New tank
- Thread starter Kieran
- Start date
Thanks but a lot of the corals I have are not the same as when I first bought them. Losing colour and little or no growth. Parameters are all good.
N03 reading of 5ppm, P04 reading of 0.04ppm
Okay, so it's probably not nutrient deficiency, but there's a chance it may still be due to the bio pellets which lower no3/po4.
Do you currently dose any Aminos? I've seen stellar high nutrient SPS tanks, but lower nutrient tanks always seem to benefit greatly from Amino Acids. I'd consider 5ppm on the lower side, 10ppm+ to be higher side. I saw the best coloration from my corals at 25ppm N03 personally.
- Are your bulbs old?
- Switch Salts?
- Missed a water change or two?
- Dose anything?
If your bulbs are old, you may benefit from lowering them a little bit. Otherwise everything sounds good, and were just grasping at straws.
If nothing fixes it, my last suggestion would be to do a series of water changes. When you run large tanks, and the tanks get mature, the missing elements from the water aren't properly replenished by small water changes anymore -- Think of it like an alcoholic Rum and Coke -- Every time you take a drink, you drink both, after each drink you pour in a little more Rum, but not anymore coke.. Eventually, you're going to have a glass of Rum with almost no coke.
That's kind of what standard 5-10% water changes do in large tanks.
Yearly, a lot of people will do a series of larger water changes to exchange a large volume of water over the course of a few days. If nothing else gives you any results, It couldn't hurt to do a 30% water change 3-4 days in a row.
Do you currently dose any Aminos? I've seen stellar high nutrient SPS tanks, but lower nutrient tanks always seem to benefit greatly from Amino Acids. I'd consider 5ppm on the lower side, 10ppm+ to be higher side. I saw the best coloration from my corals at 25ppm N03 personally.
- Are your bulbs old?
- Switch Salts?
- Missed a water change or two?
- Dose anything?
If your bulbs are old, you may benefit from lowering them a little bit. Otherwise everything sounds good, and were just grasping at straws.
If nothing fixes it, my last suggestion would be to do a series of water changes. When you run large tanks, and the tanks get mature, the missing elements from the water aren't properly replenished by small water changes anymore -- Think of it like an alcoholic Rum and Coke -- Every time you take a drink, you drink both, after each drink you pour in a little more Rum, but not anymore coke.. Eventually, you're going to have a glass of Rum with almost no coke.
That's kind of what standard 5-10% water changes do in large tanks.
Yearly, a lot of people will do a series of larger water changes to exchange a large volume of water over the course of a few days. If nothing else gives you any results, It couldn't hurt to do a 30% water change 3-4 days in a row.
Yes, I dose Amino acids and Reef Roids for feed. I use an ATI 8x54w T5 Hybrid with brand new bulbs. I religiously do a 10% water change every week and have been using Tropic Marin Pro for 6+ months. FM Balling salts, FM Colour Elements and Biogro 123 (following Krzysztof Tryc's lead).
