no growth and pastel color

Thanks guys. I'm gonna run all the tests again tomorrow and see where I'm at. I have noticed the pink coming back to my pink w/teal polyps milli. My red planet is still worthless brown. I do see a darkening of the red on my new growth of my red monti cap. So I'll post the new stats on here tomorrow.
 
I still don't believe it's your lighting or lack of nutrients. When lighting is to strong, corals bleach, they don't become brown. Then with time they addapt and start coloring up, and that hasn't happened in your case.

There are some nano and pico tanks that have no skimmer but no fish and so no nutrients and have great looking corals.

But salt needs to be changed every once in a while.

For me 20% weekly water changes did the trick, corals colored up again, try it.
 
What about other significant trace elements like strontium?

I wonder if your level has gotten low enough for corals to slow their growth. I also feel that that high KH and magnesium levels would stunt your growth.

IIRC the lower stable KH with a carbon dosing routine promotes better growth. Added "nutrients" promote richer colors.

The sunlight systems will reach par as high as 600+ and seem to grow corals just fine. Given time to adapt they will grow under some intense light. I also doubt it's a lighting issue.
 
plancton said:
I still don't believe it's your lighting or lack of nutrients. When lighting is to strong, corals bleach, they don't become brown. Then with time they addapt and start coloring up, and that hasn't happened in your case.
Click to expand...

IIRC the poster does not have brown corals at all.

The corals, given too much light will photoinhibit and shed as many zooxanthelles as needed to survive hence the bleaching occurs. In shaded areas they will brown out for trying to compensate, or there might just be "acceptable" levels of light where his growth is not directly exposed to light.

I would try to increase nutrients slowly (Reefpearls, Aminos etc) and reduce light by 50% and work your way up. (Run half your bulbs for 6-7hours a day.) How is your polyp extension?
 
two chalices at the bottom of the tank were bleached as well, one of these is a chalice that I have kept directly under 400w halides. The frags I got from you are doing great, except the one that was white, never saw much out of it other than the algae growing on it this morning. I say we change half of your water using a good salt, I got reef crystals if you need some, and see what that does. We can do a bigger water change if you are willing, definately will take the water quality question out of the picture.
 
While a water change is almost never bad, if the problems is starvation and photoinhibition, your going to make matters far worse.

These two go hand in hand. If you have a tank with decent nutrients and or food and good light, the coral will be able to "recieve" or process the light. If, on the other hand, the coral is starving, adding more light, or less nutrients will make it worse.

It's cheap to try, you got NOTHING to loose and it will be proven within short time.

Reduce your light as I suggested, add coral food EVERY night, and before lights on, not a little bit, but add a biweekly dose every night. Do this for 1 week and monitor your ammonia.

If I'm wrong, you can always exclude lack of nutrients and photoinhibition, do your waterchange and no harm done.
 
Ok now guys. Everyone says to make slow changes with sps. Plus I just got some new frags from franklypre, thanks bro.

So to recap. I have paleing corals and slow to no growth. Not browing, except a red planet that has been brown and not growing for a year...so nothing new there :(

I have reduced the photo period by two hours on both the lights switches.

I have reduced my dosing by half and am doing a routine dose now. Things seem stable now.

I have stated feeding oyster feast and aminos, the oysters I feed twice a day after the lights go out, and before they come on (actually easy for me cause I work a night shift job).

Other things to note that happened before this thread...4 out of 6 bulbs are new, all blue+. I'm down to 3 fish where once I had 13. The temp is stable again after a chiller pump broke. And biopellets have been successfully running for the past year. (N and P are low, bit cyanide is hard to eradicate)

Even other things I need to do, albeit slowly. Get two more bulbs; I can't decide on purple+, blue+, or coral+...or what combo of the two. I want to add more fish again. Wanting a melanurus wrasse. I need to recharge my DI resin to keep the water pure. And yes a WC is in the works for next week though I haven't decided how big of one.

I lost an echinata frag that bleached out in a hurry after getting it. Is that a low light frag? Cause its the second one I've lost on my frag rack...and man it bleached fast.

Growth of my birdsnest colonies is great...still very fast and healthy.

Color has stopped receding so far but has not come back very rich...though on mh monti caps I can see the new growth is darker in color. (richer)

Montis are also showing some growth...but my acro species are still stunted.

LPS corals are "ok" except my chalices which are recovering from severe bleaching. Keep in mind, a lot of this trouble started when I began to replace my bulbs. :/
 
Corals "eat" continuously when food is available. Without it, the ~20% energy budget they need from feeding/predating, makes them unable to continue photosynthesis properly, and the coral will in addition be starved from stronger light and not receive energy from anywhere will not allow them to restore themselves, only survive at best.

Remember, while the C N P is very low detectable in the ocean, the amount of organisms in a liter of water is far greater than we can ever have in our tanks. Hence, you can never overfeed in terms of what is eaten, you can however accumulate N & P. This is what you worry about, not the food itself.

Question I ask myself since I had the same problem as you up until a few weeks ago, do you feed in regard to your filtration or in regard to your top livestock (fish)? If you have no measurable N or P, you won't do any wrong in bringing your nutrients up, especially coral food which can never be too much, but rather if there is no utilization of it, will accumulate, and this is about the same as your concern with everything else. Overdoing or under doing is both wrong in equal terms when it comes to filtration.
 
Dave, I also am in a simular position with my tank and find your thread helpful.

Vannpytt makes some good points in regards import /exports volumes of nutrients I also find helpful.


daveonbass said:
I also dose the calcium and alk during the day...I assume that is ok as well.

thanks in advance for any more help.
Click to expand...

As for the cal & Alk I belive that the better time to dose is during the night to aid in the nightly PH drops.
 
also...the reason I bring up my N and P levels...is because I got them there by using Biopellets. This is a determining factor becasue the resoning behind the Biopellets is that the bacteria that consume the C, N, and P are suppoed to be slothed off and what is not skimmed out immediately is then free floating in the water and can be consumed by the corals. (in my case I think it's consumed by the cyno)

SO...the point here is that again I want to take the feeding slowly so as not to OVER feed too quickly and cause a mini tank crash. I want to make sure the the bacteria are not so plentiful and that they are feeding my cyno...and by adding MORE food I just get worse cyno.

Also I want to do this all one step at a time. I really do appreciate everyones input and suggestions...but I just refuse to do them all at once...other wise I will not know what I did that fixed things. Another point is that I don't think it's just one thing. so I'm trying a few that seem (intuitively) to be the culprits. So far from my own experience...and knowledge of what I have and havent been slacking off on lately...I'm starting with lower light on the tank, more food, and regulat dosing for stability. Those have been my weak points lately. If those do nothing in a month or two, then I may considder changing something else that's major, like removing the Biopellets, Feeding MORE...more fish...etc.

Again I will keep everyone posted...but please be patient with me...I don't want to rush/shock anthing that I DO still have in the tank. so for not it's baby steps.

;)
 
daveonbass said:
also...the reason I bring up my N and P levels...is because I got them there by using Biopellets. This is a determining factor becasue the resoning behind the Biopellets is that the bacteria that consume the C, N, and P are suppoed to be slothed off and what is not skimmed out immediately is then free floating in the water and can be consumed by the corals. (in my case I think it's consumed by the cyno)

SO...the point here is that again I want to take the feeding slowly so as not to OVER feed too quickly and cause a mini tank crash. I want to make sure the the bacteria are not so plentiful and that they are feeding my cyno...and by adding MORE food I just get worse cyno.

Also I want to do this all one step at a time. I really do appreciate everyones input and suggestions...but I just refuse to do them all at once...other wise I will not know what I did that fixed things. Another point is that I don't think it's just one thing. so I'm trying a few that seem (intuitively) to be the culprits. So far from my own experience...and knowledge of what I have and havent been slacking off on lately...I'm starting with lower light on the tank, more food, and regulat dosing for stability. Those have been my weak points lately. If those do nothing in a month or two, then I may considder changing something else that's major, like removing the Biopellets, Feeding MORE...more fish...etc.

Again I will keep everyone posted...but please be patient with me...I don't want to rush/shock anthing that I DO still have in the tank. so for not it's baby steps.

;)
Click to expand...

Dave, you are absolutely correct in changing one ONE thing at a time. In a situation like this, where you ask for advice in a thread, you will get many different opinions as to what the cause is; and you are doing the right thing by following one aspect at a time. If whatever you first try doesnt help, then so be it, but at least its one thing that is then eliminated as a possible cause and you can confidently move onto the next issue to try.

Keep us updated my friend.
 
Yeah I have done that in the past and did like 5 things to try and beat hair algae in an older tank...I finally got rid of it all...but don't know what did it...haha. It was surely a combo of all 5 things...but I wish I had done it one at a time.

this time though I have SPS and they ARE proving to be more sensitive so I am going a little slower...3 things at a time. :P
 
One thing I would suggest is that you keep a journal. It would help you keep track of things and be able to reference it in the future.

For example, what prompted the use of the bio pellets & how they affected your corals over time & maybe other changes that have happend that may have caused the situation you're in.
 
im not sure if this was mentioned but i saw your par #'s. those lights are strong. granted im not running t'5s im running AI leds but if i try to get par numbers that high i would fry most of my corals in my tank. i shoot for 100 on the sand and that gives me about 250-300 towards the upper part of the tank .
 
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