Getting that color??

[beeker]

Remember i only dose Vodka to my tank 2 days a week, 7 drops each time assuming that 1 drop of Vodka covers 30g of water

With everyday Vodka dosing you can run into issue's, so be careful, i noticed after a month of dosing 1 drop a day on my BC29g my sps were needing a lot more food and some even stned/rtned from the dosing

on my 200g i dose only 2 days a week but 7 drops on those 2 days, so far it's been netting good results without any of the negatives i have experienced in the past

for the last week i've dosed 1 drop of aminos with no noticeable results, so yesterday i upped it to 2 drops and i will dose this for the next week or two until i notice a positive or negative and then i'll either up it or back off, just wasn't sure myself if i should drop as much Aminos as i am with the Vodka, but time will tell

 

[crsaz]

I would suggest adding a couple fish to up the bio-load, maybe some anthias since they are heavy feeders. How often, what and how much are you feeding?

in my 57 gal I dose 5ml of vodka per day, I also feed heavily. my dailiny feeding include the folowing. 1 whole sheet of nori(half in the morning half at night) my frozen mix consists of roughly a 1.5"x2" chunk of mysis with 2-3 cubes of angel/buterfly formula, a small chunk of nutramar ova,and a 1"x1" chunk of brine, I the add about 3-5 drops of selco and or garlic, I mix this up in the morning before I go to work and feed them once before I got then I but the rest of the mix in the fridge and feed it throught the night when I get home(3-6X) + pellets and flake a few times. now of course your mix and portions would vary and I would consider my tank heavily stocked(10 fish), but thats to give you an idea of how much I am putting in nutrient wise.

remember you cant continue to export nutrients without putting some in.:beer:

 

[Big E]

I dont think there are many secrets to getting good color. Managing nutrient import/export, good flow, strong lighting, regular water change schedule. IMO I think a major contributor to good color are mounting the SPS to a fixed location. Dont move them around frequently or leave them on a plug that lets them sway around from current in the tank. Its almost as if the coral knows it hasnt been mounted. Give your SPS stability and they will show you love

I agree 100%.............no need for all those additives mentioned in other posts.

 

[dragonland08]

95accord - Some really good advice, could explain why my garf's isn't as purple in my new system. Was doing more lugols in my old system.

Use of amino acids (brightwell, warner marine, coral accel) seemed to add a boost to coloration in my tank, especially pinks.

 

[allsps40]

Some reef systems do need additives to help growth and color. I find that it all depends on the salt you use. I used to use Pro Reef or HW Reefer and only needed to does 2 part and had great color. Now that I use Reef Crystal salt colors need a boost. I thing I am going to cut the vodka down as beeker said. I dont think my zenia likes it, cca is still going strong and turning brown. But all SPS seem to be doing very well.

 

[beeker]

i just noticed my sps corals skin started to look concrete/hard looking, not smooth like a typically sps corals skin looks

thats when i was dosing the Vodka daily, at that time i was also upping my feeding and dosing Elo's aminos everyday i was dosing the Vodka

At the 2 month mark i decided to move from 1 drop of vodka to 2 and after about 3 weeks at 2 drops i started to notice my corals were looking concrete and hard

This caused me to rethink Vodka's use

To a degree i believe Vodka can reach a point of saturation where it's positive effects start to turn into negatives (IE: SYN/RTN cyano and corals starving)



it's the main reason why i only dose it 2 days a week now

Dosing 2 days a week allows me to get the positives without the fear of it reaching saturation and beccoming negative

if your sps's skin ever looks "Off" or concrete/hard and not smooth, make sure you cut back on dosing and feed more, corals at this point are showing signs of too low nutrients and start to decline, if i didn't look at every single coral in my tank everyday of the week i wouldn't have been able to observe this or come to this conclusion

 

[allsps40]

My fish load is 2 clowns, 1 yellow tang, 1 bleny (cant remeber the name), 1 six line wrasse, and a blue yellow tail damsel in a 50 gallon system.
I feed a mixed food of, mysis, brine, clams, Marine Cuisine, Algae Feast and Cyclopeez as a frozen food about 2-3 times a week now and Prime Reef/Formula2 flakes 4-5 times a week. Once daily feedings.

 

[Alex T.]

allsps40,

Be very careful with the vodka. As others have posted, it can be an sps destroyer. If I personally already had no nitrates or phosphates measurable, I'd probably start feeding more and getting my nitrates in the detectable range. I noticed some chaeto in your fuge. If it starts to die off and melt away...back off.

People that run ULNS systems dose a whole lot of nitrogen back into the tank with reef snow, zooplankton and amino acids and whatever else is the supplement of the day. When you reach ULNS with vodka, the absolute must is to cut dosing in half. You may be on the road to some heartache. I'm speaking from experience here. I had beautiful, mature colonies of sps with gorgeous coloration. I didn't cut my dose in half in time and colors started to pale. I started feeding a lot more heavily, stopped dosing and everything from an algae outbreak to alkalinity swings and coral and clam deaths ensued. I have since grown wiser to the ULNS system and keep my nitrates between 1 and 5.

I've used Mark Poletti and Keith Berkelheimer's tanks of the month as examples before, and they're darn good ones. Mark and Keith's nitrates hover around 5 and 1 respectively, and coloration and growth rivals any ULNS system you'll find on the net. It's easier/cheaper to maintain, and provides corals with an easy to sustain food source. I've read the articles of people saying that sps corals need food, not just fish poop. But quite honestly, you're never going to rival the amount of planktonic food they see in the wild without crashing your system. Plus, if the same means can be achieved with a less costly and sustainable method, then to me that method is more efficient if results are equal. We have to find other means that are not just possible, but affordable. So, always keeping the tank a little "dirty" is a smarter and easier route than attempting the ULNS, high maintenance system. Again, this is just my opinion, and the route I've taken this time. Your fish can be fed, and water changes can take care of stability too. i also notice your sps are not only pale, but slightly "thin". I noticed this in a friend's tank a few years back. His flow was modest to say the least. He gave me a frag of pink birdsnest that was so brittle it almost crumbled away in his hands when he tried to glue it to a plug. After two solid years in my tank it's 10 times thicker than it ever was in his tank. One reason my corals took on a more robust growth form was because of the flow. I have 4 Vortech MP40's in a 6 foot 150 gallon tank. Corals grow fatter and more robust/healthy looking from more flow. This could also be a culprit in your system. Not only is there not a lot for them to eat, but there may not be enough flow bringing what little food is available to them and flushing the toxins and wastes away. Just some food for thought. Things can look great at the beginning of vodka dosing, and then take a horrible turn. I only wish someone warned me of the caveats before I tried the vodka method.

I'll keep it in the liquor cabinet. Just my .02

 

[allsps40]

Some of my sps are thin but all are strong branches. It takes a good firm bump to make frags even on the big birds nest. Yeah I am cutting back on the vodka only going to dose twice a week 2 drops, and have slowly increased my fish load from 3 to 6 fish. Chaeto is still alive and well just has slowed growth. I have alot of water flow in the tank, 2700 gph total flow.

 

[allsps40]

Last night I also removed all effected sand (about 5 lbs) with CCA on it. Put it all in a 5 gallon bucket, and put boiling water in and rinsed. Did this 3 times to kill off and CCA that was on the sand. I also clean most of the CCA in my fuge out, hard to get it all without disturbing the DSB in the fuge. All of this required 15 gallon of water so I got my yearly big water change and cleaned up the CCA. After another good rinse I will be putting the sand back in the tank. Any thoughts on this? Should I wait? I did sterilize the sand 3 times and rinsed very well.

 

[beeker]

As long as the sand doesen't smell bad or rotten you should be ok to add it back to the system

sounds good man, you will see an effect from just dosing 2 days a week

i never test my tank for nitrate or phosphate, i just started dosing one day because i heard of all the hype, and from personal experience Vodka does work

but also from personal experience i will say that you can get awesome results from not dosing it everyday cause 2 months of daily dosing i started to get some negative results, but dosing 2 days a week allows you keep enough food in the water collum from starving anything but the growth of sps will still be increased just by the Vodka being added

 

[Alex T.]

I don't doubt that vodka works. I know it does. It's just a fine line between nuking everything and being able to sustain a ulns.

 

[davez104]

Allsps40, are you sure that is an algae and not cyanobacteria? The reason I ask is that I found myself in a very similar situation to you, measuring 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate but having cyano growing rapidly. I assumed that the cyano needed high nutrients to grow, so disregarded the test results and took steps to reduce the apparent nutrients. The end result was a tank full of dead SPS from starvation. In my case I used NP Biopellets to try to reduce the nutrients. It took four days for the corals to start to STN, from there I was unable to halt the decline.

So just be careful with what you are doing and be 110% sure it is the correct solution.

Cheers,
Dave.

 

[allsps40]

^ yep I am sure it is not cyano. This stuff is fluffy and grows in thick patches. I have fought cyano in the past more than once on a few different tanks.
Here are some pics I took today after the big cleaning. Missed some of the CCA need to get that out soon before it takes over again.
the same spot on the sand as before, also got the blenny in there to

new milli fresh off the frag rack

getting a nice pink with and without flash to get colors

these 2 are starting to look nice again

was sold to me as a blue cap but was green then a dull green, to the eye it may be getting some purple

FTS

I would say that I am starting to get that color

 

[beeker]

Your tank looks pretty white allsps

What type of lighting do you use? what type of bulb/bulbs do you use

IMO if your running a MH setup Pheonix 14k's or Radium 20ks bring out the best color, some of your corals seems like they are getting too much light and beccoming Pale because of it, it might be time to think about changing to a different spectrum bulb i feel that would help out your color a lot, as well as doing the Vodka dosing

 

[allsps40]

250 watt Phoenix 14k. It looks white in the pics cause the camera is washing them out a bit. Colors are lot better in person but yes most sps are still coloring back up from the bleaching issue. I am trying to find a good setting on my camera to get it to be not so washed out. I switched from 2 150 watt 20ks to 2 Phoenix 150 watt 14ks and had almost everything bleach out. Switched to a 250 watt setup and everything is the better for it. So yes you are right, everything did get to much light about 2 months ago and bleached. I will get some pics of the bleaching up so you can see how they looked before, bleached and now.

 

[beeker]

Aw that makes sense now, glad to hear things are doing better for you now hopefully you get the color back in the next month or two with the dosing and stability, remember keeping your Calc Alk and Mag in check as well with the Vodka is very important, try to keep your DKH at around 7-8 with the dosing

 

[allsps40]

Yep I know thanks though. I was having color issues even before the bleaching. I wanted to try Phoenix 14ks to help color plus I really needed to replace the bulbs. They were close to 2 years old and close to a year when I started the tank. So I found that 300 watts was to much for the sps when the bulbs were up to speck. I even tried getting new 20ks and those bleached the corals too. I will be continuing to update this thread as things go as there seem to be people interested and for myself to look back at.

 

[crsaz]

mexican turbos will take care of that asperagopsis.

 

[campos]

mexican turbos will take care of that asperagopsis.

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