Algae on growth tips of corals

[jgoal55]

I have never seen this but I did a water change yesterday and today all my hard corals had the beginnings of some sort of algae on all the white tips (growth tips?)

Any idea what may have caused this? Is it bad?

 

[dannybradley]

Jgoal55;61406 wrote: Any idea what may have caused this? Is it bad?

Unclean source water containing phosphates + NO3 + light = algae. Yeah, it's bad. Test your Nitrates and phosphate and make sure the levels are acceptable. Also, what kind of bulbs do you have and how old are they?

The algae will continue to progress down the coral, if left unchecked. Also, can you describe the algae?

 

[jmaneyapanda]

If you truly do have nuisance algae growing on your growing tips, the tissue is dead, and the skeleton is now being colonized. The priumary cause of this (in my opinion), is alkalinity issues. Check your numbers.

 

[nishant3789]

^ +1

 

[jgoal55]

yeah...my alkalinity was the lowest it had ever been.....I tested all before my water change and here is what i had (last night):

Ca - 420
Kh - 8.5
PH - 7.8
Mag - 1100

After the water change (today):

Ca - 440
Kh - 10.5
PH - 8.2
Mag - 1300

This is what my levels have been at since I started keeping a reef tank....for some reason though Kh and Ph dropped. I noticed because my xenia started acting funny....so I did an immediate water change.


Is there anything I can do to save the corals? Can I frag the tips off?

Thanks for the help.

I'll test for nitrates tomorrow......I dont have a phospahte test though.

 

[wbholwell]

I would vacuum the algae off the tips first, and see if it doesn't rebound. Are we talking about cyano, here?

 

[jessezm]

This happened to me as well at one point. It was only on my SPS that were in direct, lateral flow, so I tried adjusting the flow so it wasn't directly blasting my corals and the algae went away without any other intervention. At the time, my Nitrates and phosphates were undetectable on a Salifert kit, and CA and ALK had been stable.

 

[jgoal55]

as of yesterday all the algae seems to have dissapeared pretty much....it's really weird.....I didn't do anything at all to the corals......oh well....thanks for all the responses and ill kep you guys posted should something change.