I Just Suck With SPS

[Achilles18]

i find when my salinty drop down to 23 to 21 or alk, this is a huge problem with my tank & some of my sps turned out really brown some as well rtn on the base of colony suck though but within a few weeks able to get mannage all in right param.. i see some life going back in my tank colors slowly comming back polyps going crazy. sometimes over feeding also a bad hobbit for me,it cause me another problem for my tank nitrate will spike ended loosing some of my frag most case those rare sps frag that i specially pick up on our local lps store. i hate to say this i've got achilles in my 110g a school of barlet anthias a pair of parly jawfish a few gobies.

cal: hanna checker: 440ppm
mag: 13400... i don't really pay attention of what i've got for mag ( dose 2x a week kent tech-m)
alk: hanna checker:145
phos: never checked all i care reg, change every 2 month

 

[Dre59]

-dose a teaspoon of sugar everyday and have seen decent results

What kind of sugar do you use?

 

[gp2]

Im not convinced your corals aren't growing. They will encrust first before you will see linear growth and they seem to be encrusting in the pictures

 

[Felixc395]

Im not convinced your corals aren't growing. They will encrust first before you will see linear growth and they seem to be encrusting in the pictures

I wish they were encrusting! But I can easily take them off the rock, they aren't attached quite yet.

As for what sugar I'm using, I'm going to switch to vinegar tomorrow. If I'm dosing two teaspoons of sugar now, and one teaspoon of sugar is equal to 10 ml of vodka, then I would need 20 ml of vodka. Since I'm dosing vinegar, times by eight to get 160 ml of vinegar. Is this correct???

 

[Felixc395]

Oh, I also tested my water parameters yesterday.

Salinity: 1.0255 (might have to bump up .0005 to get back to 1.026)
Phosphate: 0.02 ppm (+ or - .02 ppm)
Alk: 10.5
Calcium: still 520

So at least salinity is getting better and phosphate is down, right?!

 

[allsps40]

Yeah your tank and rock looks really new/young. Give it time and stability.

 

[ChicagoReefOne]

I wish they were encrusting! But I can easily take them off the rock, they aren't attached quite yet.

I think that might be one of the problems right there, if the coral isn't firmly attached to the rock then it won't encrust or grow, instead it can get stressed out and even die. SPS don't like to get moved around and doing so will only slow their growth further. I think of it like moving around trees, they don't like being uprooted and will only really grow when firmly anchored in a spot.

I'd consider carefully where you want long-term placement, keeping in mind growth and shading and color combinations and I would definitely anchor the frags to the rock with super glue or epoxy or whatever method you prefer. That Idaho grape monti will really take off in the right conditions, mine was growing about an inch a month at one point, so I'd especially consider shading issues with that coral. Likewise the Efflo will shade out whatever is below eventually.

 

[Logzor]

My maintenance is:
-about 10 gallon water change every 2 weeks, I like to shoot for 15 gallons really
-dose a teaspoon of sugar everyday and have seen decent results
-run 3 cups of GFO, but still have two small patches of algae! Usually switch the GFO every two weeks

With the sugar dosing, my skimmer has gone crazy. Last week alone, when I started dosing sugar, I probably skimmer around 3-4 full cups of wet skimmate. It has been reduced, but still doing well. Before carbon dosing with sugar, my skimmer did very minimal, now I love it.

As far as calcium and alk, I've bumped calcium up with BRS calcium chloride, but water changes keep alk up with reef crystals. It's like my corals don't use any calcium or alk, and it just builds up. Which leads me to believe phosphate is an issue and inhibits calcification.

Overall, I have three fish. Two small clowns and a medium sized lyretail anthias. Ad the tank has been running for around 5 months now. About 1 with coral I'd say. Maybe 1 and a half actually.

The salinity issues didn't help. Aside from that, here is your problem: You have a very low bio load while you are running GFO and dosing a carbon source. This is a recipe for struggling SPS.

Your corals are not able to access the nutrients they need in order to grow.

Give you tank a chance to mature, then start with the GFO / carbon dosing. Your rocks look like the surface of the moon!

Dosing carbon without additional bacteria is going to give you a monoculture, usually giving advantage to cyanobacteria. Be careful.

Also, don't skim so wet.

Try taking the GFO and carbon (sugar) dosing offline and give it 1 month.

 

[Felixc395]

The salinity issues didn't help. Aside from that, here is your problem: You have a very low bio load while you are running GFO and dosing a carbon source. This is a recipe for struggling SPS.

Your corals are not able to access the nutrients they need in order to grow.

Give you tank a chance to mature, then start with the GFO / carbon dosing. Your rocks look like the surface of the moon!

Dosing carbon without additional bacteria is going to give you a monoculture, usually giving advantage to cyanobacteria. Be careful.

Also, don't skim so wet.

Try taking the GFO and carbon (sugar) dosing offline and give it 1 month.

Yeah your tank and rock looks really new/young. Give it time and stability.

Chicago reef one, I will consider placement for sure!

As for these posts, it's seems unanimous that I need more time. I wouldn't say that my tank is too young, but perhaps I've just been too impatient.

The reason why I say my tank is mature enough is that I do have nutrients. I have bits of algae here and there, not prevalent at all really. Is this normal?

If my rock is so clean and my corals aren't growing, should I feed ? Will feeding my corals be of benefit or is it really not needed in my situation???

 

[Logzor]

Chicago reef one, I will consider placement for sure!

As for these posts, it's seems unanimous that I need more time. I wouldn't say that my tank is too young, but perhaps I've just been too impatient.

The reason why I say my tank is mature enough is that I do have nutrients. I have bits of algae here and there, not prevalent at all really. Is this normal?

If my rock is so clean and my corals aren't growing, should I feed ? Will feeding my corals be of benefit or is it really not needed in my situation???

Just because you have nutrients doesn't make your tank mature.

What makes a tank mature is all of the algae, micro fauna, sponges, as well as various snails/worms/bugs that tend to reproduce on our liverock. In turn, the ability of those organisms to adapt to your system and process the waste that your fish/feedings produce.

Using GFO and dosing a carbon source can be a great thing for a mature aquarium, should the biological organisms not be able to process the waste. However, it may not be the best idea to use these nutrient control mechanisms in a newly established system. It doesn't give your reef the chance to mature.

Did you ever cycle you tank? Where you have a big algae bloom (which then dies off after the water parameters stabilize)?

It's normal for all reefs to have a little bit of algae. I have a mix of coraline as well as a short turf algae on my rocks, the algae never really expands and the coraline slowly is taking over (my tank is about 4 months old maybe).

 

[Felixc395]

Logzor, you make great points! What I'm collecting from this whole thread is time and stability. Time, waiting for my tank to mature and also for my corals to adapt. And keeping parameters stable seems as important as well.

Overall, I can already see the benefits of patience. My Idaho grape has finally grown and in the last three days has grown a solid inch or half inch around! Just from one coral I can learn many thing. Keeping the Monti in one spot really made a difference. As well as stable parameters and high flow.

My efflo is getting some better PE now too. Thing are looking good! Will post updates!

 

[Logzor]

Logzor, you make great points! What I'm collecting from this whole thread is time and stability. Time, waiting for my tank to mature and also for my corals to adapt. And keeping parameters stable seems as important as well.

Overall, I can already see the benefits of patience. My Idaho grape has finally grown and in the last three days has grown a solid inch or half inch around! Just from one coral I can learn many thing. Keeping the Monti in one spot really made a difference. As well as stable parameters and high flow.

My efflo is getting some better PE now too. Thing are looking good! Will post updates!

Any most importantly, for now, is it keep things as simple as possible with your system, aside from dosing your Ca/Mg and maintaining alkalinity levels when needed.

 

[SammyJ916]

Felix, your salinity parameters seem much better now, my Sps start to look stressed when my salinity drops below 1.024. Your alkalinity seems to be a little high, I keep mine at approx 8-8.5 anything less than or over that I quickly see polyp extension go away and a noticeable appearance in my sps looking "mad" at me. Try dropping it down slowly and then keeping it steady somewhere around 8! Flow is huge with sps as I'm sure you know but I'd check to make sure all of them are getting enough. But with me alkalinity is def the first thing in which I notice my Sps getting mad followed by my Ph bein too high or low. Hope this helps!