Health check - looking for coral color increase

[Spar]

Didn't want to derail another persons thread so figured I would start my own health check thread to see about popping up coral color. The advice in the other thread was to focus on keeping up PO4 and NO3 to small manageable amounts. But wanted to give my independent layout of how my tank runs to see if anything else seems out of whack. One thing I have never been overly confident on has been the lighting, but things do grow, so figure it is OK.

Also note, I have made a lot of changes over the last year, mainly reducing rock load, changing out sump, changing from Calc Rx to Dosing... among a few other things. Hence why a health check now is optimal.

Any initial thoughts/questions when looking over the stats below?

Stats:
-450 gallons (tank dimensions 8x3x2.5)
-Alk 8.5, maintained with Soda Ash dripping 24x/day
-Calc 450, maintained with Ca Chloride dripping 24x/day
-Mg 1400, periodic dosing @ 50 or 100ppm to maintain
-PO4 - ranges from 0 to .03ppm
-NO3 - always reads 0 but how do I tell if it is something slightly higher with most testkits being hard to read until 5ppm+?
-Lighting - 4x 250w radium MH bulbs; 2x 160w VHO Super Actinic; 4x 39w T5 ATI bubls (2 coral+ and 2 blue+)
---run MH 6 hours/day 1pm to 7pm
---run T5's & VHO's 11 hours/day 10:30am to 9:30pm
-Carbon - use 1.5 cups Rox .8 24/7, change-out every 2 to 3 weeks
-GFO - 24/7 use whatever the recommended amount comes to and change-out every 4 to 6 weeks
-Refugium - Caulerpa, grows pretty fast, and I don't cut if back very often as prob should I think
-Flow - 2 Dart pumps + 2 MP60's
-Salt - Coralife
-Water changes - 1% auto-daily + around 10% per month
-Fish food - Rod's Food, around dime sized per feeding once/day
-Coral - mostly SPS, get decent growth on some, not so much on others
-Coral food - occasionally, maybe once per week or 2 weeks will throw in some Coral Frenzy or Reef Chili; found a got algae issues if doing more often
-Coralline algae - does not grow fast at all (not that I am complaining all that much about this part...)

 

[ridetheducati]

Looks fine, but a picture of corals would be helpful.

 

[snorvich]

I don't see any issues. Tank height is such that 250 W lights may not penetrate all the way down. For LPS, probably not an issue as most do not require high lighting.

 

[Spar]

thanks both.

Steve, i keep my SPS at mid-to-high spots to avoid that. my LPS does pretty well low down as you pointed out. The piece in the picture below is about 8" below surface.

Here is the best picture I have right now, will take a better picture with a better camera this weekend. the white part is not bleached, just no color. the tips and edges of the base (e.g. new growth) tends to have color. when i bought this piece it was a dark blue color with green polyps.

 

[ridetheducati]

No color = bleached.

 

[Spar]

No color = bleached.

ah. i had thought of bleached as no color + dead. there is still some color to it, just not a lot. is it at least a good sign that new growth has color?

 

[ridetheducati]

The coral is stressed. Lower the coral until the Zooxanthella population increases. You want the coral to brown out. Then move it back into the rock work.

 

[tmz]

Per our pm, I'm here albeit late. I haven't been on line for a few days.
I agree bleached means the coral has depleted levels of zooxanthellae.It's alive and can recover zooxanthellae by growing more or capturing some from the water .( Often folks say bleached to describe white coral skeleton without tissue which is actually dead).
Too much light can cause bleaching since overactive zooxanthellae produce more oxygen than the coral can handle and it expels it .
Alternatively and less likely, not enough zooxanthellae is growing due to a nitrogen or phosphate deficiency. I'd move that coral down into lower light as noted and lighten up on the gfo until PO4 climbed to .02 to .04ppm. I like to see just an almost imperceptible tinge of pink of the salifert NO3 test.

Most of what you are doing is very close to my practices with the exception of the small differences in NO3 and PO4 .
I also use kalk in lieu of the two part . Don't use t5s which can be somewhat intense. I use halides and vho actinic plus some led blues. I brought a friends bleached acro home . It was pure white. Placed it under halides in my frag tank abut 10 inches down and it recovered nice color in abut 6 weeks.Lower light should help it.

Here are a couple of examples of the type of colors you should be close to getting:

 

[Spar]

Thanks Tom. I just hate to break him off and put him lower since he has such a good base growing, but will be interesting to see if he colors up at a lower altitude.

Should I consider backing off my photo period as well?

Re: raising NO3 - proportionally I just don't have many fish so feeding them more makes me nervous of all the leftover food sitting around. I can add in more coral food, but even that doesn't make much of a difference. That is why I was wondering in the other post if doing NO3 may be a reasonable addition to feeding slightly more... used to dose NO3 daily in my freshwater planted tank, worked well with that.

Re: T5's - given it is only 4x39W over 450g's (8x3 floor), think that really makes much of an impact? I had always thought of those as coloration supplement also (color for people to see, not coral color, to clarify). I would be left with the 4x250W MH + 2x160W Super-Actinic VHO if so.

Re: PO4 - i tested the other day after not running GFO for a couple weeks and it was up to .06 ppm. I started running GFO again but will watch the levels. what about cutting my GFO media in half? should I do this regardless IYE?

Re: Refugium - i have been considering moving to Chaeto instead of Caulerpa - think that will make much/any difference in the levels consumed and easy of backing it off? I bet that my fuge is taking out more PO4 than my GFO, and probably eliminating NO3.

 

[Spar]

Also wanted to note that I have a few 'supposed to be green' coral that are up high also that are a little pale. All have fantastic polyp extensions though. My mid-to-low corals all have nice color to them. So probably more indication that I am looking at a lighting issue?

 

[tmz]

6 hours on the MH is about as short as I would go. I run 7 hours
11 on the vho sounds good to me
I might take the t5's down to 9 hours. Not a big deal though.

 

[AugustWest]

Try removing the ROX carbon. I used to use it all the time too and noticed some improvement in colors when I removed it.

 

[tmz]

Re: Refugium - i have been considering moving to Chaeto instead of Caulerpa - think that will make much/any difference in the levels consumed and easy of backing it off? I bet that my fuge is taking out more PO4 than my GFO, and probably eliminating NO3.

Caulerpa outcompetes caheto ,ime,so it might make a small difference. How big is this fuge?

 

[Spar]

whereas i know that a sudden intense GFO and carbon work on a tank can cause issues, does it work vice versa as well? e.g. i plan to cold turkey remove carbon and GFO for a month or so to see if anything improves... is this OK (other than the likelihood of nuisance algae)?

 

[lokii_37]

whereas i know that a sudden intense GFO and carbon work on a tank can cause issues, does it work vice versa as well? e.g. i plan to cold turkey remove carbon and GFO for a month or so to see if anything improves... is this OK (other than the likelihood of nuisance algae)?

It should be fine. Removin gthe GFO and GAC will allow the nutrient levels to slowly rise and give corals time to adjust as levels come up. Where as a when you add large amounts GFO or GAC you are removeing nurients very quickly with little time for the corals to adjust.

 

[tmz]

Stopping the gfo and gac should not cause any major issues. Corals use phophate and nitrogen. I dubt you'll get to high enough levels to do any harm very quickly I'd just observe closely and test pO4 and nitrate along the way.

 

[Spar]

thanks both. my refugium is still intact so figure that will still keep nitrates at bay and phosphates to an extent. nonetheless, i will keep an eye out. hopefully this fixes some of the color issue.

one thing i hadn't mentioned was that about 6-7 months ago i had a KH crash while on vacation and a lot of my coral either died or lost a lot of color from that event. even with the possible low nutrients from over cleansing, a lot of the coral has actually started to make a come back now. will be interesting to see if with these changes it gets even better.

 

[Spar]

It's been a week since i stopped GFO and Carbon... leaving me with only water changes (averages to 1.5% per day) and a refugium with caulerpa to help with PO4 and NO3.

Surprisingly, my PO4 hasn't budged, still sitting pretty at .03ppm, and no signs of NO3. So I guess this means that the GFO was likely way overkill.

No noticeable algae growth either.

I am keeping an eye out on the coral color and growth to see if any improvements.

 

[tmz]

Thanks or the update.

 

[Spar]

I like to see just an almost imperceptible tinge of pink of the salifert NO3 test.

I feel my tank is in such a low bioload situation that I am just not sure how much I need to 'feed' the tank. My total volume, after displacement, is around 400g's +/- 25g's or so. Fish are (probably forgetting something though):
-2x Yellow tang (4-5"/ea)
-Tenneti Tang (5-6")
-Large Naso Tang (6"+)
-Foxface Rabbit (5")
-2 small Clowns (false percs I think)
-Yellow Coris Wrasse (3")
-Chromis (just one @ 2")
-Coral Beauty Angel (3")
-4x Blue/Regal Tang's (3-4"/ea)
-7x Bangaii Cardinals (~2.5"/ea)
-Peacock Mantis in refugium (6")

For a 450g tank, that bioload is pretty small. I do plan on increasing stock, but have been moving really slow at that.

I'm sure it is my Caulerpa eating up NO3 as it gets produced.

How much food (use Rod's Food chunks, in coin size increments as examples) should I be adding on a daily basis? I also supplement with Coral Frenzy and Reef Chili... how much of that?

Would I potentially be a legit candidate for dosing NO3?

I am also still surprised that PO4 is almost non existence in Hanna Checker readings after almost a month of halting GFO. Am still down to solely Caulerpa (refugium) and skimmer, along with daily 1% WC's, with maybe an additional 1% average WC per day for when I do a Tank Transfer Method.