bfortune76
New member
I have been in the hobby for over 4 years now. I feel like I have managed to recover from disasters to outbreaks and have learned a lot in the process. I can successfully keep a stable growing reef. But my corals dont or loose their "pop" I will start off with my levels.
Temp 78
Salinity 1.025
Calcium 420
Alkalinity 8.4
Magnesium (haven't took a reading in awhile but it stays around 1300-1400)
No3 unreadable
Po4 unreadable
Temp, ATO, Alk and Calc are all maintained with a controller. I dose several times through the day so at any given time of the day levels are pretty close to the same.
Tank is a 75g with 40g sump probably 150-200 pounds of rock. I have two Gyre XF150's one on each side alternating each hour. Filtration is a filter sock, Reef octopus 150INT skimmer, Turbo aquatics Algae scrubber 11 hours at night, a carbon reactor that runs 24/7 with carbon replacement once a month. Lights are a pair of ORT247 LED's 20/85 white to blue. PAR generalized is 400 at the surface and 130 at the bottom
I feed My one spot foxface, yellow tang, two clowns, and angel fish twice a day, one cube of frozen either home made or store bought and the other feeding is pellets. Every 4 days I turn off the skimmer for 6 hours and broadcast feed zooplankton.
I feel like I am doing everything right but coral colors are just not there. I will put in a new frag and it will look great under the LED's and just kind of fade over time. They still grow, put out feeders, and seem healthy but just dont pop. Everything I have read points to my nutrients being to low. As you can see from my readings both No3 and Po4 do not even register. So I tried dosing 5ppm nitrate and corals freaked out and turned brown so I stopped and they got color back. I recently did a cleaning blowing some detritus around in my tank which caused a huge nitrate spike reading around 20ppm for a week and almost all SPS browned out again. Most have recovered one colony is still recovering. So what am I doing wrong? How can I increase nutrients without 1 browning out coral and 2 causing an outbreak? Without my skimmer and scrubber I get either Green hair Algae or brown hair algae. How can I find the balance?
Here is an example of a coral recently added that started out vibrant that has faded but is still growing.
Temp 78
Salinity 1.025
Calcium 420
Alkalinity 8.4
Magnesium (haven't took a reading in awhile but it stays around 1300-1400)
No3 unreadable
Po4 unreadable
Temp, ATO, Alk and Calc are all maintained with a controller. I dose several times through the day so at any given time of the day levels are pretty close to the same.
Tank is a 75g with 40g sump probably 150-200 pounds of rock. I have two Gyre XF150's one on each side alternating each hour. Filtration is a filter sock, Reef octopus 150INT skimmer, Turbo aquatics Algae scrubber 11 hours at night, a carbon reactor that runs 24/7 with carbon replacement once a month. Lights are a pair of ORT247 LED's 20/85 white to blue. PAR generalized is 400 at the surface and 130 at the bottom
I feed My one spot foxface, yellow tang, two clowns, and angel fish twice a day, one cube of frozen either home made or store bought and the other feeding is pellets. Every 4 days I turn off the skimmer for 6 hours and broadcast feed zooplankton.
I feel like I am doing everything right but coral colors are just not there. I will put in a new frag and it will look great under the LED's and just kind of fade over time. They still grow, put out feeders, and seem healthy but just dont pop. Everything I have read points to my nutrients being to low. As you can see from my readings both No3 and Po4 do not even register. So I tried dosing 5ppm nitrate and corals freaked out and turned brown so I stopped and they got color back. I recently did a cleaning blowing some detritus around in my tank which caused a huge nitrate spike reading around 20ppm for a week and almost all SPS browned out again. Most have recovered one colony is still recovering. So what am I doing wrong? How can I increase nutrients without 1 browning out coral and 2 causing an outbreak? Without my skimmer and scrubber I get either Green hair Algae or brown hair algae. How can I find the balance?
Here is an example of a coral recently added that started out vibrant that has faded but is still growing.
