Coraline Algae, Nuisance?

[daugherty]

my tank has been running for almost 9 years now with ababout 11wpg calcium was at 420 and every thing else is at 0. the coraline on the back of the tank has always been white.

[Altohombre]

11wpg seems high even though I don't know too much about this. Your lights may be bleaching your coraline. I just bought a Nova Extreme Pro T5 and it is in the 5wpg range.

[fatman]

Is that 11 watts per gallon of lighting? You make all my SPS tanks look under lit at 7 to 8 watts per gallon. White coraline exists, as does greens and brown, light blues, just isn't heavily mentioned like the varying shades of red, like pink and the real deep water purple. Nine years continuous reef tank-------congratulations! I haven't had a tank crash for years, but I also haven't stayed in one place that many years since the 80's. It is a great accomplishment. What are the specifics of your tank if you do not mind sharing that. Type of substrate, depth, filtration, circulation, calcium maintenance, general maintenance schedules, progression in methodologies, and stuff. If I wore a hat I would take it off too you. Once again, congratulations and happy reefing!

[daugherty]

11.18wpg to be exact i have a acrylic 50 gal with a corner over flow. my sump holds about 10 gal. my lights are 2 96w 10k pc 1 96w duel actinic 7100 blue and 03 and 1 96w 03 actinic and last 1 175w 14k MH. my substrate is a mix of aragramax(sugar sand) and a coarse sand and is about 4 inches deep. no power heads in the tank my main pump pumps about 700 gph to the tank i think it is a rio hyperflow 15 i think. my calcium is usually about 400 with just water changes and the addition of calcium. the filtration is a wet dry filter but usually filled almost to the top with water. no carbon or anything added. 110 lbs of live rock. i put food in my tank once a week. i only have four fish in it and a couple of corals. about 7 years ago the tank did get hot and all the coral i had died. and i just left the tank running and did not add anything for a couple of years. and i change about 15 gal of water every week. i think a lot of it is luck.

[daugherty]

with that the last couple of years i have been going to school and rasing a family so there has been just money spent on maintaing what i have now but i do have plans of getting some sps in hopes of fraging them and selling them to the pet store here.

[fatman]

At least your luck, if that is what it is, is good luck. If you have not tried fragging yet I think you will probably like it. I find it more than pleasing, more like addictive! I would consider more circulation before putting to much effort into SPS though. Like a closed circulation loop. I find large colonies in the direct path of return nozzles are all the cushioning of flow and velocity I need for a SPS colony tank. The flow is turned into a turbulent flow after hitting large colonies and I have to bounce flow off of glass very little. I run circulation pumps with over sized return piping which I branch to multiple smaller nozzles. In frag only tanks I either bounce laminar flow off the tank walls or put a Gorgonian in the direct path of return lines. I find most Gorgonians love direct flow of a pretty high velocity and that they break the laminar flow into a good turbulent flow before it makes it to the frags.

[daugherty]

is there anything special about fraging them. when i first set up my tank i had 9 or 10 maxijet 1200 in the tank but it just seemed like to much flow so i took them out and now they all just sit in a bucket that i have for all my old crap.

[fatman]

Originally Posted by daugherty

is there anything special about fraging them. when i first set up my tank i had 9 or 10 maxijet 1200 in the tank but it just seemed like to much flow so i took them out and now they all just sit in a bucket that i have for all my old crap.

Check out GARF, Geothermal Aquaculture Research Foundation Home Page for massive amounts of simple directions on fragging. The main thing about fragging is to have enough circulation to supply a fresh supply of water around frags and to have it just strong enough to keep detritus from settling on the frags. In nature fragging happens due to break off from wave action during storms and when ships drag their anchors or for any other reason the fragments are broken off from there mother colonies. Gel super glue is the typical attaching agent for hard coral fragging, which shows the process is not a real delicate process. Picture taking wire cutters and cutting off a finger and gluing the end of the freshly cut bone to a rock, but that a hole coral colony grows from that little finger. No rocket science but a lot of required patience. Success can be measured in portions of an inch growth per month. In time you learn to boost that amount significantly but most people will not do what is necessary to increase the growth radically when it entails things like not keeping fish in a tank system with frags and a lot of circulation, higher temps, intense lighting and supplemental feedings. Most fraggers are happy with consistent growth of just a few frags grown at a time in their regular display tanks.

[daugherty]

i was thinking on using a twentygallon long tank and just use egg crate and that is it with power heads for circ but i did not know if you would need any kind of live rock or some other kind of filter. as that would be the only thing in the tank.