Where can I get Dead coral?
- Thread starter mossy
- Start date
Dead coral, also known as calcium carbonate based limestone, its usually bleached white, although fossilized corals can be of darker, more "rock-like" in apperance.
Algae is a problem in all fish tanks, not just to coral stone in particular. The reason it seems to be so bad in coral based tanks (SW marine, African cichlids) is because the whiteness of the rocks reflects back that, giving algae twice as much light to use to grow with. Also couple with some tanks is the intense lighting used for marine inverts or growing plants.
From my experience as a SW aquarist, coral based tanks are an algae nightmare if you do not keep up on them regularly. There are two schools of thought on algae removal though.
Old school methods require that the whole tank be stripped and all the stone be bleached as often as necessary to keep it that pristine white look. Some people do actually do this. It is part of what makes SW keeping a bit "elite" because obviously the owner not only has a huge amount of money to have an SW tank, but also the leasure time to keep it white (or the money to pay someone to do it for them<G&gt
.
New school thinking is that this bleaching process is very detramental to the health and blance of the aquarium. This is true because bleaching removes massive amounts of denitrifying bacteria from the water (which in old-school tanks is supported primarily in the filter). New school methods use "live" rock, dead coral pre-seeded with the bacteria and placed in the tank as primary biological filtration. "Live" rock doesn't necessarily have to be coral, but can be any stone, sometimes even tufa stone or volcanic stone that has simply been used as decor in an established SW tank. Live rock should never be bleached, and givin intense lighting will develop purple crusty coriline algae.
I used to simply wipe down the glass and stir up the gravel, removing large macro-chunks of algae by sweeping a brine shrimp net though the tank. I would leave whatever was growing on the coral to grow since that stuff was helping to remove nitrates from my water. I had to clean the tanks like this 2x a week to keep them looking relatively neat. The only time I ever bleached them was if the manager complained my tanks didn't look "clean" enough.
~~Colesea
Algae is a problem in all fish tanks, not just to coral stone in particular. The reason it seems to be so bad in coral based tanks (SW marine, African cichlids) is because the whiteness of the rocks reflects back that, giving algae twice as much light to use to grow with. Also couple with some tanks is the intense lighting used for marine inverts or growing plants.
From my experience as a SW aquarist, coral based tanks are an algae nightmare if you do not keep up on them regularly. There are two schools of thought on algae removal though.
Old school methods require that the whole tank be stripped and all the stone be bleached as often as necessary to keep it that pristine white look. Some people do actually do this. It is part of what makes SW keeping a bit "elite" because obviously the owner not only has a huge amount of money to have an SW tank, but also the leasure time to keep it white (or the money to pay someone to do it for them<G&gt
.New school thinking is that this bleaching process is very detramental to the health and blance of the aquarium. This is true because bleaching removes massive amounts of denitrifying bacteria from the water (which in old-school tanks is supported primarily in the filter). New school methods use "live" rock, dead coral pre-seeded with the bacteria and placed in the tank as primary biological filtration. "Live" rock doesn't necessarily have to be coral, but can be any stone, sometimes even tufa stone or volcanic stone that has simply been used as decor in an established SW tank. Live rock should never be bleached, and givin intense lighting will develop purple crusty coriline algae.
I used to simply wipe down the glass and stir up the gravel, removing large macro-chunks of algae by sweeping a brine shrimp net though the tank. I would leave whatever was growing on the coral to grow since that stuff was helping to remove nitrates from my water. I had to clean the tanks like this 2x a week to keep them looking relatively neat. The only time I ever bleached them was if the manager complained my tanks didn't look "clean" enough.
~~Colesea