Too little bio load?

Hey all, I have has my 125 up for almost a year now. I started it out with around 120lbs of dry rock and a few small pieces of live rock from my 38g that I upgraded from. Well most of my rocks are still very white. My old live rock has nice grey color and coralline growth of different colors, but zero coralline on my new rock. I have only 2 small Clowns, 4 Banggai cardinals and a Coral Beauty in the 150 gallon system. Is this too light of a load to age my rock in this timeframe? Or am I just over thinking things? It just looks kinda goofy right now.

 

I think that you may be right.

 

Could my water being "too clean" also be why the small Xenia frag I have is not doing very well? I know there are a ton of things it could be but is this one of them?

 

If you are trying to establish coralline to the newer rock you may need to run higher levels of Ca/Alk/Magnesium and replace trace elements like strontium via water changes.

 

Thanks Corailline. Ill have to pick up some test kits for those next time out. I just have the basics right now.

 

What kind of lights are you running? And I agree, especially CA is important to coraline growth.... and LEDs grow it faster then any other light I've ever used. I hate the stuff tho, wish I could just get it out of my system. I'd rather everything just fill in with coral and clean glass then that crap that I need to scrap off..... personal preference lol

 

I am running 2 36in TruLumen strips right now. The all whites (12k? I think). Coralline is plastered on my powerheads, back glass, and overflows. Just isnt taking hold on my dry rock. I even tried rubbing old shells and other rocks with coralline on them. Some pieces are coming along better than others. There are a few in random places I could probably brush off and return as new lol.

 

Im planning on getting a few of the Reefbreeder units before too long. Just trying to figure out if I need a protein skimmer first or want a pair of mp40s. Kinda leaning to the new LEDs.

 

Protein Skimmer first. But thats my opinion. Then again, if your bioload is that light and everything is good, then the LEDs.

 

Coralline will grow under most any lighting conditions as some color variants actually prefer lower light than others.

If you scrape some off the glass occasionally and let your powerheads spread it around, it will start covering the rocks.