maddmax
New Member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2026
- Messages
- 5
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- tampa bay
- What state or country do you live in
- Florida
Hello everyone! Long time reader, first time poster.
I’m about 5 months into a new tank build. Just about a month through “ugly” phase. Did tons of stuff to speed up cycle. White spots started appearing on my mostly green rocks about a month ago. First, only a few, now they’re everywhere. Internet suggests coralline, but in my experience, the coralline starts out as very small purple dots, not white blotches that looks like everything there has died. What I’m at a loss for is the uniformity. All the spots are almost completely round. Here are a couple of pictures. They seem accelerated since I started Red Sea 4 part complete dosing about a week ago. I did reduce my Red Sea 115w lights from about 80% to 50% a month ago as well. Definitely less overall algae growth, but still covering everything.
No visible anything there as far as I can tell. No spongy material, etc. they’re still slightly fuzzy like the rest of my rocks covered in green algae. They’re just white. Tank parameters below.
On an unrelated note, my phosphates stay high even though nitrites are staying low. Don’t understand why nitrates won’t go down.
Nitrate 20
Nitrite .2
Alkalinity 10.4
Phosphate 0 (was .13 3 days ago. Just did 20% water change and turned on my GFO reactor for 2 days)
PH 8.2
Calcium 428
Magnesium 1410
Salinity 1.026
Ph 8.2
Temp 77.8
I’m about 5 months into a new tank build. Just about a month through “ugly” phase. Did tons of stuff to speed up cycle. White spots started appearing on my mostly green rocks about a month ago. First, only a few, now they’re everywhere. Internet suggests coralline, but in my experience, the coralline starts out as very small purple dots, not white blotches that looks like everything there has died. What I’m at a loss for is the uniformity. All the spots are almost completely round. Here are a couple of pictures. They seem accelerated since I started Red Sea 4 part complete dosing about a week ago. I did reduce my Red Sea 115w lights from about 80% to 50% a month ago as well. Definitely less overall algae growth, but still covering everything.
No visible anything there as far as I can tell. No spongy material, etc. they’re still slightly fuzzy like the rest of my rocks covered in green algae. They’re just white. Tank parameters below.
On an unrelated note, my phosphates stay high even though nitrites are staying low. Don’t understand why nitrates won’t go down.
Nitrate 20
Nitrite .2
Alkalinity 10.4
Phosphate 0 (was .13 3 days ago. Just did 20% water change and turned on my GFO reactor for 2 days)
PH 8.2
Calcium 428
Magnesium 1410
Salinity 1.026
Ph 8.2
Temp 77.8
