Corraline and Neon Purple

Coralline and Neon Purple

So last night I was pretty stoked that some of my imported live rock with coralline has some very cool ultra violet spots under my AquaBlue+ T5s. They don't appear to be there tonight though and now I am bummed out. What is going on with that?

 

Hi David
its possible you have some GSP or some other flourescing coral species hitchhiking on the rock, the polyps glow under blue lighting and maybe they where not open the following evening when just blue light was on

did the lights go off at different times on both days?

Steve

 

What I've found is that if you have coraline and kill it, it will glow for a day or two, then stop. I've had this happen several times, most recently about two weeks ago I got a new piece of live rock, soaked it in hot water and when I put it in my tank, the coraline patches glowed bright pink and purple for the first night, then they stopped. Don't know exactly what causes it, but this is my theory.

 

same experience here. dead coralline glows.

 

I have the rotation set to:

Aquablues set to turn on at 10am, then my actinics for 12. all four of those lights then stay on until 10pm. then I have the actinics turn off. the aquablues then turn off at 12am and the leds turn on.

Damn that really sucks. I WANT coralline. I don't have any growing yet. I guess I'll just have to wait longer.

 

Damn man isn't that like too much lighting for a day? Everyone tells me to have the lights on for max of 6-8 hours a day.

 

hey karlen. the majority of people i believe, me being one of them, run actinics for 12 hrs , and their ho's or mh's for about 10. but aalso depends if youve got corals.

 

Oh. well im new to saltwater so im still learning. I have 1 actinic, 1 purple, and 2 white for a 85gal. I turn them on at 3:30pm and turns off at 10:30pm. I have some brown algae growing but the fish eat it. Is that ok?

 

Hmmm while doing research I hit this article up which seems useful:

NORM'S CORALLINE ALGAE PROPAGATION

And this from another forum:

"In terms of water chemistry, coralline requires only a few things different than your fish do. Like corals, they require calcium, magnesium, and some source of carbonate (alkalinity). So keep your parameters stable and in line using good calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium buffers. Keep your chemical parameters as follows:

Calcium: 380-450 ppm

Alkalinity: 2.8-4.3 meq/L, or 8-12 DKH

pH: 8.1-8.3

Magnesium: 1200-1400 ppm.

Also, keep your nutrient levels relatively low. High levels of phosphate are detrimental to coralline algae growth in two ways. First, there is anecdotal evidence that low levels of phosphate are directly inhibitory to coralline algae growth. Second, phosphate contributes to the growth of competing algae, such as hair algae. That algae competes for space, light, and nutrients with the coralline, and even grows directly on top of it. Other algae, such as diatom algae and cyanobacteria, also compete for space and light, so keep your silicates, nitrates and other problem nutrients low.

Surprisingly, many species of coralline algae actually prefer low to moderate light. In many very dimly lit tanks, coralline algae completely overtakes rocks, pumps, and even the back glass. If you have moderate to low lighting, moderate to low light coralline algae species will dominate your tank. So moderate power compact lighting, or VHO lighting should work great for you in a FOWLR tank."

 

I've also noticed that the more deep purple stuff likes bluer light. I seldom see deep purple corraline in tanks with 10,000K lights, more like 20,000K's and/or lots of blue/actinic T5's.