Curing Dry Rock - Coralline

[DeadPhish]

Hello all.

Great forum.

I am setting up a new tank and will be curing some reef saver. Brute trash cans, heater, pump, etc.

Would I be wasting my money on that Purple Helix stuff? Would I need to use light to grow the coralline? If it even works...

I was just going to rinse the rock off and throw it in the cans, put some saltwater on it, heater, pump and let it run in the dark with the lid on for a few months. Add some starter bacteria and ammonia after a week or so along with my marinepure spheres.

I figured if I could get some growth on the rock while I was curing it, even better.

 

[Coralreefer1]

Hello and welcome to R2R! Best of luck to you here and in your saltwater endeavors.
As for the coralline algae goes, it does need some light and water flow. Other than that calcium, alkalinity and magnesium levels should be ideal and stable.
Coralline algae is easy to grow and comes in various colors from, green to red and pink. I would not worry about it till you get your tank up and running. From that point, all you need is to get a piece of rock or some other hard surface that contains coralline algae on it. It’s as simple as that for growing nice coralline algae. It is an urban legend that unless you have coralline algae in your tank, somewhere, it is difficult to grow it. Having said this however, it’s not difficult to find coralline algae growing on something!
Good luck!

 

[lapin]

Howdy and welcome.

If you want it bad enough it will not grow. If you dont want it, it will cover everything. Murphys Law

 

[DeadPhish]

Very Dude of you.

I dig it.

Sounds like four months in the dark is what the rock is gonna get.

 

[ReefEco]

Hey DeadPhish, you can also check out IPSF.com, which sells coralline starter plates - basically PVC cards covered in live coralline you can use to seed you tank. You get 2-3, I scrape the coralline off one and let it spread in the tank, then put the others in high flow areas of the tank. Bright light will slow coralline growth, but as Coralreefer1 suggested, you do need some light for coralline. Or, often snails and hermits, or coral frags come with some coralline and that is a good way to seed the tank as well, albeit slower. Purple helix stuff sounds interesting...