looking for the coralline thread

I remember seeing on a thread somewhere on here, a company that makes Coralline discs, and ships them. You scrape the coralline off in the water column...anyone know that company?

 

Usually, coralline doesn't just disappear, but leaves a white, bleached out spot when it dies. That's due to lack of calcium/alk/magnesium.

 

did they have color choices? if so that would be great

thats why i wonder if the hermit crabs are eating it? i always see them picking on the rocks

 

Snails scrape at it a bit. If you have a sea urchin it can eat it.

 

From what I remember seeing, it was purple/pink. There was some catch to it though...why I didn't order. I can't remember now though. Anyone else remember this thread?

 

Nope. The only thing that eats coralline is a sea urchin. Google "Aristotle's lantern"to learn a bit more about their mouth; it's literally the only animal that can eat coralline because of the structure of its mouth.

 

I'm jealous congrats, blue is very nice and quite rare!

I've spent an absurd amount of hours, over many years trying to learn about coralline and still know virtually nothing. This a pretty much summary of everything I've learned LOL.

As to the colors, I've had probably every color and shape except blue, in one tank or another. Red and purple are the most common. Purple, IME seems to like low light. Pink and red seem to adapt better to higher light, but all coraline seems to grow best in moderate to low light. Orange, seems to be coralline that is dying and usually is found in shaded regions, so may be due to too little light. There is also a disease called coralline lethal orange disease (CLOD), but this does not seem to be common in aquariums. Also, there is coralline lethal disease, not sure how common this is. Blue is very rare. Green is said to be common, but some experts seem to question this. Coralline is technically classified as a red algae and a number of experts seem to believe that true green is actually extremely rare or even dosn't exist. Some say the green is the result of coraline becoming overgrown with green micro-algae, or possible a reaction to high nutrients, or just actually a form of non-calcerous encrusting algae.

Coralline does not like exposure to air, this can kill it quick. Some people say flow is important, but no IME. I've had very ow flow lagoon tanks covered in plating pink Lithophyllum coralline and high flow tanks covered in purple/pink coralline, but I have not seen plating in this type of environment. So, maybe has an effect on the specific dominant type.

Magnesium, ca and alkalinity are critical and as long as water quality is good and these are in range, it WILL grow, but can take some time to establish. Once it does get established, it can be a nuisance. Also, it seems to die off if I slack on water changes, but I can only speculate as to why this is. When I was younger and more naive, I tried dosing strontium, iodine etc... none of these seem to help and probably caused more problems as I did not test the actual levels.


There are also structured coralline algae such as Lithophyllum, which can form large plates and structures and Hydrolithon, which forms knobby structures. These are my favorites, but like others not enough is know to come up with a recipe to grow them. I've even imported them from other tanks and used the same water change/dosing routines and have not seen them to take off. To summarize coralline though, newbs want old salts want to give it to the newbs ;D

 

I remember that thread its the one im looking for lol

 

hum? i dont have a urchin. just different snails and hermits, well and shrimp

thanks, funny thing is when i first seen it appear on the rock ( i have mainly branch rock, its on that) i almost scrapped it off. but thought oh its different and left it go. i like the soft pink and soft purple coralline.

 

well m2434 dont be jealous. i noticed the blue i thought was coralline becoming fluffy/soft looking. well i rubbed it . its not coralline its spongy and soft. not sure what it is but pretty just the same. its spreading on the rock.