Why isn’t coralline growing in my tank?

[lba4590]

My tank is about 7 months old and about 3 months in I started seeing coralline pop up in spots all over the rocks. I seeded the tank with coralline in a bottle and it seemed to work well. Shortly after, I had a massive chrysophyte outbreak that covered everything and seemed to kill off the coralline that was growing. During that phase, I was using dr Tim’s waste away, Microbactor clean, and doing regular water changes and nutrients were always close to 0.

Everything was really clean and looking good (still no coralline) and then I started getting this brown hair algae all over the glass and overflow, not so much on the rocks though. I started using Microbactor Razor and it’s killing off the stuff and my nutrients are going up quickly.

Wondering if anything looks off with my parameters?
Temp 78
Salinity 1.024-5
Alk 7.3
Phos 0.08
Nitrates 6
Cal 430
Mag (not sure)
pH (not sure)
120g with 54g sump

My alk is generally around 8.0 after a water change and drops pretty quickly, so I’ve been dosing All for Reef by hand every day (15ml). Calcium doesn’t drop though. Any red flags?

Edited to add: my 10g frag tank is loaded with coralline and has only been running about 4 months. Don’t check the parameters but water changes use exactly the same water.

 

[KrisReef]

The other algae and micro-growth have outcompeted the coralline in the DT. Once it gets a foothold it will spread same as the frag tank.

The frag tank is shallow with more light?

 

[Jenuvio]

Sounds like you may have inaccurate readings due to the algae and the chemicals your throwing in... like KrisReef mentioned, your algae is outcompeting your coralline. Do you have a heavy bioload? My advise is always be patient and lay low on the chemicals.

 

[lba4590]

The other algae and micro-growth have outcompeted the coralline in the DT. Once it gets a foothold it will spread same as the frag tank.

The frag tank is shallow with more light?

That makes sense, thank you! The frag tank is more shallow but the light isn’t nearly as intense as the one in my DT. It’s a little cheapo kessil knockoff. In my DT I have a reef Breeders photon 50. Definitely more algae in that tank, the frag tank really doesn’t have much I guess for the coralline to compete with.

 

[lba4590]

Sounds like you may have inaccurate readings due to the algae and the chemicals your throwing in... like KrisReef mentioned, your algae is outcompeting your coralline. Do you have a heavy bioload? My advise is always be patient and lay low on the chemicals.

Thanks I think you’re right. Not sure how heavy my bioload is honestly.. I have 12 fish right now and feed REALLY heavily because my nitrates have always been 0 until about 2 weeks ago so I do probably need to cut back now. Hopefully once I get rid of this algae I’ll see some prettier algae take its place lol.

 

[theMeat]

What does coraline compete with algae over?

 

[Jenuvio]

What does coraline compete with algae over?

Real estate.

 

[Alexopora]

Real estate.

+1 If your tank params and lighting are right you can actually observe the coralline algae growing over other algae. Adding on real estate, if you keep hordes of those hitchhiking small limpets you will observe that wherever those limpets proliferate only a certain type of green hard (calcareous) algae remains. It’s possible that the limpet clears off their territory of any undesired algae to cultivate their favourite algae inadvertently controlling what types of algae grows in your tank.