Disappearing Purple Coralline Algae

[RaymondL]

Coming up the 3 years and tank is showing purple coralline algae on the power heads, and only very few spots on the live rock. The pattern that I'm seeing here is that when they do appear on the rock, these white spots eventually show up and the algae dies off. I thought they were spirobid worms at first, but not the case.

https://ibb.co/cSYzVnnt

Thoughts anyone?

 

[edsbeaker]

Tell us a bit more about your tank and the parameters. Is it a reef tank, or FOWLR? If coralline isn’t growing, my guess would be either deficiencies or unstable alkalinity, calcium and magnesium or inadequate lighting.

 

[Brian W]

Do you have an urchin by chance. I recently had to move my tuxedo urchin to my sump because it was eating on the coralline. I know we need to keep stable parameters to maintain coralline growth. Are your parameters stable?

 

[iseethruyou2]

I have 3 urchins in my 100 gallon and they absolutely crush coralline. Before I got them the back and sides of the tank were absolutely encrusted. Now there’s barely anything on the glass. They are absolutely veracious.

 

[RaymondL]

Hi folks - nope, no urchin. Parameters have been stable for a while now...as a matter of fact I did a beginning of the month check and all numbers were the same last month. Very odd...

 

[RaymondL]

Tell us a bit more about your tank and the parameters. Is it a reef tank, or FOWLR? If coralline isn’t growing, my guess would be either deficiencies or unstable alkalinity, calcium and magnesium or inadequate lighting.

Reef tank with mix of LPS, SPS and soft corals - clownfish tank. Using LED lighting (Prime HD), dkh: 8.6, Ca: 450, Mg: 1485.

 

[edsbeaker]

That is strange. If everything is doing well, I wouldn’t worry much about it. A lot of people hate having to clean it off the glass.
If it’s something you want, and you started with dry rock, you can put a live rock, from your LFS, that is encrusted with coraline into the tank and it should start it growing for you.

Some people have also tried the bottled stuff, but I am not convinced that it works.

Maybe some others will chime in with more ideas.