algae id

i have mint green algae growing on some of my live rock. i will get pics when i find my camera.

 

If it's hard and can't be scraped off easily with a fingernail, it's likely coralline algae. Coralline doesn't just come in pink and purple. There's also green, neon orange, blue, yellow, crimson red.

 

ok thanks

 

inwall75 thats cool to know about the coroline algea colors. Now come the question. I have seen the green pink and purple, but how can you the other colors?

 

I've only seen the blue once. I had some neon orange and yellow recently. I've not seen it often though.

 

I'm not sure about the bright green coralline. Technically coralline is Rhodophyta (red-algae). While not all Rhodophyta is red, it should have phycoerythrin, which is a red pigment. So, being bright green seems unlikely. I've heard it can be more of a grey-green, but there seems to be some debate over bright green and I have not found a definitive answer. I wonder however, if the bright green stuff isn't just the green film algae we often see on glass.

 

I had green coralline in my tank along the back wall that got different light than the walls with pink on it. It plated in the same circular pattern the pink did and totally encrusted the back wall. Had to get it off with a credit card just like the pink stuff. Only thing different about it was the color. Definitely coralline.

It all depends on lighting it seems. Different colored coralline varieties live in different lighting zones. That is why you may have 3 or even 4 colors in your tank one recently added LR, but eventually it will mostly die off and the dominant variety for your lighting will prevail. I had green, pink, purple, and maroon in my tank at one point. The maroon all bleached out, the purple receded down to the bottom regions of my rock because the light was lower, the pink dominated the upper regions and the front and side glass (to my dismay), and green was along the back where it received light from different temp bulbs on the back fixture.