No Growth in 1.5 Years - What Gives?

Solitaryensis

Solitaryensis

New member
Hi Everyone,

About a year and a half ago I started an IM 10 gallon and then about 6 months ago transitioned over to an IM 30 gallon. I have not had a single coral death in that time but oddly enough, none of my corals have grown much, if at all. My corals maintain great color and great polyp extension and otherwise look healthy but just no growth. For example, the first coral I added a year and a half ago was a single head of frogspawn and it is still one fat, healthy head today. My GPS doesn't even grow!

I have been in the hobby 10+ years and stumped. All my params check out fine. I don't dose anything but do regular water changes with IO every 1-3 weeks. Lights are AI Hydra 52. AquaMAXX HOB skimmer.

Any thoughts?
 
IME It's dosing. Just by adding kalkwasser to my IM20, my growth has really spiked. although that should not make a difference for softies. Also in a 10g you basically MUST do a 1/2g water change every week. They are getting enough nutrients to survive but not grow


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MreasyC said:
IME It's dosing. Just by adding kalkwasser to my IM20, my growth has really spiked. although that should not make a difference for softies. Also in a 10g you basically MUST do a 1/2g water change every week. They are getting enough nutrients to survive but not grow


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That was my hunch but since my alk and calcium checked out fine, I was stumped (obviously I am not measuring for all trace elements but assumed water changes were replenishing enough). And all I have are LPS and softies in the tank.
 
Solitaryensis said:
That was my hunch but since my alk and calcium checked out fine, I was stumped (obviously I am not measuring for all trace elements but assumed water changes were replenishing enough). And all I have are LPS and softies in the tank.
Click to expand...



The water change regiment is actually more important. The LPS will have a lot of trouble without adding calc/alc. when you say "fine" what level is that?
 
C.Eymann said:
How stable are those readings between w/c w it h no dosing? Also, what's your pH hang around at ?
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PH hangs our around 7.8-8. Admittedly, I don't test as often as I should. The above numbers are the general average taken before my 1-3 week water changes. Assuming for arguments sake that I happened to get some good tests but my numbers otherwise fluctuate dramatically, would you expect to see unhealthy corals, low polyp extension, death, etc.?
 
Solitaryensis said:
PH hangs our around 7.8-8. Admittedly, I don't test as often as I should. The above numbers are the general average taken before my 1-3 week water changes. Assuming for arguments sake that I happened to get some good tests but my numbers otherwise fluctuate dramatically, would you expect to see unhealthy corals, low polyp extension, death, etc.?
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Also, besides the euphyllia, I don't have SPS or corals that are high calc demanding.
 
Maybe try pulling air into the tank form outside with a lift pump orakimmer intake and check the Mag level. Low ph and mag could be culprits.
 
Since this was bumped anyway, my thoughts:

I've had an Aquamaxx skimmer now for about 2 months. It's a beast. It sucks the water clean. That might be your problem. LPS and softies (you mentioned a euphyllia coral and GSP) need nutrients in the water to grow, and particularly euphyllia probably appreciate some food now and then, so you might want to consider feeding it small bits of meaty foods like frozen mysis shrimp. I know after feeding my trumpet corals directly, they budded like crazy and spread everywhere in my old tank.

I don't directly feed anymore because my tank is mostly SPS, but SPS grow fine in those conditions, however my LPS don't. The only LPS coral I have that grows is a GIANT plate coral, which gets a lot of food because it's right under where I feed the fishes, so errant food sinks and lands on it and it consumes it, and it has grown from tiny to GIANT in 3 years (it's way too big for my tank now).

Something to consider, maybe you're already feeding, which if you are, I have no idea why they're not growing lol.
 
I find it hard to believe you are getting those numbers with instant ocean salt... without supplementing and dosing IO is a FOWLR salt... even switching to RC I imagine you would see better growth... go to a better salt than both those and you will likely experience better growth altogether...
 
Ide be careful with reef crystals. They killed my LPS. 2 bags of them were mixing to 13 pKH. Switched to redsea blue tub and the remainign survivign lps have restored beautifully. Idk how u guys run keep lps at such high alk
 
I had the same problem in my 125. I had corals in there for over 7 years and they barely grew while others didn't grow at all. I never got it figured out and eventually just got rid of them and downsized.
 
hokejka said:
Ide be careful with reef crystals. They killed my LPS. 2 bags of them were mixing to 13 pKH. Switched to redsea blue tub and the remainign survivign lps have restored beautifully. Idk how u guys run keep lps at such high alk
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How much water are you changing to make any real difference in Alk? Anything under 1DKH raise on a water chang is fine even with SPS. I run my ALk at 8.5ish and change 10% every week with RC, It raises he ALK to Approx 8.9DKH. That is on my RSR nano (25gal total) If your doing massive water changes you would need to buffer your alk down but for a regular 10% if would hardly effect your levels.
 
Cheapreef said:
How much water are you changing to make any real difference in Alk? Anything under 1DKH raise on a water chang is fine even with SPS. I run my ALk at 8.5ish and change 10% every week with RC, It raises he ALK to Approx 8.9DKH. That is on my RSR nano (25gal total) If your doing massive water changes you would need to buffer your alk down but for a regular 10% if would hardly effect your levels.
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You are 100% correct. It should be ok with regular water changes/ if there are enough corals to soak it up.

I was doing large changes of about 30% a week to vacuum out the sand bed (dealing with algae and cyano) so the alk quickly went up to mix amount and I had no idea what was happening to corals. I figured it out after 75% of the lps died. :/ I was unaware the alk would have that effect or that buffering it down was a thing. Learned the hard way. just something to keep in mind.
 
I'd suggest testing your Alk and Ca every other day at the same time each test day straight for the one, two or three weeks between water changes (whichever duration you choose). Record your results. My guess is the instability of your parameters of the big three, Alk, Ca and Mg between water changes is not giving your coral the stability they need to thrive.

After testing, if you find that your parameters are in fact stable, which I find hard to believe without dosing, then you could consider other variables, like nutrients and feeding.

Either way, be methodical in your approach to troubleshoot your issues. It'll make the hobby more rewarding as you learn more about your tank and fix issues as they arise. :)
 
If in fact you are getting those kind of #'s for parameters I would be tweaking light settings for sure. What may seem asethetically pleasing may not be best for coral growth.
 
NanoReefWanabe said:
I find it hard to believe you are getting those numbers with instant ocean salt... without supplementing and dosing IO is a FOWLR salt... even switching to RC I imagine you would see better growth... go to a better salt than both those and you will likely experience better growth altogether...
Click to expand...

I tested freshly mixed water last night and got the same numbers (except of course 0 nitrates). I also tested before the water change and still getting the same numbers. It's a fairly small tank so I suspect I should be able to keep things pretty stable with bi-weekly water changes.
 
krkosiba said:
If in fact you are getting those kind of #'s for parameters I would be tweaking light settings for sure. What may seem asethetically pleasing may not be best for coral growth.
Click to expand...

I suspect lighting could be one part of the equation. I am getting pretty bad shadowing on the sides and have been slowly turning up the lights but no matter where the corals, my growth isn't good.

As far as I can tell, nitrates seem to be the only parameter that isn't doing well but I suspect I'd see some die-off as a result.
 
Is this an sps dominated tank? If so and your lighting is too low on percetange that could be why you aren't getting much growth.
 
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