Microfauna and Live Rock ???

[stingleyman]

Hello everyone. I have seen some amazing pictures of folks tanks on here over the years.. Only thing is, How are some of you getting so much of that beautiful microfuana on your LR. I always have the little feather dusters and stuff,, and plenty of puple shades of coraline. But thats about it. So... can i seed some of that.. is there a way to get all that nice microfauna growth.. If so can someone suggest a certain product or precedure.. Thanks much

[stingleyman]

Anybody?

[scubasteve06]

There is a lot of microfauna on each and every reefers rocks. What exactly do you mean?

[stingleyman]

I know it sounds like a dumb question on the surface... i've had my tank gonig for about 3 years. fairly well established tank.. but looking at some of the pictures on here i notice a lot more "colors" on peoples live rock.. greens and red and so on.. In my tank ints always been pretty much just purple.. coralline. Must be because most of my rock was "base" or "unseeded" Im sure some of what im seeing is different macro and other algae, not just Microfauna.. guess i would just like to see more diversity ya know..dont get me wrong i dont want an algae problem or anything.. just some more "life".

[HanoverFist]

There are a few colors of coralline algae - purple, pink, green, orange. You just need to add that color coralline to your tank via either a seed rock or some scrapings off someone else's rock. I've also heard that certain colors prefer certain lighting, etc.

btw some would kill to only have just purple. I'm looking into how to get the purple to out-compete the green in my new tank. Been scrubbing the purple patches a lot with a denture brush to help it spread faster.

[njudson]

If you are looking to increase diversity in you tank swapping some LR or sand with a local reefer is a good way to accomplish this. Just be careful about introducing pests.