coralline algae question

[rica5tully]

I have a 55-gallon with 130 watts of light (2.5 watts/per gallon). This is 110 watts of power compact white light and 30 watts of regular florescent actinic blue.

Is this enough to grow coralline algae? I'm am on an extremely tight budget. I have a tank full of base rock and I thought of buying a big piece of live rock (to seed the tank) and letting it spread. I can be patient. What do you think?

Do I need to add supplements like Calcium or anything else? I'm wondering if I have enough light on the tank.

Thank you!

[Elmo]

I have a 33g tank with 25 watts of flourescent lighting over it. I've got lots of coralline algae growing. The one thing that I do have is a kalk drip for top-up water.

[rica5tully]

I'm not too familiar with kalk-drips. How do you do that? Do you buy a calcium supplement and drip it in? I don't have a sump, so how would I do that?

So far all I have is dead base rock (I'm on a budget). If I bought fragments of rock (cheap ones) with purple coralline, would that be enough to start the algae in my tank?

Thanks!

[Elmo]

I don't have a sump on this tank either. What I do is I have a gallon jug sitting up on a nearby shelf so that it is at leasts partially hidden. That runs through an IV bag to allow me to easily control the flow. You will have to find a drip rate that is best for you based on the amount of evaporation that you get.

Previous thread on the subject - http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3774

And yes, the coralline from those rock fragments will spread to your base rock.