Any tanks out there...

[Ludwigia73]

Running super clean, with no supplemental feedings for their SPS or clams?
I've been having problems with color. I'm doing great as far as growth, no losses in years, if anything things are getting a little crowded. I run XM SE 250w 10000k's, 5 hrs per day, 2x95w actinic 05 7 hrs per day, I do water changes every week, 10-15%, depending on how the skimmer performed that week. I keep my temp at 79 at night to 82 with the lights on. Could that cause any problems with color? I do have a bit of a fishload, but I skim heavily and change water regularly and feed lightly. In a 65 with an abundance of live rock, and a 20 gallon fuge with 12-15 gallons packed with chaetomorpha, I have a med size cinnamon clown, a medium sized sailfin tang (not red sea, the other one), a large mandarin, a 9" engineer goby, a u-bar hawk, and an african flameback angel. I will probably be getting rid of the clown soon. I feed marine flake, with occasional cubes of frozen mysid for supplement. Once a week a pinch of freezedried cyclopeez, but not too much. I also drop in a couple of shrimp pellets about once a week for the engineer goby, but the blood shrimp usually ends up getting one.

Any ideas or further questions?

 

[ReefRockerLive]

What's your water chemistry like? If it's low nutrient then you will need to feed your SPS with amino acids.
Coral Vitalizer or Amino Acid High Concentrate are good items that really help in bringing out colors.

 

[cw150]

My guess is that you're low in essentials like Alk or Calcium. If those readings are normal, maybe your salt isnt replenishing enough iodine or strontium and you should consider supplementing those items.

 

[jackson6745]

List all your system Specs

What kind of colors are you getting on your SPS now?

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

Sounds like you may want to run the lights a little longer as well.

Lets see some water test results as well.

 

[tacocat]

You may want to switch your actinic from PC to T-5 or better yet VHO. Still I suspect low nutrients.

 

[Simbo18]

Maybe you could clarify for me, but I was under the impression that a low nutrient system increased coral color because the organisms relied more on attaining energy from the light rather than the nutrients in the water? Is that wrong?

 

[ReefRockerLive]

I think that it is possible to have discolored corals in a low nutrient system because of a lack of potassium and specific amino acids. Coral color will only increase in a low nutrient system when they are being fed Amino Acids or another kind of food.
HTH

 

[Mchava]

yeah it sound about right. Are your coral light colored or brown. you can use Amino Acids but be verry carefull a little goes along way. But post your parameters and we can go from there

 

[Ludwigia73]

Some of the corals are basically more drab than they should be, but the browning out ones are just turning a brown. The growth tips are there, just not as bright as they should be. By the way, the actinics are VHO. If I'm not mistaken, I mixed up the wattage. It should have been 110w vho x 2.
Ammonia, nitrate, nitrite are 0 or close enough. I drip kalk fairly heavily, and if I don't drip it for a day and test, it's right at 450. While dripping, it's closer to 500.

 

[concept3]

Re: Any tanks out there...

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7205557#post7205557 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Ludwigia73

In a 65 with an abundance of live rock, and a 20 gallon fuge with 12-15 gallons packed with chaetomorpha, I have a med size cinnamon clown, a medium sized sailfin tang (not red sea, the other one), a large mandarin, a 9" engineer goby, a u-bar hawk, and an african flameback angel.

Any ideas or further questions?

If you have a low nutrient system, it's usually hard to keep Chaeto alive. Is your chaeto growing fast, and is it doing well?



I, for one, cannot keep Chaeto if it were to save my life.