Controlling coralline algae growth

Viracon13 · Mar 15, 2016

I have a 75 gallon mixed reef, (120G system volume) with lots of SPS/LPS. My system has been running for a little over 2 years now and I've had lots of purple coralline algae since it was up for 6 months. It was great once it completely covered the rocks but then it completely took over the glass. At this point I only scrape the front glass and gave up on the other 3 sides. Even then, I have to scrape it more often than I like; I just hate seeing the coralline all around the perimeter of the glass. Six months back I added a tuxedo urchin in the hopes that it would eat some of the coralline but it hasn't made a dent. I've also tried angling the flow directly at the glass as I've heard it's worked for some people, but no luck in my tank. It still grows rampant. Now that the tank has matured, I have 4 colors of coralline: purple, dark red, dark green, brown. It's the purple that has been around the longest and grows the fastest. Anything I can do to slow down the growth? Any other animal that eats it?

Parameters: 78 F, 8.1 pH, 450 Ca, 9.0 dKH, 1450 Mg, 10ppm Nitrate. Using Red Sea Coral Pro salt

Retro Reefer · Mar 15, 2016

Anything that you can do to reduce the growth will be detrimental to your coral.. Lots of scraping and then frequent tank maintenance to stay on top of it is probably your only option.

_Conway · Mar 15, 2016

Pincushion urchin love coralline

dacianb · Mar 16, 2016

Different urchins seems to love coralline algaes. I had 2 tuxedo in the past and you can really see the clean trace of bare rock / glass when they pass. Just be sure that your corals are well glued as those guys bulldozer everything not well fixed. They are also smaller than other urchins and quite hardy. Now I dont have any, as is a new tank with dried rock - so I have to wait for coraline to spread. But once matured, for sure will get couple of them.