My corals won't grow HELP ME please

A

andyITA

New member
Hello !
I am in big need of your support guys.
My corals won`t grow. I offer them a lot of care and still I have no success.
Here are my specs:

My tank is 50g display and 15g sump.

4x39W (2 Hagen GLO HO lamps)
1xATI Coral plus (12h/day)
1xATI Blue plus (12h/day)
2xATI Aquablue (white 14000k - 6h/day)
Skimmer BM NAC 3
2 fluid bed reactors with Seachem Phosguard, matrixcarbon and Seachem Matrix media.
2x koralia pumps with hydor smart wave controller.

Water parameters:

NO3 = 0-1 (Salifert)
PO4 = 0.00 (Hanna)
Ca = 410 Salifert
Kh = 10.5 Salifert
Mg = 1350 Salifert
Salinity = 1024
Temp = 25 Celsius

The parameters are stable.

Livestock:
1 small demsel blue-yellow
1 small blue green chromis
1 small firefish purple
1 six line wrasse
1 super small red scooter blenny
1 cleaner shrimp
several euplica snails
2 turbo
1 strombus
1 red mature brittle star

A lot of live rock
A lot of feather dusters.

The tank was started 5 months ago.

The colors are simply amazing, very bright very concentrated exactly how they are supposed to look but I don`t see the corals grow...except few of them.

My feeding plan is:
1xday NLS marine formula flakes
2x week Seachem Reef plus (Amino+Vitamins+Trace elements)
1x week Rotiferi Ocean Nutrition Frozen
1x week Live artemia
1x week koral food (reef interests)
I do a 5% water change every week and I add 5ml of Brightwell microbacter 7

Here are a few pics of my tank and I really wish someone could tell me what do I need to do to make my corals grow :(

 
mainly time, water stability and continued good husbandry.
5 months isn't that long a period of time for substantial growth in my opinion.
for what its worth the tank looks really nice tho
 
Corals don't grow that fast. Check back in a year, then 2 years. That's when you will see the growth.

Side note: Bump up that calcium to like 450...
 
Corals don't grow that fast. Check back in a year, then 2 years. That's when you will see the growth.

Side note: Bump up that calcium to like 450...
 
1. your calcium is 10 pts too low.
2. corals don't like to wobble. If you have any that are NOT physically stable, that's a problem.
3. you probably should start putting kalk (Mrs Wages Pickling Lime) into your topoff. I have the same size tank, and evaporate about a gallon or so a day. This drives a nice topoff rate that feeds my very hungry euphyllias as much as they like. Your corals seem happy enough, but they're not getting enough calcium to grow. Hand dose until you hit the parameters in my sig line, keep your hands out of the tank unless wearing exam gloves, and have everything on ATO and timer. My light is MH with supporting actinics, a 250 watt that has been 10000k and now is probably 14000, because that's what i could get: the corals don't seem to mind, if you break in the lights gently. They do seem to like the 10000k best.

Your corals come in 'asleep,' and if not put into ideal conditions (that low calcium) they'll just doze along surviving. Once conditions hit optimum and they start to feed aggressively, they can suck calcium like you won't believe and start really growing. Once 3 heads become 6, and 6 become 12---it starts to get crazy. Once you have over a hundred heads all bent on dividing in a given 4 months, you'll need to find somebody to take the excess.

Also, if you hit a bad spot and you have a euphyllia 'bail' on you, put it in a shallow glass dish and let it be. The 'bailed' heads can start growing skeleton if your reef is well-supplied with calcium.


Oh,---one other trick I have that makes everything happy. I got some jumbo dried krill and grind it up with a mortar and pestle, and put a pinch in daily. Nothing doesn't like krill, far as I've ever seen; and it supports both fish and corals. Don't discourage bristleworms, either: they're real helpful, imho, in an lps reef.
 
Last edited:
I do not agree that 410 calcium is low. It is well above NSW levels. The OP's coral looks healthy as does the tank. I agree that five months is not enough to see substantial growth especially with LPS coral. My only suggestion would be to increase the SG to 1.026 and wait patiently for good things to happen. Have fun.
 
Well first of all I really appreciate your efforts to figure out my problem
1) my red montipora digitata has not grown 1mm in 4 months since I introduced it....and I have friends that have had growth of few cm and have the same fresh tank I do so I am clearly missing some element in the water
2) there are a few corals that have exceptional growth: blue digitata montipora (GROWTH in 1 month and 20 days)


Another issue is that the euphylias don`t hydrate as much as they did when I had worse water parameters. As soon as I reached 0-1 NO3 and 0.00 PO4 they don`t pop as much as they did and their feeding response is very low. The only LPS that really does prosper is elegance coral.

Another thing is that I cannot dose Kalkwasser in my ATO because my ATO is made out of an electronic sensor and an air pump. The air pump introduces air in the sealed recipient and it pushes the water in the aquarium. Adding kalk will precipitate because of the high quantity of oxigen in the RODI water.

PS I still have problems with diatoms.
 
Some of my corals seem to grow like weeds and others do not, lps seem to take forever imho. I had an oregon tort that got thicker and thicker very slowly but never popped out a new branch. Maybe it was just the placement. All corals seem different in different tanks, but the key is just patience and consistency. It will happen, then you won't have any real estate for new corals. :)
 
I recently added in LSP ( duncan,euphyllia [purple hammer, green hammer, frogspawn], candy cane )

Out of the above ones the candy cane is the only one that has split new heads in the last 4months. My zoas however ad a new head or so about every week.
 
Hey Sk8r,

You've probably forgotten more about reefkeeping than I know, but your advice to the OP that "your [410 ppm] calcium is 10 pts too low" is puzzling to me.

That's above NSW levels and the sainted Randy recommends keeping calc in the 380-450 ppm range. Are you saying that failure to maintain calc within 2% of your recommended calcium level can inhibit coral growth?

Thanks,
 
Well not saying this is your issue but your water may be a little too clean for Lps, they do tend to like a little dirtier water. They may not be getting enough food
 
Test results NO3 - Salifert


I also have 2 questions:
1) if I have some brown algae, some white slime and some little macro algae growing on sand/rocks is it possible to have NO3 = 0 ?
2) All my corals have exceptional color, they look very healthy except my Euphylia. It simply won`t hydrate properly. It-s like 30% hidrated and it won`t grow 1mm. It doesn not have too strong light, and the flow is moderate. ANY IDEAS ?
 
+1 on the increase SG recommendation. Raise it to 1.026, turn off your pumps during feeding and increasing your CA is a personal choice. Yours is high enough to produce growth as long as all your corals don't decide to start growing at the same time. If they do then you might hit the low end quickly and cause a little stress.

Keep things stable and the growth will come.
 
aptasia in there could be stinging things, and more calcium, the digitata in order for it to grow like that has probabaly been suckin your calcium right out
 
Euphyllia like lower flow. I basically have my flow directed where 75% of it hits the area where my SPS are mainly placed and the LPS/softies side gets much less flow. Really helped my frogspawn come out. Make sure you still have adequate flow around rocks and on the sand bed though.
 
First rule of reef keeping. Nothing good happens fast.

Assuming your H2O parameters are accurate and, most important, stable, just keep doing what your doing. If I were to hazard a guess, your corals are still in a mild acclimation stage and you'll see an increase in growth at the later part of the first year. I'm not an expert in T5 lighting, but it sounds like it should be sufficient over a 50 gallon. FWIW, your tank looks good IMO.
 
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