Questions about coralline algae

[Krish]

Yea, I use to use that stuff! Seemed to work pretty good, but back then I never tested my water so I stopped using it and eventually switched to B-Ionic two part alk and calcium and started testing for these things including mag. I see where they mentioned spectrum which could mean a number of things as well as just their opinion on things. In addition, they may just mean that coralline will grow anywhere from 5500k (minimal required spectrum) up - where something with a bit higher kelvin rating may be better suited to promote better growth. Same thing like with salinity/specific gravity levels for example. They may say you can successfully keep SPS corals at 1.023 up - where 1.023 is borderline where they will thrive, but 1.026 is optimum. They also never mentioned intensity which would have been good to see their take on it. I'm still not sold on the idea yet that intensity doesn't matter nor spectrum to some degree. Just too many different types/species/strains of coralline out there that not all grow in the same places which means some have to prefer lower light and others higher. With that said, I could very well have it all wrong which I'm not ashamed to admit. I honestly could care less if I am ever right really. Don't have quite that type of ego or personality . The last thing I do is to prefess to know it all. Just trying to put all the bits and pieces together to understand things better really. Really good discussion though


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[Krish]

K...So I started trying to think a bit deeper on things and I think I just confused myself a hell of a lot more so I may have to throw in the towel on the spectrum part:lol:. So many things to factor in and so much facts I even forgot could play a role. On the intensity, I still think I'll conclude with the fact that some coralline prefers lower light than others. I can't seem to get past that fact with so many different types of coralline out there which grow only under certain conditions. Numerous resources point to it and also, it is displayed in our tanks and in the wild. The spectrum though is what is confusing me a bit. If I understand lighting correctly, any lighting that is used in this saltwater hobby (or sold to the hobbyist) has the blue spectrum I refered to in it to some degree which corals and coralline use for it's growth. I'm thinking probably anything around the 6000K range??? (just an assumption). The higher the kelvin rating, the more blue the bulb looks, but what I forgot to factor in was PAR rating which I'd imagine plays an important role as well. Actinics in the form of pc's, vho's etc don't carry a high PAR rating as would say a 20K XM bulb would so not sure where this all falls into the mix of things so I'm at a crossroad. Maybe someone more experienced could chime in on it. I'm honestly stuck on this one.

 

[returnofsid]

When it comes to lighting spectrum, there are many different species of Coralline Algae. I believe each species is sensitive to different spectrums or Kelvin ratings, of lighting. I think different lighting encourages different species to grow. In our tanks, we typically only have 2 or 3 species of coralline. Sometimes we get lucky and have "accidentally" matched the species with the light, other times, we haven't. This is where people can benefit by introducing different sources of coralline algae, into their tanks. This can be done, simply, with the purchase of a hermit crab, or a small piece of rock, from someone's tank, or scrapings from someone's tank....etc.

 

[Boomer]

I should have answered this yesterday before all the "wrenches" where thrown in :lol:

So, don't anybody get all upset at brief notes

1. That GARF stuff is gibberish nonsense. I do not how many times I have posted on this. Corals DO NOT live in the "Blue" Ocean" but a blue-green or yellow-green ocean, like that produced by a Iwaskia 400 W MH/MV 65K lamp. Just ask any diver or watch any vid and look in the background where the is no camera light or look at aerial views of coral reefs. That blue is in the deep ocean, where all light is adsorbed and the blue is the only light reflected back, which you see. This is the real color of almost all reefs but very shallow reefs.

Here is an example, the reefs are obvious where they are as is the blue-green color.

2. The word Coarlline reminds me of Bristle worms. "That is a feather duster NOT a bristle worm", when in fact a feather duster is a bristle worm. In most reefers minds coralline is a encrusting algae when many are not that at all. They come articulated and nonarticulated corallines.

3. Coraline spores really grab onto those clean spots created by the urchin itself. You bet as they are looking for Fresh carbonate surfaces and many sps do the same thing, often seeking out encrustating red coralline algae to settle on.

4.Purple-Up, mostly more gibberish nonsense, especially it ability to dissolve in seawater which is a joke. It only acts as a fresh surface / Don's # 3 and that is it, other than giving false readings on Alk and at times Ca++ test kit as you are dissolving the fine Aragonite in the reagents. And corallines need Mg++, as they are not made of Aragonite but Hi-Mg-Calcite. Meaning, the obvious, PU is Aragonite not calcite. So, grinding up limestone would more than likely be a better settling "powder" And just to throw in, for ****s and giggles, Hi-Mg Calcite is more soluble that Aragonite.

5. "I'm thinking probably anything around the 6000K range??? (just an assumption). " About it and K's like 15,000, 12,000 o 20,000 is more gibberish. That is what the "reefer" wants to see, not what most corals "see" in the ocean. There is no such thing as a 20K reef. And even a 10K bulb is nowhere close to a reef. This well done piece pretty much speaks for me and itself

Colour Temperature versus Water Depth
ATJ's Marine Aquarium Site - Reference - Colour Temperature versus Water Depth

and this

and

6. Encrustating coralline, which is this is the discussion here, grows in almost any condition. You travel around enough, public aquariums, aquaculture or places like Live-Aquaria you will see it growing in skimmer tubes, Ca++ reactors with just room light. Even in sumps with so-called crappy bulbs, poor K and not much intensity.

 

[Krish]

So I'm pretty much the moron here??? :lol: :rofl:


Thanks for chiming in Boomer. On the last point you made:

6. Encrustating coralline, which is this is the discussion here, grows in almost any condition. You travel around enough, public aquariums, aquaculture or places like Live-Aquaria you will see it growing in skimmer tubes, Ca++ reactors with just room light. Even in sumps with so-called crappy bulbs, poor K and not much intensity

Does this mean there is no such thing as a type/species of coralline (encrusting seeing that is what we have mostly in our tanks) that prefers low light while others prefer more intense lighting (ie. that light intensity doesn't matter)? If so, then would it be safe to say then that changing your lighting from say pc's to MH's and have coralline basically disappear and bleach is simply because it was never really acclimated to the new lights (ie it should be acclimated like corals are?). I had it happen to me and alot of the colors never came back, but rather only one color dominated my tank when I increased lighting. In the picture I posted on top of the coralline article on the homepage was a rock from my tank that had a few different colors on it. All disappeared and basically only purple stayed. Now that I think of it as I type, might have been the fact that I swapped from pc's to dual 250W MH's with 20K XM bulbs. Before too long I swithced to 12K Reeflux then I swithched to 10K XM's for a short time, then went to Phoenix 14k's. Probably confused the coralline almost as bad as I confused myself :lol:. Nonetheless, all of my colors disappeared except purple. Under pc's I had all of the colors. They didn't bleach right away after changing lights as the colors did last for a bit of time, but slowly I just lost it all. Water was top notch too which I tested religiously - OCD.

Thanks again for chimming in!

 

[Boomer]

So I'm pretty much the moron here???

No, not at all, just overly trying to take a simple subject and make it very complicated

Does this mean there is no such thing as a type/species of coralline (encrusting seeing that is what we have mostly in our tanks) that prefers low light while others prefer more intense lighting (ie. that light intensity doesn't matter)?

Of course not but first one needs to know what species it is, which may or may not help. Those that seem to grow everywhere is the red encrustating coralline. Some species may want low, some high and some it does not seem to matter. There is no real data on this and one must go by what works for them. And, just because x works for Bob does not mean that the same x works for Jim the same. Light intensity is probably the key much more so than K. Look at your bulbs then go look up the PAR. You are all over the place. In short, as K increases for the same W intensity decreases. If it was my tank I would be using XM 10K. If I was not concerned about water color so much it would be the bulb I brought to this hobby almost 2 decades ago, the famous Iwaskia 400 W 6500 K, which at least makes corals grow faster than any know bulb to this day. I will admit that "white" light does really show off colors, what many want but such tanks often look artificiality, as they are not "natural" looking as are many corals. Again, it is what the REFER wants. It all reminds me of "amber" sunglasses ( or ski goggles). You look at your red car in natural light with just your eyes and it is nice. Then you put on those sunglasses/goggles and it is like it is candy apple red and more impressive to you. This is what many store do in malls, use enhancement lights, so the colors look richer making you want to buy it. You get it home and take it out of the bag and crap what happen !!!

 

[Boomer]

I forgot

Under pc's I had all of the colors.

What does that tell you ? Light from a MH does no emanate from the bulb like a pc. That means that even if the intensity or PAR was the same the depth penetration is not the same, as the MH are more focused and have what we call "punch". I collect expensive flashlight and it is very easy to see this with a light meter. Think "spot" vs "flood" light. Meaning, a 300 lumen rated flashlight can peg a 500,000 Lux meter at the bulb meter inferface but a 1,200 lumen flash light may not. It is all in the spread and the distance from the bulb. You now move the flashlights 1 m from the bulb and the Lux out put is way different, where the 1,200 unit is showing a much higher Lux value now.

 

[Krish]

Thanks Boomer!

When I had the tank up and running, the 20K XM had the lowest PAR rating of any bulb I ever ran and was a bit too blue for me. I switched to the 12K Reeflux to get a bit more PAR and tone down the blue to find out that the 12K Reeflux looked just as blue although it provided a bit more PAR. I have an old thread here I'll try and dig up where I had the 20K XM on one side of the tank and 12K Reeflux on the otherside to compare and you couldn't see the difference with the naked eye. I said screw it and would go with the 10K XM because back then, it was a great bulb with good PAR (like you mentioned) and I figured pure white would look nice. Popped the bulbs in and I wanted to throw them in the garbage! It wasn't as nice as I thought it would be and also, I could see everything floating in the tank small particles and all! :doubt:. I didn't want supplemental lighting to "blue" it up some so I went with the Phoenix 14K and was finally satisfied. It was a bulb with pretty good PAR and had a nice color to it.

Back to the coralline, I agree with you on over complicating things. I do that alot sometimes! When you have gathered so much different information over the years from reading and what you have experienced sometimes you end up having all this info, but no direction make sense of it all. I agree with you that every tank is different. I preach that here all the time to the newbies like a broken record, but for some reason, I thought coralline wasn't a case like that. I thought it was more of a case like 1+1=2. No way around it.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback. I will try find that picture I posted incase anyone would like to see it seeing I mentioned it (12K reeflux next to a 20K XM). It's an old post of mine so may be hard to find, but I will try.

 

[Krish]

That was like finding a needle in a haystack! Too much to weed through.

First off, while searching Boomer, I came across a thread in 2006 where I was looking for a good crisp white bulb and you suggested the 10K XM (which was how I ended up with it from that thread) and you said it had the best PAR! Still a good bulb after all these years!


http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/f14/crisp-white-10k-16381/



And here is the bulb comparison. As you can see you can't see much of a difference in the photo nor could you in person. Just thought it was cool and also, just a reminder to people that the Kelvin rating of a bulb between the different bulb brands differ in color sometimes. You will see this a lot in automotive lighting like H.I.D's. for eg. You buy a 10K from one company and one from another and they are totally different shades.

Thread photo came from http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/f14/crack-my-bulb-18254/