When to Purple Up

Im about to begin cycling my 40tall with 60 pounds of sand and 75 pounds of premium live rock. When can or should I start add supplements like Purple Up to my tank? Now or do I wait til the cycling is over? And Is there a better supplement than Purple Up to accelerate the growth of my existing coralline?

 

Time and waterchanges will eventually get you coralline. Do you test your water for the big 3?

 

Just keep water parameters that are good for a reef and you will have good for coralline.


Purple up is useless imo. If you are doing a non coral tank or a soft coral tank, regular water changes will do WAY more for coralline growth than purple up will. If you are going with sps and lps you will need to dose for cal, alk and mag in addition to the water changes.

 

Never. Waste of money. If water changes don't keep your calcium levels up, then dose calcium.

 

+1 to all the above.

Never dose anything for which you can't or don't test.

 

Yea, I hear purple up is useless lol. I have decent coraline growth and I never use purple up. I a lot of SPS and LPS so I dose Cal and Alk... Mag I should dose but I don't because I don't test for it and everything seems fine. I think water changes replenish any Mag used up anyway. Like Mentioned above... Water changes and keep the Cal and Alk at level and you will see decent coralline growth. Also, taking a rock that already has coraline growth on it and scraping a bunch of coralline off back into the tank (turn off skimmer). They will settle and attach and start new growth of coralline where they set. I do this and it helps spread teh coralline.

 

no to purple up. If you have coralline in your tank already, your calcium, mag, and alk are stable, you will have more coralline than you ever wanted. When your tank is up for several years, you will be cursing coralline algea!!

Purple up is useless. If you want to boost your growth, ask one of your friends or your LFS to give you some coralline scrapings. We scrap ours off and bring it in baggies and give it to new customers at the store (inwall does) Then all you have to do is just let them fall in front of the powerhead and there you go. In 2 years you will be scrapping off the glass all the time!

 

I was going to say don't add anything you can't test, but others beat me to this...

+1 to schackmel for the best purple up idea.

 

Sorry to jump in on the op's thread. When you do the scraping you turn off the skimmer or turn off the the return pump too?

 

I would turn the skimmer off for sure... think I would leave the pumps on...