Tea cup caulerpa

[Sea~Horse~Whisperer]

I have / had a large portion of teacup caulerpa in my 65G RR tank. It was the size of a basketball. It was fine 2 days ago and I noticed today that it went sexual on me. It went from a beautiful green to a white and slimy mess. I took it out of the tank and threw it away. (Sorry susan...there went you teacup caulerpa)
What would cause it to go sexual like that? I haven't done anything to this tank in 2 weeks. It was due for a water change Sunday, but I didn't get to it. I was planning on doing it today. I lost the entire batch of this macro. I still have my razor and some feather caulerpa, they seem fine. (though the feather caulerpa is very touchy in my tank) My poor pipefish misses his home. He lived in the teacup caulerpa.

Tank info:
65G rr tank 20g long sump with chaeto proclear aquatics 150 skimmer
40lbs lr 6" DSB, 2 powersweep powerheads.
Livestock - asst. cleaners razor caulerpa, teacup caulerpa, prolifera, feather caulerpa, 1 fire fish, 1 yellow gobie, 2 carribean pipefish. That's all.

Could it be that I had too much macro in the tank and not enough waste to support it? I never thought of that till just now.

I tested the water and everything tests great. Any ideas why it went sexual?
Thanks,
Angie

[seahorsedreams]

It's a reaction to stress.

[Whoyah]

In my experience, caulerpa can also go sexual when the algae is very tightly packed together such as in a fuge. This is also probably a stress reaction. When the caulerpa is trimmed back to allow good light penetration there isn't as much of a problem.