Please HELP!!!

[steven11]

i was wondering if anyone could give me some advise. I have a 10gal. nano. there is a tiny osilarous perc, 8 nasaria snails, about ten blue leg hermits, a few mushrooms, metalic green star polips, two types of xenia, and a piece of branching hamer with two heads on it. for equiptment i have a corallife 96watt compact, red sea prism skimmer (i think its for up to 70gal), and an aqua clear mini powerhead. i have only one soft ball size piece of live rock, the rest was live rock before it dried out . i would like to get the rest of the rock covered is coraline algea. i know calcium promotes coraline growth. i was wondering if i put pieces of coraline from someone elses tank in mine, that i would get more growth. if anyone has any advise or sugestions, please let me know. Thanks!
Steven

 

[wrightme43]

Your on the right track. I had a almost identical set up for quite a while. Got tired of doing 1g water changes everyday. LOL
Yep get some coraline, and crush it to powder in the tank. Mg, Ca, and alk are all important to coraline algae.

 

[plack]

In time it will all become covered . Is your Compact light a 50/50 ? they have worked great for what you want i would be carefull in a tank that small about adding anything especially calcium its great to do if you plan on testing often but most likely you'll get all the calcium you need from water changes
Paul

 

[twilliard]

Coraline algae, boy can I tell you about that.
Well first what color are you after? Specific color.
Water movement and light are the key to what you want.
My purple, lavenders grows under verry high flow with intense light.
My yellows, orranges, and off green grow under medium flow with moderate to low light.
My deep reds, maroons (which grows like plate mushrooms up the rock) grow only is dark shaded slow flow areas.
I even get blue to dark blue almost a black but havent realy figured out what is doing it.
This is all in my 55 that I couldnt stop the growth of this stuff until I added my freindly tuxido urchin oh and I dont dose a thing in my tanks and the light was all 10K PC's.
If you ever need any coraline to get you going just hit me up. It is easiest for me to get the purple, pink colors off the glass but act fast cause the tank is being tore down.
Hoped that all helped.

 

[WAFalconer]

When I set up my last tank, I used all base rock with a piece or two of LR to seed the base rock. It took about 3 months for a noticable change in the look of the rock, but after about 6 months you couldn't tell that I used base rock. Give it time, it will grow. Seeding the tank with some coraline from another tank will help too. If you have any growing on the glass, scrape it off. People say that is the way to spread it around the tank.

I would hold off adding any calcium. Your salt mix should provide enough. It can be REAL easy to overdose a small tank.

 

[Krish]

Welcome to RF!!!!!

I wanted the same thing...Coraline! I got some rock and used a knife to scrape it off, shut off my skimmer for about 1-2 hours and dumped it in the tank. Some of my rocks had some really nice coraline growth already so that just spread, but I went bb and wanted it to grow on the bottom so that's why I scraped it and threw it in the tank. I used some stuff called purple up as well at the time which is supposed to promote coraline growth and it did. My water's parameters were pretty good using it, but it seems the new stuff I use now (B-Ionic) which Steve (Wrightme43) uses seems to keep my parameters optimum. Once you have some coraline in your tank, it will grow...

Here are some pics of how it has spread for me and my tank is only 10months old. Well, put it like this, I did a swap from a 90gal to a 75 gal in February so after two months, you can see what has spread over the floor of my tank. This is only 2 months later!!









And heres a shot of one of my rocks. If you want to see more pictures of the tank, you can just click on the link at the bottom of my posts (krish's 75 gal thread) which I have as my signature or there are a few in "my photo gallery link" under my screen name. I wish you the best

 

[WAFalconer]

Krish, is it frowing on the sand ?? lol
Looks really neat !

 

[Krish]

Krish, is it frowing on the sand ?? lol
Looks really neat !

Thanks! It's getting there. Under the new 20K MH's the coraline doesn't show up as well as in the pictures above under a less blue spectrum, but the "shimmer" coming from my new lights makes all the more difference

 

[steven11]

Thanks to all for the advise. i had got some pieces from another tank to seed with. We will see what it does.

Steven

 

[twilliard]

Hey Krish NICE rock!

 

[WAFalconer]

Hey Krish NICE rock!

LOL....before starting in this hobby, I would never have commented on someones nice roks...lol