Anyone Find This Strange?

[Rytek]

I have had this tank running for about 14 months and NO coralline!

Paramies' are great. I just dunno!

Any ideas why the utter lack of coralline?

http://i845.photobucket.com/albums/ab17/RytekInc/photo2.jpg

[NothingbutNANO]

Coralline will not just appear on uncultured or bleached rocks. You have to have SOME coralline for it to spread. If you have some, check your magnesium and calcium level. If levels are ok, add a few rocks with good coralline growth. If that still doesn't help out, I have had great success with "Purple Up." Product they sell online or even have seen it at petsmart! Good luck to ya. So your corals have all been there that long? That is super weird.

[cjtice]

Can you list your params? what mey be "great" to you, others may not think so.

I have not had coraline for 4 years thinking that my T5s being overdriven was too much light, NOT THE CASE!

Started topping off with Kalk and and keeping my alk constant, BOOM! Coraline....

I always thought my alk was okay down in the low end of the "good" but I think its more about stability. Also, my CA was always high 200s or 300s. Not good enough.

In this pic, you can see the small spots on the back glass, and I have only been topping off with Kalk for 3 weeks.
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o6/christice8/April%202011%20Tank/_MG_0216.jpg

[Rytek]

Many of the corals are new additions. Some a year old, some new. The rock that the fat leather is on has coralline all over it (came that way) and I have fire and ice zoas in the back letft (not visible here) that came covered as well.

So still no coralline. Like I said params are great. No point in listing what we know to be right. That is all text book.

What else could it be?

[Rytek]

Cal 440
Mg 1250
Alk 9
ph 8.2
sg 1025
po4 0
nh3 0

[NothingbutNANO]

I agree with cjtice. You should list ur params and tank specs. I mean if you are having issues there is something going on with ur tank. cjtice is also right about consistency. If the tank moves around a lot, even with calc and alk levels you can run into lack of growth of corals and coralline. Are many of your corals branching? Creating new stacks, growing? cj you know for sure if coralline REQUIRES the same trace minerals/elements that some corals do? I have never had to dose...but that doesn't mean others wouldn't.

After thought, what kind of fresh water, and salt mix are you using? Type of water, and brand of Salt? What kind of light do you have?

[NothingbutNANO]

Cal 440
Mg 1250
Alk 9
ph 8.2
sg 1025
po4 0
nh3 0

Didn't see. thx. Are your calc and mg lvls stable? Or have they fluctuated?

[Rytek]

[QUOTE=cjtice;18656919]Can you list your params? what mey be "great" to you, others may not think so.

I have not had coraline for 4 years thinking that my T5s being overdriven was too much light, NOT THE CASE!

Started topping off with Kalk and and keeping my alk constant, BOOM! Coraline....

I always thought my alk was okay down in the low end of the "good" but I think its more about stability. Also, my CA was always high 200s or 300s. Not good enough.

In this pic, you can see the small spots on the back glass, and I have only been topping off with Kalk for 3 weeks."
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OKay, interesting. My alk has always been 9 till recently when I raised cal disproportional to the other params. When my cal reached 520 (oops) my DkH went to 5!

Yet this has no bearing on the fact that that only happened two weeks ago but before that it was stable for about 8 months SOLID.

Question, when using kalk how do you add it? Cant it throw other things off? So far I am only using cal additive in powder form (sea chem) and alk buffer (sea chem)

Thank you so much for the help guys!

[ANGRY JOHN]

kalk is added with ro water and dripped into the tank at night or used in an ato. The problem with ato is it causes a larger ph shift day night.

[cjtice]

This may be a good topic for the reef chemistry board.. I am not aware that kalk throws other levels off but im my reading, it does help to bind phosphates which allows the slimmer to remove them more easily.

I use kalk in my ATO now and have the sensors set close enough so that there is a minimal amount topped off at one time. I would say possibly a quart, maybe two. In randys arrival about limewater (I think I read it there) he suggests a maximum dosage of saturated kalk, it works out to be about a half gallon at once for me.

I am currently in the process of recording and charting my daily loss of ALK and Ca with only topping off with Kalk. So far it looks like I use roughly 0.7dkh and 20 ppm Ca per day. Once I have enough data I will start to dose accordingly.

[Giglamesh]

try scraping some coralline off a rock and crushing to a paste then put it into a power head to disperse through the tank thats what i did and have noticeable coralline on my dead rocks after a little over a month.

[frankpayne32]

Consider yourself lucky. Coraline is a PITA. I wish I didn't have to scrape it.

[dsun]

Agree with others, lack of coraline often times is due to low Mag and Kalk. Try to keep it consistently higher for a while.

[Bamm Bamm]

I just saw a few posts up the topping off with kalk thats what I was gonna suggest=)

[Moort82]

I know exactly what your talking about as i have the same problem. I still get coralline on my powerheads and plastic areas but the glass and rocks stays clear. I have monitored all my parameters and they are where they should be. The tank is really mature and i'm not sure why it happens. In the refugium connected to the system, coralline seems to grow but not in the display. You'd think the likely solution is that something is eating it but i don't have anything that will to my knowledge apart from a few asterina stars.