[OLDSCHOOL]

coralline alge will not grow in my 220 tank it has been running 2yrs. i have used b-ionic,strontium,iodine,co ral-vite,this works great in my sons tank.I recently started using reef plus and reef complete and stopped the b-ionic and coral vite this works great in my friends 125 gal. tank i have seen no change. Ihave 2 10,000k metal halide bulbs on 8hrs a day,i do 30 gal. water changes once a week my water checks are perfect. what i can keep are fish one green brittle star, snails,blood shrimp,polyps and mushrooms and 500 lbs of live rock.Everything else that i have placed in the tank does not last. i have had salt water fish for 25yrs this is my last attempt to salvage this tank. if anyone could help me please feel free it would be greatly appreciated.

[RyanG]

What are your tank parameters?

ALK:
CAL:
SAL:
etc.

[scerbin]

FWIW, the rock I started with was heavily encrusted with purple coralline and it has spread well for years under pc's and now mh lights.

[greenwolf52]

some people might not agree with me on this, but here goes...try this stuff called purple up. it's actually meant to start coralline growth. that is it's sole purpose. this will boost your calcium levels pretty high so you have to be careful. i tell you what, though. it worked very well for me in a 60 g that i had setup for almost ayear.

[TnTanks]

This may sound quirky, but it appeared to work for me. I bought a pound of corraline encrusted rock and literally broke it apart with a hammer and threw it in my tank when the corraline seemed to take too long on its own to form. Sort of like seeding, I suppose. A local fish shop person suggested it. Also was told about "purple up" but wasnt too sure I wantd to go that route. I am corralined to death and scrape my front glass weekly. My other walls are covered.

[CaseyH]

I have 65 lbs of Fiji live rock in my 46 gal tank and have been really lucky with coraline algae growth. I added just one piece of "premium" rock on top that had pink and red coraline on it (very vivid) and it took off pretty quickly. I also have metal halide lighting, but I use a 14K bulb and have two atinic 03 compact flourescents with timers for a dusk/dawn simulation. Might be worth trying 14K bulbs. Be careful what you wish for though, if it does take off you will be scraping the glass a lot! Good luck!

[CaseyH]

Almost forgot... check your wattage per gallon. I am running 6.2 watts per gallon (8 hours per day). Coraline likes a lot of light.

[glampka]

To get the coralline to grow you need to "seed" it with either rock that already has some on it or crab/snail shells already encrusted. Purple up will help it from there.

[mtfabel]

Get your LFS to scrape some coralline off their tanks and bag it up for you. Take it home and put it in your tank. That should seed it.

[chappy]

i agree get some from your sons tank switch a power head with him
power heads allways seem to get covered first
it really has nothing to due with lighting imho
i had just two 48inch a 50 50 and an atinic
and the stuff just covered my tank and i added no chemicals to help
and i think i read where star fishes eat it so you might want to see iif your green guy is eating it before it spreads