coraline algae recipe?

[Z4]

i just started mmy tank i mean restarted my tank that was leaking and all my live rock died from being on my patio for abt a year.. i need a good recipe for growing coraline in a fresh new cycling tank.. any suggestion.. i even got a piece of live rock to help seed it.. thanx from a rusty hobbyist.

[Instar]

Get a shop light with a good reflector from HD. They have some new electronic ballast ones that have diamond plate reflectors to give more light from that part and they don't get hot like the older kind. Use 2 actinic 03 NO bulbs and leave them on 24/7. Suspend this fixture above the tank, close to the water and without a top or shield of any kind. That means there can't be bubbles and splashing going on to make a salt mess on the lights. Keep the calcium and alkalinity a little up and run a carbon filter. It would help to get a couple scrappings from live coraline out of someone's tank to be sure you have a good diversity of coraline species as well as whatever you are planning to use to give it some life, like live sand, grunge, etc. Coraline will grow but not until after the cycling is under control and the water is pure and stable. A skimmer is not necessary and maybe even less desirable at this stage. After the coraline is going, then start a good skimmer. If you do run a skimmer at first it may remove desirable spores including some of the coraline spores as it cycles. If the live rock is really nasty and the water is really fowl, do a huge water change after all the junk comes out of the rock. No sense in running a light, even the actinic 03, until the rocks and water are pretty clean and the nasty part of the cycling is mostly to completely over. It will just grow diatoms, etc., etc. You are going to have enough of that and hair algae anyway to get through before the tank is stable. As soon as the water is good, get some blue leg hermits and astrea snails. Keeping the nusiance algaes under control will help the coraline grow too because it has clean substrate to colonize. Start a good macro in the refugium if you can. You can sell the HD shop light when you have the amount of coraline going that you want and have your real lights ready to go. That's it for my method, I'm sure you will get dozens more. If you want a picture, just imagine the rocks all covered with coraline. Thats what mine looks like in my new system now and there are no nusiance algaes at this point either. Since my timing was off with the live sand introduction (had trouble getting it at the time), it took me 4 months to get a good growth of coraline this time, but thats about right as far as the earliest good stablility goes anyway, depending on what you aim to keep. Hope it goes well for you and the new set up.

[matt]

Dripping kalk really seems to help with coralline production, I don't know why.

[Z4]

ok ill try drippin the kalk... but i was reading that low light produces the coralline better than using hi intensity light which promotes hair and other unwanted algae?

[Instar]

That's correct, the lights I referred to are low out put and the purple Actinic 03 is the correct spectrum of light to enhance the coraline and inhibit the hair and other unwanted algaes. Not just any blue light, Actinic 03. It is a 420-430 nm and the other blue is a 460nm. True actinic 03 is difficult for some people to see, especially when beside a bright light and looks very dull by comparison. Mike Paletta recommends using a trace of Strontium to help enhance the coraline as well.

[Instar]

No matter what you do, within reason, the hair algae cycle is almost always guarenteed. Think of the nusiance algaes as the preparatory guys, like the corp or engineers. It prepares the tank and is a good breeding ground for pods. You have to have some other types of algae to prepare the rock surfaces for colonization by the more desireable coraline algaes. So rather than go nuts like everyone seems to do over the hair cycle, get some clean up crew early. They'll nip it (literally) before it gets out of hand.

[i_love_pez]

the last tank i started from scratch did not go through a hair algae phase but i did have a nasty phase of brown diatomes invading my sandbed :(

this was during the 1st month cycle.

[Z4]

ill keep all these suggestions in mind and try to get them working in place.. ill let yall know how it turns out.