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Old 01-04-2009, 05:17 AM
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Default Anyone else have the "problem" of not getting any coralline algae growth?

I re-setup my tank when I moved at the beginning of August. You can see in the pictures below that I have basically no coralline algae growth either on my LR or anywhere else for that matter but I still have pretty decent coral growth. There's a bit on the pumps but that's it. I'd actually prefer to have my LR be purple but the predominant coralline algae color in my tank is pink.

I've flipped back and forth between thinking I might have too much or too little phosphate and nitrate which is effecting my coralline growth. Other than my pH being a little depressed my water parameters are within typical values for an SPS dominated tank:

SG - 1.026 (35ppt)
Temp - 80
pH - 7.9-8.0
Alk - 10 (Elos)
Ca - 490 Salifert - I'd actually like to get this lower but I don't see it harming anything)
Mg - 1400 (Elos)
PO4 - less than 0.03 with an Elos kit (this includes doing a heat PO4 test)
NO3 - 0 (Salifert but was also 0 with Elos before I ran out of reagent)

Anyway, part of my struggle with the too much vs too little PO4 is that while I get negligible readings for NO3 and PO4 I do have some tiny spots of hair algae growth which means there's something feeding it. It looks to me that my frequent basting of the LR actually causes some of the detritus to be caught by the little bits of algae and it's using this detritus as a food source. I've been playing with running and removing my phosban reactor and that doesn't seem to make any difference. The only time I've noticed any appreciable coralline algae growth was when I first set up the tank after moving and I put a SSB in for about 3 weeks.

Any and all comments/suggestions are appreciated.

Here are some pics just in case they might help (they were taken right after doing a water change today so the GSP in the bottom left are closed up). You'll also notice that most of the SPS appear to be pastel and washed out like you'd see with too few nutrients but as I mentioned above I do still have some pest algae growth so I'm timid about dumping in amino acids or adding more fish (plus my crappy point and shoot digital camera doesn't do the best job of actually capturing an accurate image of the tank with the T5 fluorescents on):
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SPS Dedicated 24x24x20 Trimless Tank | 20 g Sump | Bubbble King Mini 160 Protein Skimmer w/ Avast Swabbie | NP Biopellets in TLF Phosban Reactor | ATI Sunpower 6 x 24W T5HO Fixture | EcoTech Vortech MP20 | Modified Tunze Nanostream 6025 | Eheim 1260 Return Pump | GHL Profilux Standalone Doser dosing B-Ionic | Steel Frame Epoxy Coated Stand with Maple Panels embedded with Neodymium Magnets

"Mens sana in corpore sano"

Last edited by Canadian; 09-20-2015 at 05:34 PM.
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