Excessive coralline algae cant keep up.

[Notsolostfish]

Would an urchin help? If so what kind. I have EXCESSIVE coralline growth all over 2 years old tank, cant keep up cleaning its encrusted. Would an urchin help if anything?

 

[Subsea]

Would you supply a picture of the coralline algae with white light? I don’t see the problem. If anything it’s a good bioindicator of a healthy marine ecosystem.

Urchins do eat coralline algae off rocks. I am sure they would eat it from back glass. Steve Tyree scraped off thick coralline and used it for nutrient export in conjunction with his cryptic zonal filtration

 

[kevgib67]

Yes, I have a tuxedo urchin that eats it off the glass, if you have a large tank you might want to go with a larger urchin or urchins like a pincushion.

 

[Bear22]

Send me your secrets for growth. I can't get coralline growth to save my life, lol.

 

[Notsolostfish]

Send me your secrets for growth. I can't get coralline growth to save my life, lol.

Yes, I have a tuxedo urchin that eats it off the glass, if you have a large tank you might want to go with a larger urchin or urchins like a pincushion.

Would you supply a picture of the coralline algae with white light? I don’t see the problem. If anything it’s a good bioindicator of a healthy marine ecosystem.

Urchins do eat coralline algae off rocks. I am sure they would eat it from back glass. Steve Tyree scraped off thick coralline and used it for nutrient export in conjunction with his cryptic zonal filtration

what can help me in this situation? An urchin?

 

[kevgib67]

what can help me in this situation? An urchin?

Yes

 

[Notsolostfish]

Would you supply a picture of the coralline algae with white light? I don’t see the problem. If anything it’s a good bioindicator of a healthy marine ecosystem.

Urchins do eat coralline algae off rocks. I am sure they would eat it from back glass. Steve Tyree scraped off thick coralline and used it for nutrient export in conjunction with his cryptic zonal filtration

 

[Subsea]

From the point of biochemistry, it’s better left there. I don’t think urchins will clean it off. And if you scraped it off or urchins scraped it off, then what grows back may not be desirable.

 

[mmorrison55]

Get Several urchins. Although at this point, they may have trouble removing it all. You may want to scrape your glass or places you don’t want the coralline to grow. And then the urchins will help keep it from returning.

 

[The_Bro]

A good old glass scrapper works wonders. I got a stainless one with 24" handle. Get one with a real razor blade.
The blade will rust pretty quick after a few uses, just toss it and load on another

 

[Noobreefer84]

A few things could probably help.

Adjust your light schedule to include less time at full spectrum (more blue time, less blue+white). Or reduce the over all intensity. You could be running really high par for your SPS, but if you drop the lights by 10%, might see a reduction in coralline growth

More water changes/lower nutrients. access or high nutrients will let coralline grow faster. Not sure if you are running slightly elevated Po4 or NO3.

Scrap it all off and let your sock/roller collect it. The amount you have in there is probably also utilizing a lot of your 2 part or Kalk (whatever you are using)... getting rid of it manually would reduce the dosing you should need. lower dosing = lower availability of nutrients to have it take off again.

My guess would be that when you are doing your testing to see how much ALK/CAL you need daily also is what the coralline is aggressively sucking up. scrape it all, reduce dosing.

I could be wrong, but it makes sense inside my head lol.