Algae growing on cut site from fragged coral

[reefnewbie83177]

Hi All,
I have a nice sps coral colony that has been growing from a small frag for the past 8 months. Anyway, something nipped it a while back, and algae began to grow on it (only the site of the nip). The coral looks really healthy and is growing strong, so I decided to just go ahead and cut the "nip" off and hopefully it would grow back. However, within a day algae started growing on it. Any advice? I know people frag all the time, but how do you keep algae growing. The only thing I can think of is it is right in front of an MP40. Could that be blowing algae spores onto the coral?

Thanks,

[sahin]

Hi All,
I have a nice sps coral colony that has been growing from a small frag for the past 8 months. Anyway, something nipped it a while back, and algae began to grow on it (only the site of the nip). The coral looks really healthy and is growing strong, so I decided to just go ahead and cut the "nip" off and hopefully it would grow back. However, within a day algae started growing on it. Any advice? I know people frag all the time, but how do you keep algae growing. The only thing I can think of is it is right in front of an MP40. Could that be blowing algae spores onto the coral?

Thanks,

I would move it away from the MP40. I have found that if nutrients are even slightly elevated, having a pump blow fairly close to rocks or exposed coral skeleton leads to brown stringy algae to grow.

This exact thing happened in my old nano tank; if my MP10s were close within 4 inches of the rocks or coral skeleton algae would grow. I rescaped slightly.