seeding

[miked78231]

how big of a piece of rock do i need to seed. i have a friend who has rock with coraline but im not sure on how much i should ask to borrow and for how long.

[C.Mydas]

As much as you can get. Im currently seeding my nano too (I used base rock so it is starch white right now...lol) I brush the rock with a toothbrush and hid the piece of rock in the back of the tank. As for how long...until your rock starts turning purple b/c then you can brush your own rock to get it to spread.

[miked78231]

well theres one rock that has a small piece of purlpe so can i just srcub that piece? how long does it take to show effects after scrubbing

[C.Mydas]

If your rock is white like mine those little purple things aren't coralline. So you would still need to seed. Your results will depend on your calcium levels and lighting. Your not going to find an answer like "3 months"...anywhere.

[LoneStar]

Yeah it is all variable. I'm slowly getting the coraline on the back glass of the tank. Patience young padawan....

[RTDT]

Hey guys, ok I see I'm doing something wrong here. Bought a used tank with all the fixings plus alot of live(dead)rock. it was kept in a box (dry) for about a year. i had the tank running for about 2 weeks but the rock is starting to form a green alge. I know i'm suppose to add some live rock to help it out, but what do i do about the green stuff. Help! and Thanks

[hobogato]

tank is gonna cycle for a while, you will probably have some algae issues. keep doing lots of water changes and run a phosphate scrubber like phosguard or phosban - lots of debate still on what kind is best. if you run phosguard, change it pretty regularly, or you will end up with diatoms.

what do you have for filtration? lights? etc. you can PM me and ill do what i can to help so we don't disrupt mikes thread any more than we already have.

[brewercm]

When I started my last tank (a 75 gallon) it started out with about 75% dead rock. It was very porous like live rock so a great start and added an initial three pieces of LR. The rest of my seeding got done from the corals I brought into the tank. Within about 6 months to a year I had the rock seeded very well along with many critters that made homes out of them.

It really depends on how fast you want things to happen. If you want a good amount of coraline quice buy some nice pieces that already have some nice growth.

[gjuarez]

For some reason I have had great success at growing coraline algae very quickly. What I do is get a rock and scratch some of the coraline off the rock so it can release some spores? I do weekly water changes to replace trace elements too. Alk and cal are always on check. I had it growing all over my pump in just two weeks when I had my nano. Now I am doing the same thing with my cousins tank and its been a month and it has it growing all over tha place already. I also use B Ionic to adjust levels.