I'm going to keep trying but use a seperate tank until I crack it, as obviously I just keep adding rotting matter if I keep putting seaweed in that dies.

I can't seem to find any internet references to it, most marine aquarists seem to stick to live rocks and corals.

[Timmy35]

Slink said:

Timmy35 said:

I can't seem to find any internet references to it, most marine aquarists seem to stick to live rocks and corals.

Live rocks? as as apposed to dead rocks?

what are live rocks? i understand corals but live rocks?

Excellent bio-filtration and insteresting shapes/textures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_rock

[Timmy35]

Slink said:

aaah right, so its a coral with 'bugs' an stuff living in the holes.

Yep basically a dead coral with live algae and bit n bobs living in the holes.

[Timmy35]

Had some sucess now, there are various on line retailers selling marine seaweed suitable for an aquarium, I think I'll give up on trying to use native rockpool gathered weed and try some of this stuff.

Now all I need to do is find a starfish.