getting frustrated with SPS losing color and PE

[jedimaster1138]

So I'm a little frustrated with my mixed, albeit SPS dominant, reef. I pick up new Acropora frags - name brand stuff from reputable vendors or frags from friends' colonies with successful, flourishing tanks and colonies, and inevitably days or weeks later, the frags either don't grow (or grow VERY slowly), lose PE, lose color, or most likely, all 3. Occasionally they just die off entirely.

Here's some tank parameters to consider:

120g long. Dual corner overflows, dual returns. Been up since February 2013, some of the rock was brought over from my previous 50g which was up for over a year - and that rock was real pulled from the ocean LR via Live Aquaria.

Speedwave DC 10000 return splits for a chiller
2x MP40's - reefcrest random
~100lbs of Marco Rock and Fiji standard (real live rock)
120lbs of Fiji Pink
Bubble King Double Cone 180 skimmer

Chemistry and the such -
Sg - 1.025 (calibrated refractometer)
Temp right around 78-79, chiller inline that kicks on at 80
Ca - 440 (Red Sea)
Alk ~ 8 (Red Sea)
Mag - 1400 (Red Sea)

pH has been a bit of a problem. It had been bouncing between 7.70 and 7.90. Everyone said don't worry about it, so I didn't. Then I lost a few fish and couldn't figure out what else to blame but pH. Employed a CO2 scrubber that my skimmer breathes through and pH is much more stable now over the past month, generally 7.90 to 8.10 I had previously experiment with kalkwasser in my ATO, but that resulted in wild alkalinity swings due to unpredictable evaporation. Lost at least 2 corals to RTN/STN that I can only blame on the alk swings. Blue Tenius RTN-ed and a very expensive Red Dragon just slowly died. BLAH

Nitrate ~ 4 ppm (Red Sea)
PO4 - .05 (Hanna)

PO4 is managed by GFO in a TLF reactor - output goes into a sock to catch fines.

I recently began running ROX GAC again in a separate reactor. Output of that also goes into a sock.

I had been running a barebottom refugium with chaeto (that was growing) but the chamber became a detritus trap and GHA magnet so I canned that idea and now it's just a chamber with more water volume and I actually put the reactors in there to save space in chamber one given how gigantic the Bubble King is (I love that thing, heh)

I auto-dose BRS 3 part. Each supplement goes in every 6 hours... so 4 doses per day of each, with each ion spaced 2 hours apart to avoid precipitation.

LPS / zoanthids / palythoas all look fine and are reproducing. SPS color/growth/PE - I'd rate them a 2 out of 10 depending on the species. Greens look OK. Some blues. Purples...meh at best. Reds/pinks...awful. Montipora digi's are growing with PE. Stylos, birdnests etc, fine. Acroporas...not so much.

No coral predatory fish, inverts etc. No pests that I can see.

Water changes are performed every other week around 12 gallons or so. Instant Ocean Reef crystals using RO/DI and mixed for nearly 2 weeks. Thinking about increasing that to weekly.

I (probably foolishly) spent some $ on the trace test kit from Red Sea...the I, K, Fe kit. Some were either really low or close to right on. I haven't gotten into dosing the appropriate supplements though. I can't see that making a huge difference. What I just did start in the last week was small doses of Seachem Strontium. I tested for that and found it to be 0. So I'm slowly building up the the recommended dose of liquid Strontium. I know strontium is important to acropora, so this is kinda of my last ditch idea to fix my acros...

I occasionally - twice a week - dose some Red Sea amino acid coral growth additive. Way less than their max dosage amount. I supposed I could increase that too...but...yeah.

At this point...what else is left to blame other than my lights? Lighting is 2x 160w Maxspect Razors, the 16k ones. My typical day consists of a nice slow lighting ramp up and down, peaking at 82% white channel, 99% blue channel. When the white channel is over 60% the tank looks yellow. Fortunately that's when I'm at work. 60-99 is the best viewing, but I run it higher during the day so the SPS get the brightness they need to grow.

If there's something I'm missing, I'd love to hear suggestions before I throw my lights out the window and buy an 8 bulb ATi T5 fixture.

Thanks in advance

A Frustrated Acropora Jedi

 

[YoungREEFA]

I dont know how powerful razors are, but many if not most people with leds never ramp up past 50-70 % on either channel, but some do, you could have too much light, borrow a parmeter

 

[ksicard]

If anything it's your lighting, not the led's to blame but the percentage that they are run at. You need to lower it big time and acclimate corals to the light over time. Every time I add anything to my tank I restart the acclimation process for my LED's, never had an issue with dropping blue % to 50 and increasing 3-5% each week and stopping around 80-90% sometimes I wait two weeks before I bump it up depending on coral reaction to the increased light.

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

i would agree with you burning the coral

 

[tang daddy]

4 things to consider....

When sps go into a new system they have to adjust and usually most will brown out somewhat. Also growth is dependent on if the coral is happy in the new enviroment and sometimes needs time to stabilize. Some frags take off as soon as 2 weeks from being mounted, some take a month to 3 months before they show any growth.

All my frags even new have excellent polyp extension, this is because I dose zeo sps amino. I have found great results dosing this stuff and most have polyps out 10 mins after dosing. I usually dose this before I do a heavy feeding in the tank and see the sps polyps grab frozen cyclopeze from the water Coloumn.

If your coral are lightly coloured it could be because there is not enough nutrients in the tank. You run a good skimmer and with agressive skimming and gfo gac, it could be stripping the water too clean.

Lastly possibly the lighting could be too much for sps especially if they came out of a tank with less intense light. I run t5 now so most if not all sps that come into my tank will dull out abit until they have new growth.

When I made the switch from halides to led I lost all my digitata and plating montis, they couldn't handle the LEDs so you should acclimate them to your light carefully and slowly.

 

[jda]

Drop your whites to 20-25% - they put out too much garbage spectrum in the yellow, red and green range for most deeper water Acropora. Some acropora will never adjust when you crank them up.