corraline algae question

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[VickiG]

We went up to Spokane today to Aquatic Dreams to buy a clam from Kevin, and maybe a nice coral or two.  We got looking at his big tank and it is gorgeous - has lots of corraline algae growth on the back and sides and we were saying we didn't have any yet on ours at all.  In fact, coralline on our live rocks has really decreased too.  Our tank has been up for 5+ mos now and he said maybe our alkalinity was too low.  We got a new Salifert test kit because the Red Sea kit has been reading that our alk is very high.  Came home without the clam - wanted to make sure our water was okay first (long trip for just a test kit) and tested the water.  Alk is 4.0 Meq/L.  Same as the other test kit.  That is high.  Our calcium is 380 today.  pH is about 8.3 (with normal day/night minor fluctuations)   Why are we not getting any coralline algae growth?  Any ideas?  We are going to bring the calcium up a bit, usually  it runs about 420, but is our alkalinity TOO high?  Everything we read talks about it being too low and to bring it up, but nothing about it being too high and what to do about it if so?  You CHEMISTS out there - what do we need to do differently to get coralline algae to grow???[/u]

[Ed]

Vicki,
    First question, Algae can be transfered from someone elses tank to yours.    If you can get some shavings or starts of coraline its easier.   I rock with coraline algae to seed your tank.

Second question, When you dose calcium are you waiting for 4 hours before taking readings of calcium.    Any change you make(FE.  adding calcium, buffer, Magnesium, Strontium)  Please wait for four hours after before testing.    Salinity is important also.    Most manufacturers list their salt at 1.025 or .026 to get readings that are stated.    If you are doing Hyposalinity, your readings will be different then stated.  

Another way to get Coraline algae in your tank is to buy a urchin.   You should look and see which sea urchins are reef safe.  Urchins eat coraline algae and then poop it through out your tank spreading it.  
I hope this helps.    I have coraline algae on my glass.    I could scrape it and let you take some home for a start also.

I hope this  helps,
Ed

[angelscrx]

Sounds like your calcium and alk are out of balance.  If you bring the calcium up the alk should come down some.  Also what is your PH and do your have your lights on reverse cycling from the tank and sump?

[VickiG]

Vicki,
    First question, Algae can be transfered from someone elses tank to yours.    If you can get some shavings or starts of coraline its easier.   I rock with coraline algae to seed your tank.

Second question, When you dose calcium are you waiting for 4 hours before taking readings of calcium.    Any change you make(FE.  adding calcium, buffer, Magnesium, Strontium)  Please wait for four hours after before testing.    Salinity is important also.    Most manufacturers list their salt at 1.025 or .026 to get readings that are stated.    If you are doing Hyposalinity, your readings will be different then stated.  

Another way to get Coraline algae in your tank is to buy a urchin.   You should look and see which sea urchins are reef safe.  Urchins eat coraline algae and then poop it through out your tank spreading it.  
I hope this helps.    I have coraline algae on my glass.    I could scrape it and let you take some home for a start also.

I hope this  helps,
Ed

Ed, thanks for the advice.  We always wait a day or so after dosing anything in the tank to do water tests.  Salinity is 1.024-1.025, per Darrel.  If he doesn't top off twice day, it spikes slightly higher (still needs to make his auto top-off set-up).  We did have lots of coralline on the rocks that we got from Aquarium Arts - nice purples and reds that are now faded.   I will look into the sea urchin suggestion.  Would love to get scrapings from your tank - let me know next time you do that and I'll come over with a container of our tank water and take it off your hands - unless you can bring some to meeting tonight?  Are you going?  What about using Purple Up?  We won some at the reef conference in '05 - it says you can add it daily, but Darrel is concerned we'll have too much Ca and only adds it sparingly every few weeks.  

Angel,  So, if we bring Ca up more, to say 420, you think the Alk will come down?  We've had the Ca that high, but Alk still reads 4.0, which according to the Salifert test kit, should be okay.   We will miss your smiling face at the meeting tonight - we always do!

Thanks, both of you, for advice and suggestions.  Appreciate it!

[Rico]

Vicky,

What is your magnesium at?  It should be around 1250 ppm.  If it is low, it will cause a loss of coralline.  I find that I need to regularly add mg along with the calcium and alk.  The alk reading of 4.0 Meq is still ok,  it will not hurt your coralline growth.  Actually high alk helps reduce the opportunity for nuisance algae to grow.

Let me know if you have a mg test kit.  If not I can bring mine.

Rick

[VickiG]

Mg is one of the few test kits we don't have yet.  We've been replacing our Red Sea kits with Salifert and just got Iodine, but don't have Mg yet.  That would be fantastic if you could test our water for it - give us an idea where we are at.  Thanks!

[Nate C.]

Colleen and I had a problem with corraline algae bleaching out and going a way a while after we re-started our 75 gal.  I ended up having to drop lighting by a couple hours a day for a while.  I've been able to increase it again, and things have stayed stable.  I've read that too much light can actually kill the corraline though, so you may give that a shot and see what happens.

[VickiG]

Thanks Nate - worth considering.  Rick also tested our magnesium for us and it was low, so we are trying to fix that as well.  This hobby sure is fascinating/frustrating at times - never a dull moment!

[angelscrx]

Dull moment what's that? You should see what IO have done now to my tank! (tank Update thread)