Blue live rock

[marktea]

Hey guys. I'm new to the salt game. I started my nano with one large live rock and one small. Large is various shades of blue and a little purple and violet and red on some areas. I actually never thought anything of the blue rock until today. I looked on line and I can't really find anything. Can some one tell my why my rock is this way?

 

[J604]

Don't know about your rock, but you have an awesome setup

 

[Oceanwave45]

Its very pretty, but I haven't seen blue live rock before. Maybe the #reefsquad can help

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Yea, I'd like to see a close up of that.
I've never heard of blue live rock.

 

[Kershaw]

Don’t know about the blue but the other colors are most likely coralline algae.
Or maybe you got real reef rock which is painted purple, maybe they messed up color

 

[marktea]

Thank you guys! Evo 13.5 is a beautiful nice build I recommend it a lot [emoji1]

 

[marktea]

What do you mean by mess up the colors?
And I'll have a few close up for you guys in a little bit. On my way to the store for some frags

 

[jsker]

Looks like decorative rock

 

[Oohkris123]

Awesome... I was some of that blue

 

[Maggie321]

I have heard of people using Rit fabric dye to dye their rock with no problems (I wouldn't do it though) maybe they were going for that and picked the wrong color. Looks cool though.

 

[deedubz]

Pretty rock regardless

 

[Kershaw]

Real reef is a man made rock that they paint too look like coralline. Maybe they have blue color now or messed up when making purple

 

[Reefbuds]

It very well could be some kind of rare blue coraline algae. I've heard of a few rare cases of it

 

[marktea]

Here's some close ups for you guys

That's my leather still pouting at me from a freshwater dip preformed the other day lol.

Wow this is very cool! Thank you everyone for your ideas/input. I think I can rule out it being painted. I got the rock very very blue, guy said it wasn't man made (can't really believe was lfs tell you), but it also had a die off where it turned very pale and has since former back to the colors you are seeing now. I guess it's some kind of rare blue coralline like some guys here are saying

 

[KJ]

Look like sponge.
@Tahoe61

 

[JaimeAdams]

That rock is indeed man made. Its what I think of as almost a porcelain. If you pull it out and hammer/chisel a knob off you will see that is is solid white with barely any internal pore structure. You can even see that in the pictures. The rock is painted/dyed. IT's the rock that you buy already purple for the "instant mature tank look" but obviously the color shades of purple are wrong. I have some of it that I have acid washed and the paint does indeed come off with muriatic acid. Your looks like it simply got a bit faded out/wrong dye mixture applied. I do have blue sponge growth in the coral tanks at work and it could be some sponge growth but it more than likely is just the red portion of the dye mix was diluted when applied to that rock as the purple is a mix of blue and red dyes.

 

[marktea]

What do you make of the die off? The rock got really pale. Also, there a back side against the glass that doesn't receive light that is still rather pale. Can you bounce off that a little?

 

[JaimeAdams]

What do you make of the die off? The rock got really pale. Also, there a back side against the glass that doesn't receive light that is still rather pale. Can you bounce off that a little?

HAs it always been the bluer color? I have some of that stuff that a customer gave us at work and while cleaning up another few hundred pounds of rock today I gave it a bath in bleach. The mild solution of bleach made the rock pretty blue almost as you see in your pics. Also reef tank lighting is pretty blue to begin with which could accentuate the coloration further.

It's pretty bad as far as actual pore structure for biological filtration to take place, but it's a fine base on which to grow coral. I'm not a big fan of the man made rock, but to each their own. I can see a certain type of aesthetic value.

 

[marktea]

I picked the rock up live covered in blue, placed it in new tank and both the blue rock and purple had a major die off. Very very pale. Me being new thought I got ripped off haha. But yeah since then it has come to this color and is still just pale in the back where their is no light
Yeah I have to agree with it not being great for biological filtration. I supplemented with more objects that are porous with surface area in my sump so I'm hoping I'll be ok. Tanks 4 months old my ammonia trates and trites have been at 0 for quite a while so I think I supplemented adequately.
Cleaning off 100 lbs of rock a day!? God bless

 

[marktea]

Oh I also noticed some green patches here and there forming. I tried to scrape it off with my finger nail. Wouldn't budge so I think that's additional coralline?