How to Jumpstart Coraline Growth

[jonboyb]

My tank has been up for about a month now and I have about 40lbs. LR in it. I have about 20 lbs. of fully cured LR that had tons of beautiful purple and deep red coraline growth to begin with, but it really seems to be dying off and turning dull/white. Is there any tricks I'm missing or is this just what coraline algae does? My calcium is steady at 420 and my phospates and other parameters appear to be near perfect. THroughout the entire process I have had very little other algae growth other than some bubble algae that the emerald crabs took care of and some minor diatom outbreaks. No hair algae to speak of either.

 

[ccCapt]

My tank has been up for about a month now...
My calcium is steady at 420 and my phospates and other parameters appear to be near perfect.

Nothing happens fast in a sw tank and in a month alot of chemical reactions are still taking place. Even tho you used some cured rock, there is alot going on. Give it some time to stabalize.
What exactly are your other parameters?
temp
pH
salinity
nitrate
alk
magnesium
phosphate

 

[jonboyb]

Im still doing weekly PWC's of about 20% so my numbers vary VERY slightly but for the most part:

temp - 76-78
pH - 8.4
salinity - 1.024
nitrate - 5-10
alk - 8-9
magnesium - right around 1300
phosphate - 0 or dang near it anyways

 

[ccCapt]

The parameters look good. Just give it time. You will eventually be cursing the fact you have to scrape it off the glass...lol.

 

[Devilishturtles]

The parameters look good. Just give it time. You will eventually be cursing the fact you have to scrape it off the glass...lol.

How true this is! Just be patient and it'll start taking off

 

[jonboyb]

The parameters look good. Just give it time. You will eventually be cursing the fact you have to scrape it off the glass...lol.

I look forward LR just looks so bland right now. Guess I should just cover it with corals. My newest aquascape has the top "show piece" of LR which has the majority of the coraline is only about 8" or so below my halides. I may lower it a bit since the coraline seemed to do better when I had it a bit deeper.

 

[melosu58]

I agree with the patience part. It will happen.

 

[DJLiquid]

My tank has been up for a little over 3 months and the coraline algae is now really starting to show up. It seems to especially like the submersible heater, powerhead and mag float because it all over them.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Just give it time... your parameters look great and it'll just take some patience. I put up a few photos of my tank the other night in a different thread to show the progression of things over time. You can see it here...

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f45/not-happy-108423.html

It looked pretty sparse for the first 8 months, but the coralline eventually kicked into overdrive. You just have to kind of reach a "cricital mass" point.

 

[DJLiquid]

Once the coraline algae starts spreading (for me right around 3 months) it really spreads. I just added a few shavings this week to get it floating in the water column and it's only been 3 days and it's almost double the amount.

 

[Justin_Toronto]

My tank has been up for only 3 weeks now... similar situation with half cured rock, and half was cured in the tank for 6 weeks prior. I used some iodide (5ml, twice a week, which is less than the recommended dose) during the cycling process and for the past 3 weeks... I've had a lot of additional corraline algae growth on the cured rock, my kenya tree doubled in size, as have the mushrooms. The uncured rock is just starting to see the tiniest specks of purple showing up. For me I had 80lb of cured LR with already existing coraline algae, and 40lb uncured.