Coralline Algae vs. Urchins & Asterina

[Patio]

Curios what y'all think.

While I do not seem to have visible typical coralline algae anywhere in my tank, I do have urchins and many many asterina starfish. I used to think- look at me not having to feed alk & cal to coralline algae (pats self on back), its all going to coral instead. But then I realize the starfish and urchins themselves might be using some alk & cal which makes me wonder if they use more or less than if I had coralline growing in the tank rather than them.

Who consumes more cal/alk, coralline vs urchins & asterina? I imagine this is very hard to answer or know for sure but curious what you think.

 

[JVU]

Asterina stars eat coralline algae aggressively. That’s the main reason to control their numbers in my opinion. So Alk/Ca -> coralline -> asterina

 

[MichaelB]

I have corline alage it vanished when asterinas multipled, hasn't started growing again until i had a harlequin shrimp that ate them all. Went two years without any coraline in the tank. They also ate some prized zoas before i got rid of them.

Recommend harlequin shrimp if you have nothing that would prey upon it. Just be prepared to rehome it once job is completed. They only eat starfish nothing else. Extremely effective i might add, i had a few 100 asterinas took 3 months to wipe them out.

 

[Patio]

I like the asterinas I have and am also enjoying not having to deal with coralline algae.

Harlequin are very cool. My long time reefing buddy Pete always kept them so I would get my fix visiting his tank (same with his anemones).

What are some drawbacks to not having coralline? I hear people often say it out competes algae but I currently have a clean up crew that can handle the algae in my tank. Are there other pros to coralline algae?