Hi everybody,
I am into my second year of reefing and have still no coralline growth. Here my story: I started out with a 4 gallon pico (dry rock and life sand) cube which I cycled and that was the only time I had 2 or 3 purple spots show up on the rocks then I had a diatom bloom. The purple spots disappeared after a couple weeks. Once that was established, the diatoms were gone and I got some green algae (green coralline???) that have a teal or blue color under actinic light and added some coral, the some mushrooms did well and a candy cane had slow growth. I didn't do any testing at that time but the SPS test frags obviously died. I didn't have fish, so it was most likely PO4 starvation.
After 6 months I took the same rock and added a little new rock into a 20 gal and went bare bottom. I got testing equipment and am in much better shape now. Parameters are stable but I still don't have any coralline. I got a monti cap to grow well now and tried a green slimer as a starter acro, which looks good so far. Still no fish, but I dose KNO3 and PO4 and feed the LPS 3 times a week. Here my parameters.
Ca 410 to 440
Alk 9.5
Mg 1350
Temp 78
PO4 12 to 35 ppb (Hanna ULR)
NO3 around 5
pH 7.8
Light 2x Kessil A80
Does anybody have suggestions what I could do to get coralline going? Please don't say seeding, I already scrubbed snails and got 2 rocks covered in coralline. Those coralline only bleached a little when I put them in, but now they are recovered and evenly purple. They just won't spread.
Thank you.
I am into my second year of reefing and have still no coralline growth. Here my story: I started out with a 4 gallon pico (dry rock and life sand) cube which I cycled and that was the only time I had 2 or 3 purple spots show up on the rocks then I had a diatom bloom. The purple spots disappeared after a couple weeks. Once that was established, the diatoms were gone and I got some green algae (green coralline???) that have a teal or blue color under actinic light and added some coral, the some mushrooms did well and a candy cane had slow growth. I didn't do any testing at that time but the SPS test frags obviously died. I didn't have fish, so it was most likely PO4 starvation.
After 6 months I took the same rock and added a little new rock into a 20 gal and went bare bottom. I got testing equipment and am in much better shape now. Parameters are stable but I still don't have any coralline. I got a monti cap to grow well now and tried a green slimer as a starter acro, which looks good so far. Still no fish, but I dose KNO3 and PO4 and feed the LPS 3 times a week. Here my parameters.
Ca 410 to 440
Alk 9.5
Mg 1350
Temp 78
PO4 12 to 35 ppb (Hanna ULR)
NO3 around 5
pH 7.8
Light 2x Kessil A80
Does anybody have suggestions what I could do to get coralline going? Please don't say seeding, I already scrubbed snails and got 2 rocks covered in coralline. Those coralline only bleached a little when I put them in, but now they are recovered and evenly purple. They just won't spread.
Thank you.