lack of coraline :-(

[Magickiwi]

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.

[michika]

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.

[Magickiwi]

Originally Posted by michika

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).