Coralline in a bottle?

flampton · Oct 11, 2020

Cwentz758 said:
Well reading the bottles they all say the bottle itself doesn’t contain coralline. It’s just the spores that help promote the growth of coralline. I used ARC once and didn’t see any change after two months. Eventually found an outdated “Purple Up” bottle did a little of that. I now have coralline growing on everything. BUT I don’t think it was because the bottles. I stabilized my tank got rid of Dinos and now it’s back on the rise. My tank has been established for a few years, I had a coralline die off from moving is why I did all this.

Just a little help here. ARC contains corraline spores. Purple up is aragonite, aka expensive powdered sand. So you're purple up helped your ARC spores. Please read the ingredients

Cv111 · Oct 11, 2020

Cwentz758 said:
Well reading the bottles they all say the bottle itself doesn’t contain coralline. It’s just the spores that help promote the growth of coralline. I used ARC once and didn’t see any change after two months. Eventually found an outdated “Purple Up” bottle did a little of that. I now have coralline growing on everything. BUT I don’t think it was because the bottles. I stabilized my tank got rid of Dinos and now it’s back on the rise. My tank has been established for a few years, I had a coralline die off from moving is why I did all this.

the spores are coralline and they explicitly say that lol. it for sure works.

they do mention coralline is slow growing and say in 8 weeks you should expect "chicken pox" also they give you conditions under which the spores will stay dormant until your parameters are better. but tbh if you already had coralline and some died it was probs unecessary. i doubt all your coralline died?

michaelabellz · Oct 11, 2020

rmurken said:
Coralline is such a mystery. I don’t recall any anecdotes of the bottled stuff not working, which amazes me. My tank grew so much garbage the first year, I can’t imagine coralline would have taken hold. The best was the pink pompom algae. Tank looked like a plush toy that washed up on the beach.

Okay thanks for the advice!

Pistondog · Oct 11, 2020

cshouston said:
It’s not a gimmick. I don’t understand the haters that always pop up on threads about the bottled coralline spores. You can add a plug or snail with coralline on it and wait a year or so for growth, or you can add the bottled spores and have it in a month. Nothing gimmicky about that.

I think some people don't like spending money on something you get for free, however long it takes.
I got the bottle and coralline started in a few weeks.
Might be tough to start coralline in a tank, 3 weeks old.
The arc bottled spores buys coralline sooner, assuming your water and lighting is ready.

Cv111 · Oct 12, 2020

Pistondog said:
I think some people don't like spending money on something you get for free, however long it takes.
I got the bottle and coralline started in a few weeks.
Might be tough to start coralline in a tank, 3 weeks old.
The arc bottled spores buys coralline sooner, assuming your water and lighting is ready.

i think if you're going with all dry rock it makes sense/works, just because the other way of introducing it is most likely by getting a piece of rock with it and scraping which might introduce other pests that is half of the point (the other being aquascaping options/cost) of dry rock. Snails, etc can bring it in too, but is a bit more of a luck-based thing. I think the quickest way to get coralline is probably bonafide live rock with tons of it already on there (ARC also sells that, or at least used to sell it)

Cell · Oct 12, 2020

ARC products are the only bottled coralline I would try, but you are better off hunting down some snails at your LFS that have some on their shell or a local reefer perhaps.