what would you do?

[jhale]

I have coraline algae growing everywhere in my tank like crazy.
Except on my rocks. My rocks were from an old folr tank I had set up for about six years. I did not cook the rocks and though they have stopped shedding I have not seen one spec of coraline grow on them.

So what to do? Live with the brown/green colored rocks or start with new rock? This would not be fun or easy to do. There are numerous frags and colonies growing on the rocks now along with tons of sponges and other critters I would hate to loose or kill.

the one thing that might happen is if I get a big enough skimmer and strip the tank of every available nutrient the micro algae coating the rock may die and let the coraline take hold. but then my algae blenny and snails might starve :sigh1:

 

[jackson6745]

I like the skimmer part

 

[nanoreefer22]

John,
Have you tried placing a small coralline covered rock on the main rockwork? That way you might be able to get it to spread directly.
-Kris

 

[jhale]

Rich instead of saying skimmer, from now on I'm just going to call it a Jackson, lol.

like did you see the size of that Jackson at spykes place haha

Kris there are small rocks covered in the stuff that frags are on, they are touching the main rocks. it's like the old rocks just repel the CA. I can't keep up with scrapping the CA off the glass though.

 

[nanoreefer22]

like did you see the size of that Jackson at spykes place haha

LMAOO!! Now that just sounds funny...

 

[Tonyscoots84]

hehe lolz umm jhale did you try to scrap the coraline off and place that on the rock work, if possible. i guess thats worth a shot.

 

[Deanos]

hehe lolz umm jhale did you try to scrap the coraline off and place that on the rock work, if possible.

LMAO...glue coralline directly onto the rocks :lol:

Jon's New Rock:

 

[NYPDFrogman]

aside from astetics it's really not a problem as coraline builds on LR the rock is no longer porus thus losing some of it's filtering ability. Jon as long as the corals are healthy I wouldnt worry let the snails and critters munch.

get a bristletooth tang to help out
JMHO

I would have answered this post soone but I was cleaning the collection cup on my "jackson"

 

[Tonyscoots84]

deanos i never tried it but figured hey wat the hell. i no some people take coraline from other members and i guess dump it in there tank.. again i dunno neva did that never had that problem i got coraline growing everywhere.

 

[ShaunW]

I think patience is the key here. Coraline takes much longer to grow on rock than plastic or glass. I think that eventually your rock will become covered with coraline, your just going to have to wait little while longer than you seem willing to do. My rock took years for it to become completely covered in coraline.

I don't think your rock is inhibiting coraline growth, IMHO.

 

[herman]

Sraping coraline and placing it on the rock will not help u much. J, if you look on the glass on the left hand side of your tank you will notice that you have two colors on it. Pink and a small amount of green. The coraline will not grow over other algae. This is by no means a scientific fact, just observation.

In your tank you seem to have a lot of turbos but you have little of anyother kind of cleanup crew. Identifying the algae covering the rock I think is what you should do first and get a couple of critters that will target that kind of algae.

I had a similar thing a couple years back and I got a huge cleanup crew from garf. What they send you is extremely diverse. Where the crew cleaned the rock, coraline soon followed. Before long the entire thing got covered quite beautifully, but on the flipside my cleanup crew died off almost entirely because of lack of food.

Honestly, I think you have a beautiful and healthy tank. Your corals look amazing, your mandarin is almost obece and your algae blenny is happy. If you start messing with that great balance you have, you will most likely encounter other problems. Besides, the way your corals are growing, you will not see any rockwork in a year anyway.

 

[jhale]

the way your corals are growing, you will not see any rockwork in a year anyway.

so what I really need to do is just get more frags

I'll be stopping by Rich and Steves place soon