new To sps please help

[nemmy]

I've been having some odd sps trouble and was looking to get some advice on it. I'm on my iPhone, so bear with odd spelling mistakes, grammar, and formatting.

40B with sump and fuge with chaeto
6x39w t5ho. 3 giessman bulbs, 3 current bulbs.
About 2000gph of flow in the display
ammonia, nitrite, nitrate all 0
alk 9 mag 1350 cal 450
sg 1.026 @ 79 degrees
no phosphate test kit, but some cyano in the fuge that I clean out
running a nac6 skimmer. Rodi water 0tds neo-marine salt.

I have a green slimer and blue Millie that are Doing great 0 probelms with them.
My garf bonsai has great PE, but light brown at top of the tank, started it down low. My Joe the coral has poor PE and semi bleached, tried moving up top same thing but bleached on the bottom of the tank. I also have a misc acro that's losing some color but has great PE.

I added some gfo to the tank, and I run carbon as well. Any idea on how to get my garf bonsai and Joe the coral to come around? I dipped Joe and it didn't do much difference. I don't think pests are an issue as I have looked for red bugs and aefw.

I have been feeding roti feast and oyster feast. Trying to give all the info I possibly can.

 

[graveyardworm]

[welcome]

Can you post any good closeup photos of the corals in question? I would move them back to the sand temporarily and give them some time. How long have you had them?

 

[nemmy]

I've had them since early to mid Jan. Can get pictures tonight I'm at work right now.

 

[nemmy]

Guess they dont look as good as i thought (green slimer, blue milli) now that i moved them all to the sand and the polyps are retracted. The garf bonsai, and the other misc acro (green) always have good PE as well. The Joe the coral has never had good PE and has been on the sandbed for awhile, so thats all the PE he has. Just trying to get help on getting some color in these guys, and maybe PE from Joe.

Heres the shots, they are all on the sandbed now as graveyardworm suggested.

 

[ScrubberOTanky]

FWIW I had some issues with lightening of my colors, and I was using Neo Marine. I switched back to my IO/O mix and have seen some improvement. There were other factors involved as well, so I wouldnt attribute it to just the salt.

Edit: What brand test kits are you using, as I also have issues with lighter colors and lower Alk. If your readings arent accurate it may be a factor, might be worth double checking with a different test kit.

HTH

 

[nemmy]

Salifert test kits for mag, alk, and calcium. API for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. I use a PH probe for my reefkeeper light for PH, and that stays around 8.1.

Do you think the T5's are just too much for this tank?

After my NeoMarine is done i plan on switching back to reef crystals as im not impressed with neomarine. I could always switch now and use up the neomarine in my nanocube.

I'm planning an upgrade of two 40breeders connected to the same sump so i can have an anemone only tank and a coral tank. I was thinking of using a 250w MH with a 14k phoenix on the second 40B. I might put the SPS in that tank and see what happens when i get it set up, but would like to rule out water quality issues etc.

 

[dudley moray]

those pics look ok to me they are acclimating to your tank, it could take years to fully acclimate, white tips are usually new growth ! just watch for excessive slimming and above all leave them alone they like stability

 

[seminolecpa]

How old is your tank?

 

[graveyardworm]

To me the one in the background in the first pic and the one in the third pic looked a bit bleached from overexposure to the light. The rest look pretty good. I'm not exactly sure how they should appear. The colors look a bit light to me, perhaps your nutrients are a bit too low. Do you have any fish, and what is your feeding schedule? What is the sand you're using?

 

[nemmy]

How old is your tank?

7-8 months i would say, it was a transfer from a year old tank.

To me the one in the background in the first pic and the one in the third pic looked a bit bleached from overexposure to the light. The rest look pretty good. I'm not exactly sure how they should appear. The colors look a bit light to me, perhaps your nutrients are a bit too low. Do you have any fish, and what is your feeding schedule? What is the sand you're using?

I have 4 fish, i feed them every 2-3 days, and broadcast feed the sps every 2-3 days (sometimes i target feed them). Its a smaller tank so i dont want to feed too much, should i bump it up more? Theres really no algae in the tank except a tiny patch of GHA on one of my powerheads. Theres none on the rocks to be seen at all. A bit of cyano gets in the fuge but its a low flow area, i syphon it out.

The sand is Caribsea arag-alive Hawaiian black, it has bigger chunks in it that seem to have all settled on the surface. Its half purple though from coralline.

 

[graveyardworm]

Do you alternate the feedings so they're on different days? Personally I wouldnt bother trying to target feed the sps. They'll get plenty from the fish poop and from what gets added to the water column. Some people turn to Amino Acids for sps when nutrient levels get too low. Its easier to guage whats going in the tank with AA's.

Since you seem to have a pretty good handle on nutrients it wouldnt hurt to start feeding the fish a bit more. Increase the feeding slowly and if algae begins to increase the back off or increase your nutrient exports, or give AA's a shot and see if color improves.

The corals that appear to be bleached a bit will probably take a month or so to fully recover so dont pay so much attention to them. Look at the healthy ones for indication to see if what your doing is having a positive effect.

 

[nemmy]

Do you alternate the feedings so they're on different days? Personally I wouldnt bother trying to target feed the sps. They'll get plenty from the fish poop and from what gets added to the water column. Some people turn to Amino Acids for sps when nutrient levels get too low. Its easier to guage whats going in the tank with AA's.

Since you seem to have a pretty good handle on nutrients it wouldnt hurt to start feeding the fish a bit more. Increase the feeding slowly and if algae begins to increase the back off or increase your nutrient exports, or give AA's a shot and see if color improves.

The corals that appear to be bleached a bit will probably take a month or so to fully recover so dont pay so much attention to them. Look at the healthy ones for indication to see if what your doing is having a positive effect.

I dont usually feed the fish and corals on the same day if thats what your asking. I tried brightwells amino acids and didnt see much of a difference after a whole bottle of it. But then again i think the light was shocking them too much to see any difference. I did frag the garf bonsai a while back and left that frag on the sandbed, its a darker brownish purple and does look better than the other one in terms of color. I will leave them all on the sandbed and see what happens. If i still dont see an improvement maybe i will try the amino acids again.

Thanks for the help, i will bump this thread up in the future with an update on how its going.

 

[Henry Bowman]

Leave them on the sand bed and watch them for a few weeks. Coral metabolism is very slow (by our standard thought processes). I wouldnt change anything about your routine right now. Give them a few weeks...

I believe many folks underestimate the strength of T5's. I have bleached and melted acans in my tank with T5's under 12-14" of water after taking them home from the store where they resided under 250W MH's.

 

[nemmy]

Leave them on the sand bed and watch them for a few weeks. Coral metabolism is very slow (by our standard thought processes). I wouldnt change anything about your routine right now. Give them a few weeks...

I believe many folks underestimate the strength of T5's. I have bleached and melted acans in my tank with T5's under 12-14" of water after taking them home from the store where they resided under 250W MH's.

I will wait it out and see what happens. My tank upgrade is going slow anyways so it won't be until 4-8 weeks by the time I'm done anyway.

And my t5s melt zoanthids and palys down to almost nothin unless they were extremely shaded. I ended up just putting them all in my nanocube with pc lighting instead. They do great in there.

 

[gasman059]

Nothing to write home about-sps are finicky critters at their best-
the pics show normal frags to me.

We all at some point tend to overthink the reasons why some of our corals are doing this or that.
Seems to me that innyour case a little bit of patience and maintenace of your good husbandry(as noted by your params) will go q long way.

 

[nemmy]

Thanks for the input gasman. The second picture is a garf bonsai, and the third is oras Joe the coral. So you can see how they don't look like they should. I'm going to do a couple extra water changes this week just to get down my phosphates if they are present. Probably just 3 or so 10% changes just to clean things up a bit. I just noticed some brown hairy like algae in the front left and front right corners of the tank, which is new. Couple extra water changes can never hurt. I will be sure to match the tanks parameters as best as possible. I think I'm going to star using reef crystals again in this tank, my neomarine has been testing low (390,8.6,1200).

 

[soulsigma]

Thanks for the input gasman. The second picture is a garf bonsai, and the third is oras Joe the coral. So you can see how they don't look like they should. I'm going to do a couple extra water changes this week just to get down my phosphates if they are present. Probably just 3 or so 10% changes just to clean things up a bit. I just noticed some brown hairy like algae in the front left and front right corners of the tank, which is new. Couple extra water changes can never hurt. I will be sure to match the tanks parameters as best as possible. I think I'm going to star using reef crystals again in this tank, my neomarine has been testing low (390,8.6,1200).

Theres nutrients in your water column other wise you wouldn't be having algae issues. The algae could be consuming the trates and phos quickly which would give you a false reading.

 

[nemmy]

Theres nutrients in your water column other wise you wouldn't be having algae issues. The algae could be consuming the trates and phos quickly which would give you a false reading.

I had 0 algae problems before i started overfeeding the tank like an idiot trying to get the SPS to color up.. But maybe there was still enough nutrients in the water in the first place. I'm doing water changes to try to cut it back.

 

[nemmy]

Found a picture of one of the corals in question when i first got it.
This is the same coral in picture 3 above:

Did i bleach it with too much light? Bad light acclimation?