is this corraline algae?

[stan450z]

its sort of grown on my live rock and also has spread onto my artificial coral - as well as little bits on the crushed coral on the bottom of my tank


Also, what is the white thing growing on my hermit crabs shell? sorry if its not totally clear. i took them using my blackberry.

 

[AMDPhenomX4]

The purple stuff? Thats coraline. Wait, The dark red stuff? Not sure about the shell.

 

[juice28]

i thought it looked like "red slime" how long did it take to spread?

 

[stan450z]

yeah i cant tell if its red slime algae or good coralline algae. yeah im talking about the dark red stuff that i see on most of my rock. how do you tell the difference? im going on month 5 with this tank. i got this piece of rock along with the artificial coral from somebody elses established tank. thought it might be a good idea as a starter.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Red slime will wipe off easily with your finger. Coralline won't - you'll have to scrape it with your fingernail.

I was kinda thinking red slime (cyanobacteria) also.

 

[juice28]

now the 2 bottom pics with the pinkish red spots on it is coralline, coraline is like a thick cementish plate but looking at the pics of the whole set up looking at the decoration corals that looks like the red slime(cyano) do what kurt nelson said, if you rub it and it comes off its the red slime. coralin wont spread to your substrate if its spreading across the "ground' its probably the red slime. what typ of light do you have? red slime will come out of nowhere with the wrong lighting or old bulbs. i had a problem wih it when i set mine up but i was using 3300 k bulbs which isnt high enough, if you leave your lights on too long you can get it to I believe. Im still new at this so if im wrong hopefully someone will correct me but look up cyano bacteria or google "red slime"

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

...coralin wont spread to your substrate...

Yes it will.

But as you mentioned, if it's creeping across the sand in a sheet... that's cyano.

 

[juice28]

see thats why i love this site lol thank you for the correction, and the info Kurt, its nice to see that im actually learnig more and more every day from this site and am able to at least give minor help to other like so many people have helped me out

 

[MichaelsLilGray]

if you contribute with helping anyone.. your adding to the site.. your just one of a few hundred people helping 1 person at a time lol