Coralline Algae

tmscott89 · Jul 2, 2019

So Id like to get a little more coralline algae growing in my tank to bring out the color. My nitrates have been too high for awhile but I’ve finally got them at a decent level for algae to grow again. My problem is my magnesium is around 1800. I was tempted to start dosing purpletech to increase the growth but I know it also has magnesium in it. My question, even if in short term it raises my magnesium a little higher, will the surplus of coralline algae growing start to lower the level overtime?

LiveWire · Jul 2, 2019

Anytime my level of Mag gets too high I just change some water and it tends to go down to the normal range. That is unless you are using a salt mix that has a mag value of 1800

. I have not used purple up or tech in forever. You can always get some coralline from a fellow reefer to boost it up. Have you looked into the coralline in a bottle? I have heard good things on it. If you want to use what you have I would just change some water to get your mag down and then dose what you need.
https://arcreef.com/product/coralline-algae/

lapin · Jul 2, 2019

The purple tech and purple up are additives and will help if you have low cal, mag ect.... Simple water changes with a good salt will add the same things. Will this help you grow it ? Maybe and maybe not. Its cheap, so throw it in and see.

Tastee · Jul 3, 2019

I run Aquaforest Reef salt and 3 part dosing and my Mg is ~1600. Initially I was concerned about that but a) I saw no issues over 9 months, b) my efforts to reduce it did not work; and c) my post on the forums resulted in quite a few replies telling me not to worry about it, so I now don’t. I think Mg needs to get much higher than 1800 to cause issues.

And I have lots of coralline algae.

rkpetersen · Jul 19, 2019

I don't think those products do much of anything.
If you want more coralline algae, you should add actual coralline algae spores.
Get your nitrates down, calcium and alkalinity up, and then add these (also mentioned above):