Coraline Algae

[gaspusher]

Hi, I am fairly new to this hobby, 4 months now, have a question regarding coraline. when i see the reefs in the ocean and purchase live rock from LFS there isn't that much visual coraline which looks natural. Although pictures of tanks I have seen show rocks and sides of aquariums covered in coraline. Can this algae get out of hand and hinder the biological filtration of the live rocks in the tank? can it be controlled?

thank you

[REEFSTOCK]

Any cover will slow down the proccess of transportation. If our objective is to move arobic bacteria waist to anarobic, certianly corline will slow down / prevent that from happening. I like to get rid of as much corline as I can... its not like we could stop it from comming back, lol.

[clownnut]

like i said. if there is a pill will kill all coraline algae i will be first inline to test it out.^_^
Li

[David Grigor]

I'm just the opposite, strong coraline growth to me is a great barometer of your system health ( ie: CA/ALK levels and low phosphates ) and lessens the chances of nuisance algae to take hold.

I welcome the day to scraping off the glass.

The overall effects of coraline on your LR filtration is negligable and I have never considered it ever to be of concern. No way coraline is ever going to completely cover your rocks. If you think about it, exposed parts of the rock to the light where corlaine will develop is just a small fraction of the total rock surface area/pores.

[coralreefer]

yeah, i wouldn't really let worry about it hindering the biological filtration. Bacteria will regenerate and recolonize quickly and probably form biofilms in a matter of days/weeks. Bacteria will colonize, then die, then the space will be taken over by coralline and vice versa.

However, I would try and keep coralline off the glass b/c it tends to look bad IMO, especially if it gets on the front pane. Also, if it covers all of your glass this just increases your demand for Ca and CO3. Better to keep it on the rocks.

[David Grigor]

Me too. I specifically aquascape so that rock never touches the back glass not only to provide better water flow and room for fish to swim freely but also so that I'm able to scrape it off for a nice clean look as well as the front and sides.