Pink Fusion and Purple Helix are two new products promising to contain ‘Coralline Algae in a Bottle’. Produced by a company called Atlantic Reef Conservation or ARC Reef for short, Coralline Algae in a Bottle is exactly what it sounds like, with millions of living spores of various species of crustose coralline algae.
Coralline algae is a very important part of healthy reef building in nature but our understanding of this broad group in aquariums is woefully lacking. Many years ago when I worked the LFS beat I would produce a ‘coralline soup’ from the pink stuff that was scraped off the glass, and customers used this live mix to seed their tanks with the desirable algae.
But Coralline Algae in a Bottle is way beyond that technique since it includes specifically cultured spores from a “minimum of 7 different species of Purple Magenta, and Lavender coralline algae”, although the precise types are not specified. ARC Reef’s Coralline in a Bottle comes in two forms, Purple Helix which is just the algal spores, and Pink Fusion which also contains nitrifying bacteria to help kickstart the biological filter.
Don’t you dare go confusing Pink Fusion or Purple Helix with coralline boosting products like PurpleUp, ARC Reef’s Coralline Algae in a Bottle are live products that must be used within 14 days of bottling. A single bottle treats 50 gallons and costs less than $20, and reviews from users seem to be positive so far. Testimonials that using this product indeed kickstarted populations of coralline algaes within their reef tanks so we look forward to learning more about this innovative product and testing it out for ourselves. [ARC Reef]
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