Hey everyone,
I went into a LFS yesterday and saw Bali live rock with orange, red, pink coralline algae on it. Is it possible to buy a small piece of rock so I can seed this into my tank? Would it work and how would I do it?

As of right now, only 5-10% of my rock is filled with coralline (probably even less)

Ideas appreciated!

I've found that simply using a good quality reef salt and keeping calcium levels up sufficient for good coralline growth. But ultimately, it's just a matter of time - probably 2-3 months to start seeing some decent growth (depending on tank size and the amount of rock you have of course).

And yes, you can 'seed' your base rock simply by getting a bunch of little pieces of nice liverock and placing it around your tank.

Coralline will eventually spread with good water quality. Besides using live rock with coralline, you can also use some scraped coralline from the glass of an established tank. That helps to introduce more spores.

does purple coralline algae outweigh the other's. For example if i scrape off orange from a bali rock..will orange dominate? Or would it balance...etc?

IME Purple beats the others, I had some teal and green and the purple won.

Good question... I'm not sure. My guess is that it's just the luck of the draw, although all the coralline in my tank is either pink, purple or red... so I dunno about orange.

I've always liked that Bali live rock color with the pinks red orange etc I wanted to achieve this look

Coralline grows coralline, so it wouldn't hurt to add different colors. IME orange grows more orange and so on... but as stated b4 purple will eventually win.

it also depends on the material and flow rate. my acrylic panel is covered in purple coraline algae while some of the rocks arent covered at all. also lighting will help a lot.

different colors grow based on different lighting. purple is by far the most common in our tanks. i usually see red farther down where there is less light intencity.

IMO, if you find orange/dark red I'd get a piece. At least, that's my personal favorite. It starts as small orange patches that fluoresce under actinic lights, and eventually turns dark red, leaving a thin orange border as long as it's growing.

I'd get a piece too for purposes of seeding. The coralline spreads faster when you do, assuming your water params are good of course.

that will work, the thing about different coralline species though is they compete with each other.