Keeping SPS is soooo hard and expensive! Thinking about quitting after 2 years.

[tkeracer619]

ALOT of feeding (I think this is what your after)

Like so?

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SPS grows in fresh instant ocean. If you want to get to the bottom of this you will need to remove the variables and go back to a simple setup. Remove the sand, do huge water changes (50%), and just keep is KISS. Remove or stop everything that you are doing that isn't skimming, feeding, sucking out waste, changing water, and two part dosing.

If you still can't keep it going something is wrong with your lighting, contaminants in the rock, or unseen pests.

If everything goes well when doing 50% weekly water changes and reducing them causes the issue to surface you have something in your rocks.

Before doing anything you need to check for chlorine making it through your RO filter.

 

[Lagoon monkey]

I can't keep SPS, when I finally get a frag to take off it dies all of a sudden overnight.

I check my alk daily, it stays between 7.4 and 7.8. My calc is always right around 410 and mag I keep around 1320. I use an Apex to monitor PH which stays stable at 8.1-7.9; my salinity probe keeps me in check as well as my temp probes holding at 79.

No matter what I feed, what I do...the following WILL NOT live in my tank:

Acans, will look good for 2 weeks then shrivel up and NEVER open.
Trachyphyllia & Wellsophyllia, usually shrivel up before 3 days and slowly die while in shrunken state, love to lose color.
Zoas, they just don't stay open and eventually wither away...even the cheap green ones
Acros, basically will never have PE and eventually die through a sudden random RTN event

What I can keep:

Hammer corals - had some die but most have grown nicely
Frogspawns - had a few die but mainly they flourish and grow
Birdnest - grows like crazy
Toadstool - grows
Torch corals - growing like crazy
green star polyps - open and close randomly, seems to be ok? Not really spreading though
xenia - colony seems to have stopped spreading but always open and flowing

Jury still out:

Duncans, some seem ok but often close up
RBTA, have one in my tank...was doing great and split into two, now both shriveled and moving all over

So basically my tank has nice frogspawns, torches and hammer corals but everything else is hit or miss and SPS other than birdsnest and monti caps always seem to die.

Equipment:

150G
2 AI Hydra 52
lifereef skimmer (large model)
2 MP40's
Apex controller with about every option you could imagine
DOS pump dosing BRS 2 part
Carbon/GFO reactor
Ecobak pellets in TLF reactor

Daily dose:

BRS 2 part 38ml of each daily
Korallen Amino acid per instructions daily (6 drops)
Korallen Pohl's Coral Vitalizer (6 drops daily)

1 cup HC GFO monthly
1.4 cup Carbon monthly

reef roids/oyster feast 1-2 times per week

Daily feeding of Neptune crossover via AFS

Nitrates stay around 5
Phosphates .03 and jump to .09 if I turn GFO off

15% weekly water changes with red sea coral pro. Also use a BRS 5 stage RODI.

Not sure what else to do, I spend at least 2 hours a day on my tank and my results are crap.

Over the course of 3 years I have probably lost around $1500 worth of corals.

Everything you can keep are begginner corals...intermediate sps are tough and sometimes crap out for no known reason. Your system seems very expensive and overkill for begginer coral. Also does not have enough light. I have 3 AI fixtures over a 90g and I could add more...I have all sps and some lps and softies. skip the dosing and hightech zeo garbage that stuff might work if u know exactly what your doing but I run my tanl off of calcium chloride road salt and baking soda...check out randys 2 part. No need for amino acids and all that fancy crap unless you have high demand corals which in mu opinion are only bound to die in time and not worthwhile. I need to start a reef store to capitalize off ppl that have too much $$$ for their own good....jeez

 

[power boat jim]

I need to start a reef store to capitalize off ppl that have too much $$$ for their own good....jeez

If you are posting here I would say you are one of those people.

 

[Lagoon monkey]

If you are posting here I would say you are one of those people.

Sorry pal your dead wrong. I sponsor my hobby by propogating corals and selling them thats how i paid for 1500$ of LEDs. My setup is all diy and ive done my research for years. My tank costs me approx 200$ / year and thats only salt calcium chloride and baking soda. 6 years in the hobby and going strong you learn alot. Your not worth my time to even go into more detail...goodbye

 

[power boat jim]

Posting an editorial comment on someones finanancial situation you know nothing about is uncalled for and provides no help at all. You certainly took exception to that sort of thing. Think that might be a clue as to how your comment will be recieved by others? .

 

[Lagoon monkey]

Posting an editorial comment on someones finanancial situation you know nothing about is uncalled for and provides no help at all. You certainly took exception to that sort of thing. Think that might be a clue as to how your comment will be recieved by others? .

You like to make assumtions about people you never met so I dont think ur one to talk here powerboatfred...your comment makes no sense go back to bed or have another one cause im assuming you think your initial response to my comment provided help did it? and futhering this conversation also helpin op? your a hypocrite dude i calls it as i sees it. Im done with this thread so stop wasting my time.

 

[kenpau]

kurfer- it sounds like your system has a carbon addiction. the faster you stop the addiction the greater the chance of algae bloom. the slower you can do it the better. get that LR doing its job instead of the water borne bacteria.

if you want to make reef keeping less expensive than just break keeping corals down to the absolute basics. bring it back to the known good husbandry practices. feed it what it needs, and remove its waste in a timely manner. it is that simple. we walk our dogs, empty the litter boxes, flush our toilets, change the paper in the cage, and rotate pastures for a reason.



skimmers and powerheads do not remove the large pieces of detritus. it takes a siphon to remove that. relying on only water based nutrient export methods misses the largest source of the problematic nutrients, the detritus. equate it to trying to remove poo from a bathroom by just running the fan and not actually flushing the toilet. you flush the toilet in order to remove the waste. siphon up the waste, you remove the poo. are we keeping corals as pets or poo?

G~

I understand what you are saying but if that is the case then why is siphoning not a common practice in the majority of reef aquariums? I'm not saying it isn't used but in all the tank journals I've read and awesome SPS tanks I've seen in my cities reefkeepers club I have never heard of siphoning as a major part of maintenance. Small water based nutrients are taken care of by powerheads and skimmers. Having a sufficient clean up crew should take care of the rest.

 

[kenpau]

Everything you can keep are begginner corals...intermediate sps are tough and sometimes crap out for no known reason. Your system seems very expensive and overkill for begginer coral. Also does not have enough light. I have 3 AI fixtures over a 90g and I could add more...I have all sps and some lps and softies. skip the dosing and hightech zeo garbage that stuff might work if u know exactly what your doing but I run my tanl off of calcium chloride road salt and baking soda...check out randys 2 part. No need for amino acids and all that fancy crap unless you have high demand corals which in mu opinion are only bound to die in time and not worthwhile. I need to start a reef store to capitalize off ppl that have too much $$$ for their own good....jeez

I'd definitely like to know your secret to growing sps, every thread I have read about AI sols has said that they just can't cut it when it comes to sps. Vegas are a little better but still not great. You're right that the OP could do with more light, maybe one more fixture but the truth is that if lighting alone was the issue then he should be getting growth directly below the fixtures, AI Hydra52s are more than enough to grown acropora, I can testify to that.
also branding methods that you don't use as 'garbage' is pretty narrow minded. We all have our different methods of reefkeeping, I don't agree with some methods and have said that in this thread, however I try to put an educated point if view across instead of just labelling someone else's methods as garbage. A Google image search of a Zeovit sps reef will bring up some of the most amazing tanks you have seen, it is a method that has been used over and over again with proven results. Of course if you have an educated answer as to why it doesn't work and the OP shouldn't use it then please feel free to post it.

 

[power boat jim]

I'd definitely like to know your secret to growing sps, every thread I have read about AI sols has said that they just can't cut it when it comes to sps. Vegas are a little better but still not great. You're right that the OP could do with more light, maybe one more fixture but the truth is that if lighting alone was the issue then he should be getting growth directly below the fixtures, AI Hydra52s are more than enough to grown acropora, I can testify to that.

.

I ran AI blues for a long time and had good success with them on sps also. Keep them up high and didnt go over 70%. Having 6 over a 180 helped. You need more leds the you might think. Adding full spectrom leds later on did help out too.

 

[wasatchwired]

I suffered the same symptoms after successfully keeping a 400 gallon tank full of SPS corals for 2 years. I didn't have an Apex back then. After downsizing, I started losing coral. I bought every module Neptune makes before I nailed it. My Refractometer was way out of wack. Salinity was 40ppt. 7 months of corals dead over a bad calibration.

 

[kenpau]

I ran AI blues for a long time and had good success with them on sps also. Keep them up high and didnt go over 70%. Having 6 over a 180 helped. You need more leds the you might think. Adding full spectrom leds later on did help out too.

That's interesting to hear, probably the first time I've heard that about the Sol blues! They are powerful lights but the spectrum on them isn't the best. Great to hear you had success with them though

 

[PhaneSoul]

I understand what you are saying but if that is the case then why is siphoning not a common practice in the majority of reef aquariums? I'm not saying it isn't used but in all the tank journals I've read and awesome SPS tanks I've seen in my cities reefkeepers club I have never heard of siphoning as a major part of maintenance. Small water based nutrients are taken care of by powerheads and skimmers. Having a sufficient clean up crew should take care of the rest.

It all goes back to the DSB fad and a 'no maintenance' system. People were tricked into sand being the en of all nutrient solutions when they were Te exact opposite but mask nutrients well for several years.
Clean up crews just eat and poop. They are not an exporter, but their poop is able to be hidden a lot easier then the algae growing on your rocks.

 

[CStrickland]

I understand what you are saying but if that is the case then why is siphoning not a common practice in the majority of reef aquariums? I'm not saying it isn't used but in all the tank journals I've read and awesome SPS tanks I've seen in my cities reefkeepers club I have never heard of siphoning as a major part of maintenance. Small water based nutrients are taken care of by powerheads and skimmers. Having a sufficient clean up crew should take care of the rest.

This is interesting to me as someone who is just starting a tank. From all the stuff I've been reading it does sound like there are two totally dif ways to go about it. Idk why those old tanks run so well, I think they've struck a balance that might be harder to find with all the extra nutrients that need processing. Not that it doesn't work sometimes, but it is harder and there's more that can go wrong.

It seems pretty well established that high nutrients make SPS hard to grow, and it makes sense that leaving detritus in the tank to decay will raise nutrients. If the old school tanks can create some ecosystem of benthos that allows them to do so then that's great cause vacing isn't super fun. But those tanks are few and far between, and they do seem to crash a lot. I think that keeping sand and not siphoning might be why people think SPS is so hard, people give up on their tanks, and people are so impressed when it does work. I'm assuming the old tanks didn't like, try siphoning and give up when it didn't work, rather they just do what has always been done. Then when it stops working after a few years they attribute that to user error, or stray voltage.
Getting out detritus by high flow and big skimming in a bb seems like a very easy way to grow SPS. Keeping a clean shallow sand bed seems like an easy way to have sand if you like it. The user controls much more of the critical variables like nutrients, and isn't relying on managing a waste treatment system in the tank on top of the coral that is the goal of the thing in the first place.

When you are first getting started you look at what works and try to think about why. It makes more sense to me to streamline things for max benefit / min effort with the ultimate goal in mind. If that's sps they seem to thrive pretty fast and easy in the bb tanks, and they seem to struggle in the others. As the new school ways are getting some years under their belt you can start to see that the method does have staying power. The old timers that found a way that works for them don't need to break what isn't fixed, but there sure are a lot of threads where it wasn't working and the reefer pulled their sand or started cleaning out the rocks and sand to great benefit. I think it might be a little more "fool resistant" (obvy not fool-proof, that would be worth patenting )

 

[PhaneSoul]

I have also read something, and I believe reef n' dude can clarify this for me, but with the symbiotic relationship between coral and the zooxanthae you want the coral to be in charge, not the zoox.

High inorganic nutrients, high lights, so so feeding -> zoox is in charge of the relationship

Low inorganic nutrients, low lights, high ORGANIC feeding -> coral is in charge

Not exactly sure if I got that completely right, but I feel it should be something that is more elaborated on since we are talking about how the TOTM have high feeding rates

 

[power boat jim]

That's interesting to hear, probably the first time I've heard that about the Sol blues! They are powerful lights but the spectrum on them isn't the best. Great to hear you had success with them though

That is probably an accurate statement. It seems most corals do ok with some part of the spectrum missing. However, I found results with LEDs do go in the right direction with a full spectrum lighting set up. What you use for that is really a personal choice there are many good options.

I have since moved to the radions G3s and they rival MH in growth and color in my tank. The only downside is again the cost of needeing so many to do the job. That is why for now, I run a hybrid system of 1 MH and 3 radiums.

 

[Nano sapiens]

I understand what you are saying but if that is the case then why is siphoning not a common practice in the majority of reef aquariums? I'm not saying it isn't used but in all the tank journals I've read and awesome SPS tanks I've seen in my cities reefkeepers club I have never heard of siphoning as a major part of maintenance. Small water based nutrients are taken care of by powerheads and skimmers. Having a sufficient clean up crew should take care of the rest.

In large tanks nutrients can be sequestered for many years before they show up as an obvious issue. How long depends on a multitude of factors such as depth and type of sand bed, amount of live rock, flow, what other nutrient export mechanisms exist, CUC present, chemical media(s) used, etc., etc.

If you were to radically downsize to a nano or pico tank, the time-line effects of nutrient accumulation are magnified many fold due to the (typically) much higher bioload to water volume ratio. At the extremes, the choices are to throw everything in the book at the system (WCs, GAC, GFO, skimmer, etc.) to try and manage NO3 and PO4 accumulation or simply remove detritus wherever it occurs on a regular basis.

To give you an idea how effect detritus removal can be in regards to phosphate control, I sent a sample off to Triton labs from my 6-1/2 year old 12g mixed reef (no mechanical or chemical filtration, 10% WC/week, a moderate density of corals plus two well-fed adult clownfish). Both P (phosphorus) and PO4 (inorganic phosphate) were below their recommended values of P=6.00ug/l and PO4=0.018 mg/l, respectively. Unfortunately, they don't test for NO3, but nitrate is undetectable using a Salifert test kit.

Detritus removal is simply a useful procedure that can be used to help promote long term stability in a reef system.

 

[Mishri]

I agree with lagoon monkey's principle, about not starting off with all the dosing pumps and extra things, but not the spirit of his post...

Spending money and getting all the most expensive gear isn't the way to succeed in this hobby. In fact, from OP's last post that I read he had an issue with one of his automatic dosers, causing the low alkalinity. That's why I don't like those things. Keep on top of it, this isn't a lazy persons hobby. check your water parameters, dose for what you need. Once you've achieved success with minimal automation you might consider it (I only like it for my lights)

I see so many people immediately buying reactors and dosing things "fixing" issues that they don't even have. Because that is what all of these successful people are doing... Well most of those people did it a different way before figuring out the needed different things for their particular tank. vodka dosing... so many people rush to it when there are other ways to fix that problem, and they aren't getting to the root of it. not saying it doesn't work or you shouldn't do it, but it seems like now it's the go to method for nitrate/phosphate reduction...

 

[Reefin' Dude]

Sorry, snowed in and no power.

It is all about who is in charge of the nutrients. The more you feed the more in control the coral is and not the Zoax. As long as the flow of Pi is higher in the coral than outside. All is good. We fall into the trap of starving the corals to keep the P from building up.

G~

 

[tkeracer619]

Im done with this thread so stop wasting my time.

That's what you said the last time. Run along already.

 

[kurfer]

You like to make assumtions about people you never met so I dont think ur one to talk here powerboatfred...your comment makes no sense go back to bed or have another one cause im assuming you think your initial response to my comment provided help did it? and futhering this conversation also helpin op? your a hypocrite dude i calls it as i sees it. Im done with this thread so stop wasting my time.

8 pages of constructive and extremely insightful posts and you come in on the tail end with bland advice and negative ****y comments. Please go away, go be mad somewhere else little man.