You can see from this image that the green algae continues to slowly recede in favor of the red and pink coralline algae. What caused the abundant red fuzzy algae to die back and be overrun by the green is still something I don’t know, but I have always suspected (hoped!) that it was a temporary cyclical thing. I’ve removed a fair amount of detached algae bits with recent water changes and will remove more in future water changes.

Click for larger image, all images, including the one above.

Right on the front edge of the rock I’ve been watching these bright, almost day-glo, green patches of algae. The image doesn’t do them justice. It looks like paint splatters. As hard as I look I get no sense of depth; the patches lay very flat on the surface, just as if they were painted on. I’ve also been keeping my eye on what looked like a tiny piece of algae with what appears to be a stem thicker than the filaments of the other green algae. It’s finally gotten big enough for me to get a good picture. Only today did I notice that there seems to be two of the stems. My first macroalgae! Hurray!

Here’s a closeup from the same image in which you can see the structure a bit better. “Macro” may be a bit optimistic for this algae because it is very small. Look back at the first image of the whole rock, look to the upper back corner and if you squint and use some imagination you can perhaps see where these small stems are.

But wait there’s more! While snapping pics to see if I could get a better angle on the two bits of algae, seen here in the left circle, the flash illuminated another piece obscured to my eye by the clump of nuisance algae it’s growing up in.

Encouraged by this finding, I took a few random shots of the rock to see if any other new algae showed up. I found this on the front right side of the rock. Of course, it’s too soon to tell what these small algae stems will grow up to be—or even if they are all the same thing. Even though the stems look way too small for macroalgae, I’m encouraged by the appearance of this new plant life. The live rock was added 8 weeks ago today.