I have fully recovered from the brown algae outbreak from several weeks ago. Everything seems to be back to normal. Lost all but two of my fish from ick but all in all, I think I was lucky not to have a bigger catastrophe. I have noticed my Coraline algae which was a very dark deep purple has faded a great deal. On the rocks it was getting close to a deep reddish purple, now it is more of a pink . All corals seem to be doing great with some showing an amazing amount of growth in the last month. I'm wondering if this fading is a result of me cutting back my lights drastically during the brownout, or too much light. From what I have read online it could be light shock or any number of things. Anyone have any thoughts on this. Thanks in advance. Jerry
I don't think it's lighting. I've got deep purple coralline in my QT which has lousy lighting. I had the same thing happen that seemed to be related to a fairly sudden change in alkalinity....of course the change in alkalinity could have been related to the coralline not growing.
Yeah David, I think probably during the brown outbreak and getting ich and losing 3 fish had my levels out of whack. Back in November I added a 3rd Orbit Current LED to the system. Seems like that is about the time everything went haywire for a month with the bloom and ich. I don't see any signs of my corals bleaching out so I have been back up to 12 hours lighting now for about a week. I think I'm going to mount my 48" lights to the canopy which will at least get them about 6-8 inches from the surface. Almost afraid to change anything for fear of causing problems, but I guess thats what this hobby is all about, learning curve! This evening is water change, checking levels before and after the change.
Sounds like you have it going the right direction Jerry! Slow and steady wins the race. I constantly have to fight the urge to change multiple things at one time, even if they're small changes. Problem is if something goes wrong and you've changed multiple things it's much harder to figure out which one caused it.
It is probably due to the change in your lighting schedule, additional lighting and your water parameters. Algae outbreaks are generally caused by an increase in unwanted water parameters, specifically phosphates for algae outbreaks. Phosphates inhibit growth in calcium uptaking corals including coralline algae.
Coralline algae has always been pretty elusive for me. My tank just turned 2 years old. There is some finally starting to explode on my lower back glass. I run LED's on pretty high intensity, and I think that might be a factor. But it could be other things like phosphates or something too.
