White Coraline !!

No change in lights, bulbs and light are less than 6 months old. Timer seemes to be on/ off ok. The top 5" or so goes over water during change for about 5 minutes.

This is uniform and all over on the galss. The rock is faded but not white yet.

Anyhitng else i can / should check ?


Thanks

 

Exposing the coralline to air will sometimes make it turn white, but if it's widespread, it's probably not the water change. Did the KH drastically drop in the last couple days? For example, was it 13 then drop to 9 in one day? That could have an impact as well. Are you confident your test kits are good? Maybe your calcium or MG levels aren't quite as high as the kit says, maybe have your LFS test to confirm? If one is low, that would effect the coralline.

Or maybe you have one hungry urchin ;D

 

No Urchin yet, but was looking at one..

Well I have a tough time with my KH. It dropped to 9 from maybe 11. I am adding 100ml of ALK every Wed and Sat to keep it up. It seemes to drop easy for some reason. It typically goes between 9 and 11 throughought the week.

The CA kit I have been using since the beginning is API. The MG I am now using is Sailfert. A month ago I added to much Mg and it has never come down. Sailfert KH as well

This is the first time this has happened and it seemes to be spreading.

 

One NOTE: Two weeks ago I added white egg crate to the entire top as I had a jumper.
Would this cut down the light to cause a change ?

 

New tests - Any Thoughts ?

Here are the results of todays tests.

TEMP: 78.1
PH: 8.1
ALK: 4.0
AM: 0
N2: 0
N3: 0
P4: 0
KH: 11.2
CA: 420
MG: 1500
SG: 1.024



Any reason for white Coraline ? I removed the egg crate JIC but I hope no one jumps...

 

Just for giggle I got a new Calcium test kit. Picked up a red sea kit. Shows higher than the API kit. maybe 450 - 475.

Any other thoughts on this based on the info provided ??

 

Here is a pic of the White taking over

 

OK, so the white has started turning green, also the rock on the lower left now has algae growing on it.

I checked P4 and still reads 0. I had bumped the light from 8 hours to 9 hours a week or two before this all happened. Is this just too much light ? should I go back to 8 hours ?


Cheers

 

It simply sounds like to me there is a case of some sort of disease ?
There are two known diseases of coralline algae have been described that I know of . Both involve the loss of algal tissue that exposes the underlying white carbonate in the process. One will show up as white the other will so up as a yellowish like coloring RTN on a hard coral this attacks the plants tissue and then it sets in

 

Not trying to thread jack, but may be related. It seems my tank has recently exploded with coraline. Light blue. It sort of looks light blue, maybe white. Spots everywhere. Not really the purple stuff fading to white. I had had it growing before, but lately seems like it took off everywhere? I have a lot more purple growing on my glass.

Yet I have spots of green algae growing on the coraline on my overflow. Seems odd. Is something wrong with that???