experience with coralline algae

as the newb i once was i was obsessed with getting coralline growing everywhere in my tank. i introduced many pieces of rock with the algae on them. i dosed with calcium additives and was always fooling with stuff and scraping the coralline off the rocks. it took about 7 months to even start to see any spreading. i then tore that tank down and got a new drilled tank. i put all my stuff in that tank and left things alone with the water chemistry. the only thing i do now is weekly water changes. at about 1 and a half months after this change my back glass and everywhere else i dont magfloat every other day is COVERED in hundreds of purple dots. the best thing to do to get coralline growing is to just water change and leave it be. no expensive purple up etc.

 

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thats great information thanks for the report
with systems that dose and systems that do not dose both featuring plaguing coralline I find it rather amazing like you said for the times where you try to farm it but can't...the stuff is truly finicky. as a secondary follow up id also say that my coralline is in layers, where it may look white and bleached as a tiny spot on the outside but the inside is stark purple, and Ive also heard of other threads where people could only grow the green calcareous kind!

 

i can only grow green! and tiny red specs, but thats it. after 6 months, my rocks are literally GREEN... and its clearly not a hairy algae, its like the rocks themselves are green in color

 

wow. the ONLY color i have is purple. one of my frags has red coralline but that has not spread. the purple has engulfed my powerheads and back glass.

 

I have the same thing as Patrick. One day I noticed that all my rocks that were exposed to the light were a bright green with very small red dots. I have red dots on all of my equipment but nothing on my back glass.

One day....

 

One of the side panels on my tank is completely covered with pink coralline, while the other 3 sides barely have any. And the side that does have the most coralline is the darkest side.

 

it is wierd stuff. the truth of the matter is everybodys tank is different with flow/lighting and placement of things. coralline wont be the same in any tank. from what i have seen it always seems to grow profusely in high flow areas(hence powerheads always being covered). however my back glass is covered in low flow areas to.....