How to promote Coralline Growth

[smokinreefer]

hmmm... maybe i could do a little experiment. i have been monitoring my water religiously lately and maintaining Ca and Alk. at about 400 and 3.5meq/l and my coraline has taken off like wildfire! i will admit that i do not do water changes as often as i should, perhaps tommorow. but i dont see my tank getting any supplemental stront/mag. from any internal source. or any other trace elements for that matter. i'll look around and see if i have any supplements lying around and i'll try dosing them. see what happens. if i find some, what should i dose, half the recommended amount? BTW do supplements go bad? if i have some kickin around somewhere they are liable to be a few years old as i have stopped dosing stuff years ago, besides kalk that is.

just a thought

 

[toptank]

No doubt the intense lights help. I have 2 tanks the 90 which I posted above but also have a 50 Gal with nothing but PCs and I took some of the LR out of my 90 gal that has the coralline 8 months ago and put it in the 50 gal and the coralline algae has spend very well under the PC. Ca and alka are the same in both tanks.

Barry

 

[Flatlander]

Hey smokinreefer, whatcha dosing with for calcium and alk. P

On a side note, I forgot to mention that my turbos, love to eat coralline.

 

[Canadian]

IME,

Darker coralline species (purple) grow best under moderate light, while intense light like MH encourages lighter colored species to grow.
Good water flow (well oxygenated water) also helps to promote its growth.
B-Ionic is one of the best coralline algae enouragers. And there are a whole whack of "trace elements" in B-Ionic...not just calcium and buffer.

Here's an example from my old tank. I got sick and tired of trying to clean if from the glass, overflow box, etc. On my new tank, I'm working meticulously to keep it from growing anywhere but the rocks.

[Edited by Canadian on 03-25-2001 at 11:39 AM]

 

[smokinreefer]

hey doug,
i use turbocalcium and superbuffer. about 2 tsp a week of each and i drip kalk to compensate for evaporation, about one and a half gallons a day.

 

[brad]

I rarely see live rock come in with as much coraline as after it is in tanks for a few years, nor have I ever seen rocks that coraline covered in the wild (not that I've seen much of the world's reefs). Does coraline cover everything like this in the wild? What are we doing differently if it doesn't?

 

[bigben]

Brad,

Generally, most rock in the wild is not covered with that much coralline. However, I've noticed that the Fiji shaped with all the little round nodules tends to be almost 100% covered with coralline (straight from the reef). It's really hard to find pieces like that in the store, though.

Reasoning: Compared to the world's reefs, our tanks (such as the ones seen above)have a much higher ratio of corallines spores to water volume. Our tanks also have much less waste and nutrients in the water (for us to be successful, our water must be reasonably "clean"). In addition, reefs in the wild have more grazers, more variation is lighting due to depth differences, MUCH higher nutrient levels in the water, and more competitors of reef building elements, such as corals, algaes, etc. There's a whole bunch more factors I probably didn't mention.

Nice coralline growth, everyone. I will never achieve that level, because I definitely overfeed my tank (I have nice corals, though) and have excess PO4 in the water. Take it easy,

Ben

[Edited by bigben on 03-24-2001 at 10:31 PM]

 

[Flatlander]

Just wondering what else besides kalk, you were using smokinreefer.

Most likely thats where your added elements are coming from.

Good post Andrew, completely agree.

Like others said though, be careful what you wish for. The coralline in my 170, consumes considerable amounts of calcium.

 

[brad]

<b>I've noticed that the Fiji shaped with all the little round nodules tends to be almost 100% covered with coralline (straight from the reef).</b>

I have some of this - anyone know what these are?

 

[stingray]

Andrew aka Canadian

What type of lighting were you using on your old tank? Also what additives were you using? Do you have a web page?

Thanks
Robert

 

[Canadian]

Rob,

My old tank was a 20g with 4 x75W VHO lamps (1-50/50, 1-Actinic, 2-6500k). I pretty much used B-Ionic the first 8 months that tank was set up and then hooked up my Ca Reactor. All of the coralline in the picture was grown with B-Ionic. The Ca Reactor maintained what had grown.

Just click on the pic in my signature to see my old web site. I haven't really started the new site for my new tank yet.