lack of coraline :-(
 

I've been running my reef for a year and am somewhat surprised by the lack of coraline. Calcium and alk are in check. I'm running pellets and halides with led supplementation. Any thoughts?

coraline
 

depends on what's in your tank.something might be eating it(urchins)or using all your calcium

check your phosphate and magnesium levels
Maybe scrape some coraline off of what you have on some of your rock into the water line as this help seeding.

Don,t have any urchins, and according to Elo's, my phosphates are zero.
I think its time for a hanna checker or 2
lower rocks have some coraline, but upper rocks are relatively bare. good thing i have some beautiful Bali live rock to make it looke nice and natural.

Maybe its being breached by high 6500k range lighting,as coraline really grows crazy in the blue spectrum range

Try using Purple Up. Or scratch some of the coralline off ur rock n putting it near power head to spread it

Get an acrylic tank, and the coralline will be sure to find you.... I curse it every time I clean mine. You should not be complaining...

thanks for the tips.

I can't get coraline to grow for anything in my tank. It grows on anything black plastic but not on my rocks etc. Phosphates under .09 according to my Hannah checker. Calc and alk always in the green Etc. Doing 20k bulbs so it isn't the spectrum.

Coraline has a direct link to magnesium; something about how they need to uptake it to balance out the Calcium. Anyways its in the Reefkeeping.com archives if you're curious for the longer read. The short version is though that you might find you get better, more robust, growth when your Magnesium is balanced. That being said, its always good to cultivate mutiple strains of coraline, nothing wrong with a few scrapings here and there from a variety of good sources. I found it took my tank about 8 months before my coraline really started to take off.

I keep my magnesium at optimum levels too. The fellow at Wai's (Wai?) mentioned that magnesium is something I could dose to help my stony corals out so I test and make sure they are up at the high end of recommended. I just bought a strontium supplement too even though I don't think I'd need to dose that. Just waiting for the strontium test to arrive from J&L before I start dosing (as required).

Why would anyone want coraline? I dip everything so it won't grow although It still gets in my tank

I found coraline grows fastest on plastics and the more you clean it off the more it spreads

Personally I don't like it because I'm lazy and don't like cleaning it off glass, other than that there is no downside to having it as far as I know

be careful what u wish for I used to think I never get Coraline and then bang I couldn't keep up with the CAL and the ALk levels. it will come give it time. I have LED for the last 4 months and no coralline. patience patience

mine always grew in places where there was less intense light , lower rocks and shaded areas first . I took some time for it to take off in high light areas .

You should NOT complain. I got 4 tuxedo urchins to fight the coraline plus lots of elbow grease to scrape the glass. It is pretty hard on your Ca and alkalinity levels.
Be careful what you wish for.

Yes, I noticed that, too. And marco rocks for some reason, took longer, too.

+1, 19 months in and you're just now not able to tell the difference between my Marco rocks and my live rock. My black plastic encased over flow boxes however, are so thick with the stuff they're starting to look like columns of live rock.

I've got zero coralline growth on the highest, brightest points of my rocks.