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Why different colored Coralline?

Funny how those things can linger, like the smell of the pilot light on my grandmom's stove, I haven't been to her house (she's dead) in over 20 years but can still "remember the smell".
 
Here are my live rocks with green coralline, I place a 23 watt coiled fluorescent bulb clip on light about 40 inches from the front
of each of these 3 tanks and all the coralline in each of these 3 tanks are mostly green with some red and other colors, but
when this same 23 watt light is placed 24 inches or less from the tank the coralline on the rocks are dark crimson, burgundy
why is this?

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tuberider said:
I've found that Dobie pads work very well to remove the green coralline, it isn't as tenacious as the pink stuff that's for sure ;)

I'm not even sure the green is a true coralline, is it?
 
I haven't tested the residual to be honest, could be silica that's making the structure, who knows. It would be pretty easy I'd imaging to run a quick test, I'll do a scrape next time I see some and run a calcium test. It sure grows like coralline...
 
non coralline algaes can have calcium in their structure as well... take Halimeda for example :)
 
I'm pretty sure they are coralline, they look very similar to my usual purple coralline, although I'm aware
that they would need to be analyze to be conclusive. I do like my live rocks looking so colored :)
thanks for helping out..
 
fishtales said:
I'm pretty sure they are coralline, they look very similar to my usual purple coralline, although I'm aware
that they would need to be analyze to be conclusive. I do like my live rocks looking so colored :)
thanks for helping out..

Looks from a distance is no way to ID an algae. There are corallines that look nothing like what you'd think coralline should look like... like one of the ones off our coast (branching type) or the ones off Baja on the pacific side (another branching). Our coastal one looks like a plant and the one in baja looks like a coral.
 
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