Regrowing coralline algae
 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to speed the growth of coralline algae? We had a long tentacle spiny urchin that wiped pretty much all of ours out. Now most of our rock is really drab. It's slowly coming back, but I'd like to help it along if I can.

dont quote me and i could be wrong but i heard actinic lighting helps coraline grow, but imo the best way to speed it up is to add more rock covered in it and scrape off what you can off the glass with your filter off.there are products like purple tech that could help but it raises your calcium so pay attention to how its used:)

i use purple up!

Purple Up is a fantastic product! I used it on my nano and loved the results.

You do not need it however. Keep your Calcium and Kh in line and the coraline will grow.


Also I agree with a previous statement... get some rock or rubble with coraline and scrape some coraline off the rock, filters off, and let it settle.

Lose the urchin as he will do it again if he has once.

Thanks! The urchin was removed and put in a separate tank when we caught him killing/eating some of our hermit crabs.

From what I have read coraline likes Magnesium as well. try to keep your levels up along with you Calcium.

Agree with keeping your magnesium alkalinity and calcium in check. old readings says keep higher Kelvin is best. The days when the iwasaki 6500k was big.

I agree with Grizz. I've been pumping the magnesium hard to my tank lately and the coraline algae has really started to take off in my tank.

I have to agree with denny with the bluer lighting. About the only thing my led light grows is corline i can put it on the tank and within week or so its nuts the amount of coraline growth i get.

I recently changed out my 10K halides for 15's, and also bumped up my magnesium a lot to help with a HA problem. The Coraline algae is growing like CRAZY. I had only a few spots on the side glass last month, and now it is completely encrusted. same with my powerheads :S.

my Mag is at 1550-1600 now, was at 1250 before i bumped it up.