I have noticed in my reading that a lot of SW keepers have problems growing the beneficial and very pretty Coralline Algae. For those who don't know, it is the purple algae that covers live rock in a lot of tanks. I had zero Coralline when I started my SW tank. I bought a piece of live rock from APFP that was just oozing the stuff and it has since spread to all of my rocks, my glass, a big shell in the tank, all over. Lot's of people have issues with it. So, I figured I would post up this little article that helped me.

http://kb.marinedepot.com/article.aspx?id=10274


What are your experiences with Coralline growth? How did you encourage it?

As it states in the article, other algae growth can inhibit coraline algae growth. Many people have this problem sometimes from poor water quality mostly from overfeeding, or the unwanted algae is introduced thru additions of rock or coral with it on it to the tank. Over feeding expecially with foods containing phosphates will cause unwanted algae.

Also anyone keeping stony corals may have problems growing coraline algae. Stony corals use the calcium and alkalinity and magnesium to grow them selves and deplete these minerals from the water. Additives are made to add to the tank to replenish these and if not added correctly will cause the balance of these three levels to be wrong for the growth of coraline algae. They will have problems growing the stony coral too if the levels are not maintained.

In a fish only with live rock tank using a good salt mix and making regular water changes will help maintain these levels and promote coraline algae growth.

On that note...I have so much coraline algae growth, that I have to take the power heads out of my tank every two months and replace them with clean ones and clean them so they dont get clogged up and stop running. I am trying to keep the front glass clean but the back and both sides are covered. I did scrap some off the back glass recently.

Same here. I have to clean my front glass every day. Purple everywhere!