Where oh where has my coralline gone?

bluetmax

New member
I have a question that I would like to ask you all regarding coralline algae growth. I have a 20 gallon long tank primarily filled with SPS corals, with the exception of a few soft and LPS corals, that is lit with two 65 watt PCs. The corals all have beautiful color, and were grown from frags. They are doing great. The problem is that for some reason I cannot get coralline algae to grow to save my life. As far as trace elements are concerned, I follow the same procedure that GARF uses. I put a capful of Reef Plus, Reef Complete, and Reef Calcium in the water on Sunday and Thursdays, and for my make up water I use RO water with 1.5 tsp of Reef Builder and 1.5 tsp. of Reef Advantage alternating them each week. The tank is continuously filtered with a CPR BackPak, and has sugar sized sand and live rock. I have a 55 gallon FOWLR that has coralline algae growing everywhere. It is lit with one 48" strip and has crushed coral. After talking with the owner of my LFS I was shown in his systems how the tanks with larger sized substrate had way more coralline growth than the tanks with smaller sized. Do you guys know of anything I could do that would help the growth?? Anyone tried Purple Up? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dustin Daley
bluetmax@aol.com
 
I use none of the products you mention but I drip kalk for topoff water and do weekly water changes. Coraline is a nuisance algae in my tanks and I spend a whole lot less on reef additives.

Have you tested for ca and alk levels ? If your SPS are using the available calcium there may not be enough for coraline to grow.
 
alkalinity at 3.0!?!?!
holy crap man, get that between 8 and 10. calcium is good. Also, if there is no coraline algae present in the system (on rock or something) it must have something to grow from.
 
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