Coraline still declining.

I have 4 different colors of Coraline in my tank and different colors seem to like slightly different light levels ... Pink , Purple ,Yellow are the major colors growing in my reef . there is also some bright orange in small areas that seem to love MH light...

 

Yeah when my tank wash FOWLR my coarline was growing like crazy. Since I have upgraded my lights and reefed my tank out, it has pretty much vanished. It still is in the darker areas but thats about it.

 

Yeah, I have some orange rust colored coraline growing now. I also have what looks like a drab gray coraline that is growing on some dead base rock I added. I put that base rock in months ago and still don't have any pink or purple. Just some gray spots.

 

Well, I would consider the back glass a little darker. It is growing under the sand on the front glass where my clown buried it.

Think is it could be from chemistry, yet it really seemed to take off a couple of months ago. The old stuff started turning white, and now the new stuff on all the glass is turning white.

DOH!

So the stuff on the back glass seemed to take off when I repositioned my power head to the back glass and down the back. Last week I repositioned my PH to the front again. My pump return is all going down the back glass. My return piping is big so I have high flow low pressure. I have to pinch my pump back a bit cause it cavitates. Don't knw if that matters.

 

simplest thing. bump up your Mg to 1600-1800. It won't hurt anything and your coralline will come back. it'll also help keep Ca up(from my experience)

 

I think I'm going to go to BRS, and I have a Mg kit now, so I will get things straight.

 

if you have those tiny hard stars with six legs in your tank that is probably why your coraline is in decline. They are called asterinas some have six legs and some have seven or more legs i believe. The six legged variation is known to eat Coraline, they also eat algae. I work at the lfs and one of our reef tanks has the six legged variation. in that tank i have noticed that if you put live rock in it winds up losing all of the lighter pink colored Coraline, only the darker Coraline does well. The seven leg variation is know for being a coral predator also. so either way i consider these guys bad news for a reef, while on the other hand may be acceptable in FOWLR tanks for keeping coraline down or feeding predatory inverts since the stars reproduce so fast.