Zero Coraline algae growth - solved

[alaskan84]

Blaster what about the bare bottom tanks we have here that have coralline painted as the carpet and paneling...every once in a while on the top page I'll see one rolling through the pictures and it will be a point to stop by and complement them.

 

it never fails each and every time they are doing only water changes, right when Id be sure it was a dosing of some kind. the number of people getting coralline on just water changes really kind of shocks me.

 

its so common now I have trouble pinpointing it to anything. although I don't doubt the substrate swap affected your tank it makes it hard to draw inference when these guys and gals have coralline plated in whorls and all they did was use tropicmarin salt...frustration...water changes alone didn't work for me, I had to dose C balance to get the plague.

 

without reading through the whole thread...has anyone brought up large dosing of kent tech m? I have two tanks...started with a 28 gallon with a minor bryopsis breakout...dosed marginally with tech m and eliminated the bryopsis, but noticed a massive corraline outbreak and substantial growth since then. I also have a 120 gallon that I started with 1/2 live rock and 1/2 brs pukani and the brs literally grew a bryopsis forest. I dosed about 1 1/2 gallons tech M over a couple weeks and sure enough beat the bryopsis and ended up with some very impressive coralline growth over the white brs rock.

[brandon429]

Ive heard of that effect from magnesium dosing your results are very consistent with what I read about it as a limiting factor in marine aquariums.

 

my c balance has mg in it, maybe thats what's doing the trick...

[HecticDialectics]

No response blasterman?

[Monochrome5]

Also, the fact scientists use tests similar to the Salifert ones kind of add legitimacy to the numbers.

 

No we don't. We use titrations and probes. Test strips and liquid kits are way too unreliable. Good for a rough estimate, sure, but nowhere near accurate. Everything from air quality to accidental contamination can influence them drastically. The liquid kits are better, but still not that wonderfully accurate.

 

 

For what it's worth, this whole thing sounds to me like there just wasn't enough free calcium. I know you've checked and rechecked a million times, but if adding CaCO₃ perked up your plating algae then it just didn't have the calcium it needed. You mentioned the rock was from an old tank. It's likely the algae had gone dormant due to low calcium levels in the previous tank, and spiking the calcium revived it. Most algal cells can form hard cuticles and go dormant for years at a time until nutritional levels are adequate enough to promote growth. Sounds like that's exactly what happened here. Chemistry fixed it, but it was essentially a biological factor. Everyone wins

[HecticDialectics]

No we don't. We use titrations and probes. Test strips and liquid kits are way too unreliable. Good for a rough estimate, sure, but nowhere near accurate. Everything from air quality to accidental contamination can influence them drastically. The liquid kits are better, but still not that wonderfully accurate.

 

 

For what it's worth, this whole thing sounds to me like there just wasn't enough free calcium. I know you've checked and rechecked a million times, but if adding CaCO₃ perked up your plating algae then it just didn't have the calcium it needed. You mentioned the rock was from an old tank. It's likely the algae had gone dormant due to low calcium levels in the previous tank, and spiking the calcium revived it. Most algal cells can form hard cuticles and go dormant for years at a time until nutritional levels are adequate enough to promote growth. Sounds like that's exactly what happened here. Chemistry fixed it, but it was essentially a biological factor. Everyone wins

 

It'd be easier to take what you said seriously if you didn't contradict yourself int he first three sentences of your post.

 

The Salifert calcium kit is an EDTA titration.

 

 

Quite simply, blasterman did NOT spike calcium levels.

[sean151]

The Salifert calcium kit is an EDTA titration.

 

Quite simply, blasterman did NOT spike calcium levels.

That was my point exactly. I've used lab grade titration for nitrogen and phosphorous in streams and lakes for labs before and I was 90% Salifert was also a titration test.

[Monochrome5]

It'd be easier to take what you said seriously if you didn't contradict yourself int he first three sentences of your post.

 

The Salifert calcium kit is an EDTA titration.

 

 

Quite simply, blasterman did NOT spike calcium levels.

 

Haha. Didn't know Salifert was titration. I probably should have looked it up first, eh? I thought he was talking about the generic test kits you can buy at any LFS where you dunk a strip and compare colors.

 

Moral of the story: always do your homework first

[blasterman]

I know you've checked and rechecked a million times, but if adding CaCO3 perked up your plating algae then it just didn't have the calcium it needed.

 

Exactly. The question is, why did the addition of CaCO3 improve things immediately but kalk or calcium additives have *zero* effect? For the record, the local reef store was using a fresh Salifert kit, and tracked my initial attempts of calcium supplimention (and alk) until it was off the scale.

 

Nothing, and I repeat nothing had much of an effect until I added a couple cups of CC to my tank (after I let calcium levels ride back to normal via water changes).

 

In any case, here's what I recently did: Given I can't keep a substrate in my tank for logistical reasons I took a 2gal pitcher, filled it half full of CC, and am running a 50gph power head through it. Kind of like a filter sump, but smaller scale. Given water siphons from the top down it will be really easy to gravel vac any deitrus build up on the top and keep it performing it's purpose.

 

I calculated this will give me the a substrate contact area of about a 20gal tank, and any 'bare bottom' buffering issues should leave the equation.

 

Here's the interesting part. Before adding the subtrate bucket my pH ran about 8.1. After adding the substrate bucket it crashed to 7.4. Livestock and some SPS frags are fine. I thought CC was supposed to buffer your pH up, not down.

[cptbjorn]

This is interesting, but I'm really not buying the part where you say that all the added calcium is getting "bound up" in carbonate. I think it has to be something else, dissolved compounds just don't do that.

[blasterman]

but I'm really not buying the part where you say that all the added calcium is getting "bound up" in carbonate

 

(1) What happens to calcium ions when they contact C02? What happens to carbonate molecules when they clump together in increasingly larger masses?

 

(2) Why has every marine biologist confirmed that elevated C02 levels in surface sea waters are causing devastation in square kilometers of SPS?

[cptbjorn]

(1) What happens to calcium ions when they contact C02?

 

dissolved CO2 and dissolved Ca2+ ions? nothing. in fact they should tend to not even contact because the ions will be much more attracted to the polar water molecules they are surrounded by.

 

What happens to carbonate molecules when they clump together in increasingly larger masses?

 

this should only happen if calcium and carbonate ions are both in solution in excess of what the water can hold at equilibrium. which shouldn't happen in aquaria unless you are dosing too much.

 

(2) Why has every marine biologist confirmed that elevated C02 levels in surface sea waters are causing devastation in square kilometers of SPS?

 

the explanation I have heard is that the dissolved CO2 decreases the pH to the point that some biological processes in the SPS stop working.

[HecticDialectics]

dissolved CO2 and dissolved Ca2+ ions? nothing. in fact they should tend to not even contact because the ions will be much more attracted to the polar water molecules they are surrounded by.

 

 

 

this should only happen if calcium and carbonate ions are both in solution in excess of what the water can hold at equilibrium. which shouldn't happen in aquaria unless you are dosing too much.

 

 

 

the explanation I have heard is that the dissolved CO2 decreases the pH to the point that some biological processes in the SPS stop working.

 

^^ This.

 

 

You're chasing a red herring, blasterman. The reason it helped obviously must be different than the reason you suggest.

[aquaenthusiast]

dissolved CO2 and dissolved Ca2+ ions? nothing. in fact they should tend to not even contact because the ions will be much more attracted to the polar water molecules they are surrounded by.

 

 

 

this should only happen if calcium and carbonate ions are both in solution in excess of what the water can hold at equilibrium. which shouldn't happen in aquaria unless you are dosing too much.

 

 

 

the explanation I have heard is that the dissolved CO2 decreases the pH to the point that some biological processes in the SPS stop working.

exactly.....

[brandon429]

when I read this thread, Im seeing the OP make the claim that crushed coral is the solution to lack of coralline. what about dosing and bare bottom tanks? I know of about 20 on this site, plus my own, chock full of coralline, how does that factor into this hypothesis blaster>

 

not being argumentative, just wondering if you think dosing can take the place of what cc does to liberate ions into the system.

[marinekeeper]

I dont know, but I have the exact same problem as blasterman and have so for the last 4 mos. I am getting me a couple cups of CC and going to try that out.

[brandon429]

doesn't hurt to try thats for sure, post before and after pics if you can.

[nanojg]

Crushed coral will not "buffer" at reef tank ph levels.

[psykobowler]

I am sorry but changing Substrate to crush coral to grow coralline is pure hoax. In fact NO substrate is better than having substrate for coralline growth. Sand and liverock absorbs phosphate and if left long enough, it can be released back to the water inhibiting calcification. You need to have all parameters under control. Ca mg alk at proper levels, minimal or no phosphate and blue light. Use reef crystals and Kalkwasser. Ph also needs to be high and Kalkwasser is the thing to dose.

[brandon429]

To achieve the same effect Ive always used c balanced and recommended it to everyone that ever pm'd me. In 100% of their tanks it caused coralline, just by an alternate means to all the params you just listed. I find zero correlation between sand beds and coralline but this thread is a trip. C balance causes what I would consider to be plague coralline, I had to use a coat hanger to scrape it out of my half gallon pico its on some of my vids

 

its the people like yoshii who get it with only water changes, that's pretty amazing. lots of bare bottomed pico reefs in that forum have a lot of coralline, or at least those not using cc. There was this pic up top about two months ago of a bare bottomed 4 gallon with literally 100% purple floor covering, but it was cleaned sharply off the sides, where only the bottom (pristinely free of detritus and even rocks) shined purple, I told him it was the best coralline growth Id ever seen. After seeing coralline in every tank setup possible, I am sure that it comes down only to seeding and strong ion support in any manner.

If I had a larger tank Id probably use kalk as listed, but its too alkaline for the gallon picos.

[Tenor]

In my experience coralline will growth very slow or not to grow at all if I only using 2 part dosing but when I added magnesium then coralline growing very well. You might try to add extra magnesium.