How do I grow Coralline Algae?

Think about Coraline as the SPS of all algaes haha. I had a 29g and got it growing in the 4th month i had the tank up...the params were stable and everything it just did not grow...

I used Purple up for a couple of weeks and that shot the growth rate out of the sky, but i am not sure if people would reccomend it..But i thought it worked pretty good...I say purple up is more of a last resort easy way...But its better to grow it with high calcium and stable water params..I have a 14g biocube now and it is already starting to get on the back of the glass/plastic. I do weekly water changes and its good.

 

You can try scraping some coraline algae off a rock that already has some and then turning off your skimmer for a day and add the scrapings. I had a coraline explosion after i did that.

 

urchins "eat" it but they excrete tiny bits, eventually cuasing it all over your tank, but once you have a purple wall your gonna wish it never happened. while purple up does help, its similar to using slime remover on that nasty stuff. you get rid of it but you dont know why, how , or how to prevent it in the future. or in the case of coraline, your just putting it in to speed it up, try looking at whats in purple up and dosing from there. also my coraline takes off after water changes.

 

Believe me, you want coralline algae until you have it. While it may be pretty, it is, after all, still an algae, and it can still get out of hand quickly if you have a bloom. Then it can obscure entire walls of your tank, and given the nature of coralline, it is very difficult to remove. If it grows, thats nice, but I wouldn't do anything special to encourage it.

 

I have to clean my powerheads every six months otherwise they would freeze up.




Yes a good sign that hard corals will do well, but it comes with it's draw backs.

 

wow thats a lot of coralline lol

 

It is a pain lol but has it benifits. It and i qoute releases mag into the water from what i read.

 

decided to revive this thread since i have a 10 gallon now. do i need any special lighting? all i have now are some fluorescents

 

I don't know really how you tell the difference between Coralline and that red slime algea that is hasty. I have three different colors of pink in my tank and none are really slimey. Sorry if I am hijacking your thread but is all of it good and just a little varied in color or is some of it the slimey stuff?

 

...umm... what does this have to do with this thread? anyway post a pic and we could probably ID.