Jestersix

No coralline, 1 year later. Anyone else?

kinetic

Supporting Member
I'm not complaining at all, but I have no coralline in my tank even at the 1 year mark. I did start with totally dead rock, scrubbed the heck out of any shelled animal coming in, and always removed frag plugs before putting a piece in (of course after dipping).

I wasn't specifically avoiding it, but I've had a few tanks in the past and always got some coralline in the system.

Parameters check out, SPS are growing.

Anyone else coralline free? I think it's kind of nice not dealing with scraping it off of everything and needing to constantly maintain pumps.
 
You can have some of mine. :) I get dots of it on the glass that have to be scraped off constantly.

Right! I don't miss that. I think I'm OK for now not having any.

Are you using any form of algae removal products? Vibrant for example?

Oh! Well at the ~8 month mark I did use Dino X to help rid of dinoflagellates, but that was 4+ months ago. I've been dosing NoPox since, which might be the reason?
 
I had rather bad luck with coraline for a very long time.
It would grow in my fuge, but not my display tank.
It eventually started to grow though, especially on front glass. But only certain types.
Interestingly, when I took tank apart to reboot, I had a ton of coralline on the underside of my rocks.

So I suspect the intense LEDs are not friendly to coraline.
 
Have you put ANYTHING in the tank that may have had coraline on it? Most common thing is frag plugs. Coraline won't grow out of a vacuum that other types of algae seemingly do, the reality is those other types of algae are just that much more resilient to things like bleaching and what not.

That said, in my history of reef keeping I've never been terribly successful in growing it on rocks, however it would prefer to grow on the glass (or more to the point... acrylic). Don't get me wrong, I've had coraline on rocks, just not nearly the growth that I did on the sides (and bottom) of the tank, maybe because water flows much more smoothly over those surfaces? I dunno.
 
I dont have any corraline in my rocks because I have a bunch of tuxedo urchins. It does grow in big spots in places where the urchins cant get to
 
Another thing that seems to help - lots of snails.
They keep the regular algae from growing, giving the coraline a better chance.
 
You can have my scrapings...

But really, what you need is a spot of low lights. Coralline grows best in low light areas...assuming you already have a starter source

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Pretty sure it's not due to intense lighting, since I've had coralline grow in 470-770 PAR using LEDs. Flow could have more to do with it versus lighting if anything.

For reference, this is the PC rainbow getting blasted by light (470 PAR) and flow (you can see the floating bubbles in the pic). Started with bone white Tonga branches and here it is 5 months after it saw water. Started out with pink coralline, then secondary coralline species, red, filled it in. Now it's in the next stage where macroalgae and worms are actually beginning to show up. Even some turf algae has taken a small foothold, but is kept cropped by the army of tiger Trochus. All this was seeded via some plugs which were transferred over and a 4x3 piece of rock that I had placed in the sump.

upload_2018-9-18_15-34-13.png


Here's the seed rock in the middle of the pic. It was coralline encrusted when first placed in the sump for seeding purposes. Served its purpose even though all the coralline has since died off without any light.

upload_2018-9-18_15-44-38.png
 
I am assuming you did a huge water change after the DinoX treatment?

Yup, 8x 25% water changes within two weeks after dinox treatment, changed out my carbon (rox 0.8 from brs) a couple times just in case as well. The dinox on its own wasn't working, but combined with nopox I was dino free after just a couple weeks of nopox dosing and heavy dinox dosing. The DinoX helped kill it off and NoPox built up all the bacteria to suck up all the no3/po4 that the dinos would have kept consuming afterwards.

On the note of coralline, I am actually not a fan of it or the color. I don't mind it, but I'm pretty happy I don't have any clogging up the pumps etc. Just very surprised I didn't get any. I guess the scrubbing I did on everything and the lack of plugs/rocks from other systems worked enough. Might get some hitchiked later on, but curious to see who else has coralline free tanks!
 
Pretty sure it's not due to intense lighting, since I've had coralline grow in 470-770 PAR using LEDs. Flow could have more to do with it versus lighting if anything.

For reference, this is the PC rainbow getting blasted by light (470 PAR) and flow (you can see the floating bubbles in the pic). Started with bone white Tonga branches and here it is 5 months after it saw water. Started out with pink coralline, then secondary coralline species, red, filled it in. Now it's in the next stage where macroalgae and worms are actually beginning to show up. Even some turf algae has taken a small foothold, but is kept cropped by the army of tiger Trochus. All this was seeded via some plugs which were transferred over and a 4x3 piece of rock that I had placed in the sump.

View attachment 10391

Here's the seed rock in the middle of the pic. It was coralline encrusted when first placed in the sump for seeding purposes. Served its purpose even though all the coralline has since died off without any light.

View attachment 10392
Not saying it's not impossible...just that lower lights tend to promote more coralline growth. 7000 - 14000K and about 100PAR or less

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Yup, 8x 25% water changes within two weeks after dinox treatment, changed out my carbon (rox 0.8 from brs) a couple times just in case as well. The dinox on its own wasn't working, but combined with nopox I was dino free after just a couple weeks of nopox dosing and heavy dinox dosing. The DinoX helped kill it off and NoPox built up all the bacteria to suck up all the no3/po4 that the dinos would have kept consuming afterwards.

On the note of coralline, I am actually not a fan of it or the color. I don't mind it, but I'm pretty happy I don't have any clogging up the pumps etc. Just very surprised I didn't get any. I guess the scrubbing I did on everything and the lack of plugs/rocks from other systems worked enough. Might get some hitchiked later on, but curious to see who else has coralline free tanks!
Get some of those coralline margarita snails from petco... $1.99 and your set

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Just get a piece of rock with purple coralline algae, finely scrape it so the spores? are released;
The holding bin I have running with just couple rocks, has started to grow it; two power-heads have the coralline and I think is spreading due to that. Gonna transfer at least one power-head to the main tank see if that does the trick as well there.
 
What is your ph level at?
I was reading somewhere that optimal ph for coraline algae is 8.2-8.3.
Once I got it there -took off like crazy.

Lawrence


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What is your ph level at?
I was reading somewhere that optimal ph for coraline algae is 8.2-8.3.
Once I got it there -took off like crazy.

Lawrence

No idea actually. Never tested ph (not even in my previous tanks).

I'm OK without having any coralline, in fact, I prefer it this way. Just wondering if this was abnormal =)
 
No idea actually. Never tested ph (not even in my previous tanks).

I'm OK without having any coralline, in fact, I prefer it this way. Just wondering if this was abnormal =)
As long as you are ok with it -then it’s all good!
I have noticed though that having my rocks covered in it has kept other unwanted algae at bay.


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