Coralline in an uncycled tank

So I bought all dryrock to set up my tank. My LFS sells aquacultured live rock (No Pests!!) that is COVERED in purple coralline. When I say covered I mean covered like completely. Downside is it is 12 or 14 bucks a lb!! They also sell live brown fiji which I dont have much itnerest in. Should I buy a few pounds of the purple rock to seed my tank with now or will all the coralline jsut die since the tank is not yet cycled??

 

If you haven't bought any live rock yet, then a small piece will be enough to see your dryrock. It's just going to take a while to seed the rest of the rock.

 

Everywhere I read though states that growing coralline is like growing corals more than algae and that it will not grow with nitrate and phosphates and without proper lightening, ca, mag, alk, ph levels. I dont want to spend 40 bucks to get purple coralline jsut to have it die because my tank is not eyt ready to grow it yet

 

Good move! Let the tank finish its cycle and when all your parameters are stable, buy a piece of the purple rock. U don't need a lot, even a 1 pound piece will do. Scrape some Coralline off that one piece of rock into a plate or bowl with salt water and then pour that over your base rock... u can also turn the pumps off for a bit to make sure this Coralline "dust" lands on the rock... eventually this would not matter though.
If your calcium, magnesium and alkalinity are all in check and stable, it will start to slowly cover not only your base rock, but the glass and everything else in your tank.
Keep in mind that stable parameters r really helpful to grow Coralline or coral.


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More than likely it is man made live rock. It is painted purple. My lfs sells it as fiji premium. $12lb.

 

it is manmade but he said its coralline algae and that to keep the color I would have to dose my CA and Mag, I didnt think it was painted man what a ripoff if thats the case!

 

WOW! some people will do anything to make a buck! Id be concerned about what would leech from the paint into my tank!

 

It takes a lot to kill corailline algae. If you want it to grow, however, then you need to be dosing. It eats up calcium fast.

 

Its not intended to be a ripoff. The idea is to not take rock from the reef. All of the material is tank safe and it will grow real coraline. I do preferr real rock myself.

 

I'd tell them to stuff it for $12/lb painted rock. It will eventually get coralline on the rock and glass. Just takes time.