dread240

Ya tank is looking great Dread! The GSP is looking real good. They are filling up nicely in the center again. I bet you are so happy the algae is gone. I have so much algae in my tank...wow! I can't wait for it to go away. I can't wait till ya get ya frag pack and ya update us with pics of them in ya tank.

That stuff growing on the Nepthya rock doesn't look like coralline to me, but you'd have to take a straight on focused shot for me to be sure. It looks like a type of red valonia. Are any of those red bubbles speckled like an easter egg? Now directly behind that rock to the right of the Ricordea is a nice patch of coralline algae. It is purple in color, and matches the contour of the rock. There is a type of plating coralline that looks really neat, but I'd have to dig around to find a picture of that to show you.

yea, I've like actually picked up that piece, and they're kinda like hard plates, that fold in and on themselves over and over. That's about the best I can do with a picture on this cheesey little olympus camera, hell it's only a 3.2MP setup lol

The reason I've considered it a form of coralline is how it's grown with the higher calcium levels in the tank and that it's a hard algae. I guess I should've called it calcerous or whatever it is like those green bubbley ones I get on the left side of the tank too.

The red bubble algae is less round, and more flattened in shape than the green bubble algae. The easiest way to figure out what you have is to remove the rock from the tank and squash a couple of the protuberances. If they smoosh and squirt slimy stuff at you, they're valonia. If they crack and break off, then it's coraline.

Nice, your tank is really shaping up good. And congradulations, you've got a form of algae I've never seen in my tank. That's rare.

Try a few more times to get that picture. Keep your hands steady (use a chair back to steady the camera if you have to), clean the front glass and turn on all the lights. Let's see it once more.

Best shot I could get of it, I even broke a small piece of it off the rock and have it laying in front of me... It honestly kinda feels like a polyp mat, not really slimy, but tough, not particularly squishy.

I looked up the red valonia and it doesn't really look like what I have, but then again this could be a really bad pic of it and mine is the more common... I dunno

and btw, my nepthya is now pissed at me for moving it all around and taking off part of it's home land

That last picture doesn't show up as you hoisted it from RC or Reefkeeping magazine. It is in the valonia family, and to be honest if you enjoy it, keep it. Most people wouldn't put that in their tank, not even a few.

oh and I totally missed it.......

' Now directly behind that rock to the right of the Ricordea is a nice patch of coralline algae. It is purple in color, and matches the contour of the rock.'

That's purps.... one of my hermit crabs actually lol, his entire shell is encrusted in coralline. If you look in the daylight FTS he's hanging on the edge of the middle table piece... coralline on the move!

Learn something new all the time... what are ways to combat it if it starts getting out of control? nothing in the tank seems to touch that at all, and it's taken probably 3 months for it to get that far.

Sad part is one of the most colorful things in my tank right now is apparently bubble algae lol....

It usually appears, takes over for a while, then one day vanishes. (if you're lucky)

Like I said, if you like it, enjoy.

If you go back to the Ricordea picture, you'll see a tiny spot of coralline on the rock in front of it, just to its left. That will spread. If you clean your glass of any coralline build up, those shavings will seed your reef and help encourage it to grow. There is a product called Purple Up (by Caribsea) that also encourages coralline growth.

yea, I'm using purple up already :-P

Yeah, i've been using Purple Up from the start. If you blow all the algae off ALL my rock you can actually see some growing..lol