Red coraline I suppose?

[piperky1]

I'm guessing this is red coraline algae? It has grown some since I put the live rock in and starting to show up in a few other places. Tank has been up for almost two weeks. Will it die as my tank cycles?

 

[PurplePolyp]

It's not coralline if your tank has been up for only two weeks. Your tank will like have a cyano outbreak and possible a hair algae outbreak before you start seeing coralline. It takes stable water parameters and time for coralline to grow. And it has to be introduced to the tank. It looks like a coral of some kind to me. Photo is kinda blurry. Maybe someone on a computer and not a phone will chime in. I would say let your tank cycle (4-6 week). Then if its still there, re-post this and we'll see. It might be good but the cycle might kill it.

 

[piperky1]

I assumed it was coralline because I purchased the rock as "fully cured" so I thought it might have already been on it when I bought it. Is that possible?

 

[PurplePolyp]

It's possible but it won't start growing and spreading for awhile. My rock had coralline on it but it took 8 months to finally start growing. Plus, that looks like its growing out away from the rock. Is it hard or slimy? Or soft to the touch?

 

[piperky1]

It's hard to the touch.

 

[90291]

Sponge maybe

 

[piperky1]

Are there hard sponges? Would it or any coral survive FedEx 2 day export to me?

 

[piperky1]

Also, my lights have been off 95% of the time. I'm really curious as to what this is now. Does coralline lay flat on the rock? This does grow up and away from the rock with a leafy pattern.

 

[PurplePolyp]

It's definitely not coralline. Some kind of hard coral. Consider it a free gift with the rock.

 

[ktomminello]

It's more than likely the same thing that I have in my nano 10g, I'm still pretty new to salt and reef and I've come to know that it is virtually impossible to get coralline to grow with no lights, hands down- my puffer tank is almost a year old and I am just coming out of a hair algae/ cyano outbreak and my beautiful neon purple, green and white cyano is finally taking hold after I introduced all of my fully encrusted live rock from my nano 2 months ago- and my tank spends 4 hours completely immersed in intense real sunlight along with a boost from a t8 for an additional 2 hours, then dropped to a normal fluorescent for another hour.

My 10g nano which was started over again a month ago that was completely encrusted in coralline is covered in hair algae (yay no cyano!!), well only one or 2 of my rocks, but it feels like it's worse, but signs of white crusty coralline are starting to come out, and beautiful purpleness again finally. Though I do have some stuff that looks live that on my rocks.... It's been slowly moving and dropping pieces of rock all over the place, I don't know what it is- I thought it might be sponge or something. I'll keep watching in case someone knows what it is.

 

[pairenoid]

i have that too and have had cured live rock for about 5 months

about 2 months ago my coraline started growing nicely, right now its all over all my rocks

 

[mr_X]

That is a type of branching coralline algae.