Pic: "this is getting crowded!" Said one coral to another as an algae named phyto drifted the coral.
Algae grows everywhere on a coral reef despite very low nutrients. Its not unhealthy to have algae, it just means your mimicking a partial ecosystem, and its functioning as it should. Algae are using the food source to grow, instead of corals. More on this below.
The term coral reef comes from an area of the ocean thats been there growing a long, long time.
Corals grew where algae once flourished. But what happened to all the algae that was there before coral? It was eaten.
But one full moon there was a massive spawning event. Millions, if not trillions of fertilized coral eggs were released into the current. Eventually a coral "egg" settled down where the algae was. It began to grow hard calcium carbonate branches, which became nearly industructable. The algae gree back under the coral. But the coral was getting big already and it partially shaded the algae, and it didnt grow much. Not only that but most importantly the coral took the SPACE that the algae used to grow on but now CANT. As soon as a little algae grew below the coral, it was quickly eaten by snails, crabs, fish, sea urchins, etcetera but those snails, crabs, fish and sea urchins didnt eat the coral because it was so hard that it was protected from complete removal if anything could. Eventually all the hard surfaces were covered in corals because nothing could eat it, except a few rare predators.
You see corals are an evolutionary step up from algae, sort of. Corals are too hard for most sea life to eat. Thus corals became a dominant species on the reef, hence the term coral reef.
The same is similar with a cheeta and deer in Africa. Its a predator against herbivor. Predator are stronger, and keeps herbivores under control.
Corals are predators. Like a cheeta they are not preyed upon by much if at all anything. Perhaps a few hyheenas could takle a hurt cheetah but is rare. So cheetas succeed, but they dont outcompete deer (like algae) But They are faster than deer and can trap deers with their claws. (Like coral polyps). You say, "But cheetas are limited in number compared to coral so thats a bad comparison", you say. Ok Lets do the math. How much hair algae on a reef? How much zooplankton/pods? How much corals? Something like 1 million pounds of algaes, 10,000 pounds of zooplankton to 100 pounds of coral. Same is similarly true with cheetas. 1 million pounds of grass, 10,000 deer. And 100 cheetas. These numbers are estimates. This is called an ecosystem. Its a cycle between speed and slowness, where slowness eventually balanced with the speedy things like the soft algae to hard algaes to corals. Soft algae grows very fast, hard algae grows moderately fast, while very hard algaes (like corals) grow very slow. This it took time for corals to form a coral reef, because they were dependant on the herbivores (zooplankton).
So the "algaes" that survived predation on a reef were mostly calcium based ones like helmedia, corraline algae etcetera. While hair algae, turf algae, film algae, diatoms, seagrass, etcetera get eaten by lots of predators because they are easy prey -because they are soft. And tasty.
So whats the story telling us? If you want a coral reef, cover your rocks with frags. Get a few predators to eat the soft algaes. And guess what? Your reef will turn from an algal reef to a coral reef! Space on the reef is in fierce competition. If you keep dead rocks as pets, some form of life will use the SPACE and usually soft algaes will grow on it first like hair algae. Algae show up from the air through spores, thus they dont need to be purchased from the store to be introduced to grow them. But corals dont travel in the air. Thus, we need to plant them. So plant your coral garden to get rid of that algae garden!
This is the solution guys. More corals= less space for algae to grow. Have a look at that pic above again and tell me, is there space for algae to grow?
Hope this helps guys
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feel free to ask any questions guys.
