Coraline algea

[Wayupnorth]

Until about a month ago I was constantly scraping coralline off my glass. My back wall, powerheads and overflow walls were covered in it. Now it has all turned green or else just gone away - the green stuff is hard to scrape but not like coralline that chips off. I am not getting any new growth on my tank walls. I have made 2 changes in my tank in this time. The first was to put my calcium reactor on line and the second was to change my bulbs to Giesemann 13000K (my previous ones were Coralvue 15000K). I still have lots on my live rock and it is not turning green or fading. My water tests at:
Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 5-10
Calcium - 480
Alk. - 3.2 meg/l
Mg. - 1350
Ph - 8.2 - 8.5

Any ideas? Not that I particularly like scraping coralline off my tank walls but I am concerned that soon my rock will go the same route.

Ruth

 

[wrightme43]

Coraline likes lower light levels and blue light. I think it was ed or don that said to take a piece of pvc pipe and roll it to a random spot on the tank every day to make a shadow the coraline will go crazy. Probley when you changed your bulbs the light is brighter and whiter. Also a urchin will usually make coraline spore like crazy.

 

[clayswim]

I agree, it's likely the change in lights that did it. You may see a brief setback of your coralline on the rocks, but in time it will adjust to the new light.

Clayton

 

[Wayupnorth]

The funny thing with the bulbs though is that the appearance is actually more yellow to the eye. I don't have a lux meter or have access to one to measure the actual par. My corals however seem to be doing fine under the new bulbs. Would it help if I changed my pc bulbs to all actinic? I currently have 3X 400W MH and 4 X 65W PC of which 2 are daylight and 2 are actinic.

 

[clayswim]

Eventually the coralline will likely grow back. I think I would change them for all actinic, but only because I like a lot of blue. Your coralline would probably like it as well.

Clayton

 

[Krish]

Yeah, I agree with the guys. Believe it or not, my coralline grew better on my old setup using only 80watt 50/50 lights on my 90 than when I changed to 260w pc's. It eventually started to grow again after the changed, but it took a little while.