Why Does Coraline Algae Love Glass?

KingBlingTX · Oct 18, 2016

I've noticed something strange in my 40g frag tank. I've had lots of coraline algae growth, but's it's only on the glass. I don't see any growing on the rock in the system. I run a bare-bottom in this tank so i'm letting it be covered. However, i'm always scraping off the front, sides, and back.

Any ideas why it prefers the glass so much?

Tahoe61 · Oct 18, 2016

To me it appears that coralline prefers indirect lighting. I always see the fastest growth in the darker areas of my tank.

Reeferdood · Oct 18, 2016

I feel it likes to attach to smooth surfaces first for some reason.. So many answers or opinions on this topic I am sure will follow..

Alfrareef · Oct 18, 2016

I thought they like the smooth and clean surfaces like glass and plastic surfaces (pumps).
When I had brown algae over the glass there were no Coraline in the middle...

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 18, 2016

Coralline prefers plastic (perhaps with proteins and such from the water already attached) over glass for many people.

Where organisms settle depends strongly on the specific surface chemistry, and probably also whether there are organisms already there. Scraping the glass provides an uncolonized surface to attach to. Scientists often chemically treat things like petri dishes, where cells are going to grow attached to the bottom, to make it more attractive for growth. These changes in the surface chemistry make the surfaces more attractive for cell attachment.

Here's a summary:

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/technical-documents/articles/biofiles/evolution-of-cell.html

"Many cells, however, especially primary cell cultures, had difficulty attaching to glass so in 1956 George Gey used rat tail collagen to coat glass surfaces to improve cell attachment and growth. In addition, glass culture vessels require very careful cleaning procedures to ensure detergent residues do not interfere with these and other cellular processes. As a result researchers began experimenting with disposable plastic culture vessels including the first microplates. By the 1960s plastic flasks, dishes and 96 well plates were all available commercially. Most of these vessels were manufactured from polystyrene, a long carbon chain polymer with benzene rings attached to every other carbon. Polystyrene was chosen because it has excellent optical clarity, is easy to mold and can be sterilized by irradiation. However, it also has one significant drawback—it is a very hydrophobic (nonwettable) polymer to which cells have difficulty attaching. For good cell attachment the hydrophobic polystyrene surface must be modified to a more hydrophilic surface. This allows cell attachment proteins (vitronectin and fibronectin) found in the serum containing culture medium to adhere and spread on the vessel bottom providing a better surface for cells to attach. The freshly molded polystyrene surface is treated using either corona discharge under atmospheric conditions or gas-plasma under vacuum. These processes both generate highly energetic oxygen ions which oxidize and graft onto the surface polystyrene chains (Figure 1) so that the surface becomes hydrophilic and negatively charged once medium is added.1-4 By the mid 1970s most researchers were growing their cell cultures in treated polystyrene vessels rather than glass."

Alfrareef · Oct 18, 2016

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Coralline prefers plastic (perhaps with proteins and such from the water already attached) over glass for many people.

Where organisms settle depends strongly on the specific surface chemistry, and probably also whether there are organisms already there. Scraping the glass provides an uncolonized surface to attach to. Scientists often chemically treat things like petri dishes, where cells are going to grow attached to the bottom, to make it more attractive for growth. These changes in the surface chemistry make the surfaces more attractive for cell attachment.

Here's a summary:

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/technical-documents/articles/biofiles/evolution-of-cell.html

"Many cells, however, especially primary cell cultures, had difficulty attaching to glass so in 1956 George Gey used rat tail collagen to coat glass surfaces to improve cell attachment and growth. In addition, glass culture vessels require very careful cleaning procedures to ensure detergent residues do not interfere with these and other cellular processes. As a result researchers began experimenting with disposable plastic culture vessels including the first microplates. By the 1960s plastic flasks, dishes and 96 well plates were all available commercially. Most of these vessels were manufactured from polystyrene, a long carbon chain polymer with benzene rings attached to every other carbon. Polystyrene was chosen because it has excellent optical clarity, is easy to mold and can be sterilized by irradiation. However, it also has one significant drawback—it is a very hydrophobic (nonwettable) polymer to which cells have difficulty attaching. For good cell attachment the hydrophobic polystyrene surface must be modified to a more hydrophilic surface. This allows cell attachment proteins (vitronectin and fibronectin) found in the serum containing culture medium to adhere and spread on the vessel bottom providing a better surface for cells to attach. The freshly molded polystyrene surface is treated using either corona discharge under atmospheric conditions or gas-plasma under vacuum. These processes both generate highly energetic oxygen ions which oxidize and graft onto the surface polystyrene chains (Figure 1) so that the surface becomes hydrophilic and negatively charged once medium is added.1-4 By the mid 1970s most researchers were growing their cell cultures in treated polystyrene vessels rather than glass."