Coralline algae

J

jammerz

Large Fish
#1
Feb 28, 2005
308
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45
Boise
#1
once and awhile i will get a purple or pink spot of coralline. I want lots of it. One of the tanks at the LFS is exploding with it and i think it is beautiful. for a few months all of my base rock(lava of some sort) was turning nice and crusty purple and now it has seemed to stop. All my parameters are good. I dont dose anything yet, im scared to mess with something thats not broken. I do add 3tblspn of phytoplankton every other day or so but thats just to fed clam, and other inverts. SO how can i get my tank to explode with coralline algae? The guy at the LFS uses reef builder and keeps his alkalinity really high. but like i said im scared to start messing with this stuff. I did add the garf grunge which i think helped, my buddy who also added garf grunge to his tank at about the same time i did, is exploding with coralline. He runs t5's alot of them, im running 500w of metal halide could that be the reason why his is exploding and mine not? So do i need to be dosing to get the algae i want?

Also on a side note iam getting all kinds of little white dots on the rocks and all over the back of the tank(wherre i dont mag float)? what could it be?

thanks guys hope you are all doin well....
 

KahluaZzZ

KahluaZzZ

Superstar Fish
#2
Jun 12, 2004
2,778
3
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48
Montreal, Quebec
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#2
hey Jammerz i had the same prob..not much coralline and i wanted purple everywhere.
I had pretty much crappy live rock and base rock. I added some very expensive live rock fully purple and placed it next to the base rock..some little spots appeared. Then my snails were fully covered with coralline, and it spread a lot. I noticed coralline wasn't really hot near my metal halide and i only have a 150 hqi (20000k). My coralline was fading once, and i wasn't dosing calcium. Now good calcium level and it's vivid.
I have astrea snails, and they are morons...so i found one on his back..dead. His shell was 100% covered with purple coralline so i decided to scratch it with a knife. I had powder coralline ( do not sniff ;-) . I put the powder back into the tank, and it's like seeding coralline. It worked..i have purple dot everywhere. It greatly spreaded. Also if your tank is fairly new ( less than 6 months ) don't expect miracles.
I have a load of white dots too on my magnetic floater and the glass..they're tiny snails.
 

W

wayne

Elite Fish
#4
Oct 22, 2002
4,077
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#4
The light won't be helping, but I'd have a go at getting alk and Ca up. I normally don't like random additives, but in this case dosing strontium might well help
 

yamahaguy06

yamahaguy06

Large Fish
#7
Feb 28, 2005
569
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36
Waterford, CA
#7
1979camaro said:
coraline grows better in darker areas of the tank and in tanks with less light...with 500w of MH i doubt you will see much coraline at all. your best bet is to keep CA and AK up
Click to expand...
CA, AK, Camaro I dont have test for either one. Should I do something about this and is there something I can add to my water maybe once a week or something to keep CA up??? thank you..
 

W

wayne

Elite Fish
#12
Oct 22, 2002
4,077
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#12
Try changing your salt to reef crystals or something with a bit of added Ca - I've seen that make a difference to FO tanks coralline growth as there's nothing else much to use the Calcium
 

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