How to promote Coralline Growth

[brad]

I rarely see live rock come in with as much coraline as after it is in tanks for a few years, nor have I ever seen rocks that coraline covered in the wild (not that I've seen much of the world's reefs). Does coraline cover everything like this in the wild? What are we doing differently if it doesn't?

[bigben]

Brad,

Generally, most rock in the wild is not covered with that much coralline. However, I've noticed that the Fiji shaped with all the little round nodules tends to be almost 100% covered with coralline (straight from the reef). It's really hard to find pieces like that in the store, though.

Reasoning: Compared to the world's reefs, our tanks (such as the ones seen above)have a much higher ratio of corallines spores to water volume. Our tanks also have much less waste and nutrients in the water (for us to be successful, our water must be reasonably "clean"). In addition, reefs in the wild have more grazers, more variation is lighting due to depth differences, MUCH higher nutrient levels in the water, and more competitors of reef building elements, such as corals, algaes, etc. There's a whole bunch more factors I probably didn't mention.

Nice coralline growth, everyone. I will never achieve that level, because I definitely overfeed my tank (I have nice corals, though) and have excess PO4 in the water. Take it easy,

Ben

[Edited by bigben on 03-24-2001 at 10:31 PM]

[Flatlander]

Just wondering what else besides kalk, you were using smokinreefer.

Most likely thats where your added elements are coming from.

Good post Andrew, completely agree.

Like others said though, be careful what you wish for. The coralline in my 170, consumes considerable amounts of calcium.

[brad]

I've noticed that the Fiji shaped with all the little round nodules tends to be almost 100% covered with coralline (straight from the reef).

I have some of this - anyone know what these are?

[stingray]

Andrew aka Canadian

What type of lighting were you using on your old tank? Also what additives were you using? Do you have a web page?

Thanks
Robert

[Canadian]

Rob,

My old tank was a 20g with 4 x75W VHO lamps (1-50/50, 1-Actinic, 2-6500k). I pretty much used B-Ionic the first 8 months that tank was set up and then hooked up my Ca Reactor. All of the coralline in the picture was grown with B-Ionic. The Ca Reactor maintained what had grown.

Just click on the pic in my signature to see my old web site. I haven't really started the new site for my new tank yet.