Officially throwing in the towel

reefmutt said:
Personally, you've gotten fantastic advice from many here but what Sahin and Markalot have said is what I would stick to.
Your LEDs will work perfectly.. Just set them as sahin suggests, or even a touch lower for starters.. And then do not adjust them anymore..
Your tank is so new.. It's brand new. No surprise you are having trouble with the sps..
Do smaller water changes if you want to do them regularly but find a salt matches your parameters and aim for rock solid stability.
Your tank needs to mature..
I looked at the picks at the beginning of this thread and I thought.. 'Holy crap, they are spotless! What 'dirt' is he seeing?'
I have to clean my glass daily and I have quite litterally a hundred snails in the tank.. And hermits.. And 3 tangs.
The ocean is jam packed with clean up crews. Add a bunch for your algea.. They convert that algae to coral food..
Don't throw in the towel, man..
You may laugh but I think you are half way to a great sps tank!
Click to expand...

thanks man. the glass gets pretty smutty after a couple days so I scrape the glass every couple days. the rocks just look horrid color wise. I will add a few pieces of well established rock. The guy that owns the LFS I buy everything at is a good solid dude and im gonna go at noon when they open up and see if he will sell me a couple pieces of rock outta his sps tank sump. haha. I'll just guilt trip him into it and hopefully that will give my tank the kick start it needs. I'll post up a pic of what his look like to show how well his stuff is growing under LED's for the halide junkies on here... I just tested my water today and here are the results.

PH 8.0
Nitrate just under 5 ppm
cal 550
alk 8.8
P04 0
temp 78.3
salinity 1.026


I am going to keep rolling on the water changes as I will be using the red sea coral pro ( I bought a bucket ) changing from the kent that my LFS sells premixed I started the tank with. He uses the red sea coral pro in his coral tanks.

the difference is this between the two

kent
cal 540
alk 8.5
mag 1200

red sea
cal 450
alk 12.2
mag 1340
 
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While I don't like LED's and would ditch them asap for a 6 lamp T5 fixture to remove any speculation, I highly doubt they're the specific problem here.

The tank is too new, can tell by the rocks... Let the fish and LPS do their thing for a few months while the rock matures and you perfect your husbandry... Get dosing sorted because water changes will NOT be enough and WILL be too unstable for an SPS system. Get your water change schedule and parameters locked down dead solid for a couple months with no or very minimal adjustment, minimize chemical medias, get rid of equipment tinkering, etc.

Revisit SPS this spring or summer when everything has settled in.
 
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Well, good luck..
I've been keeping reef tanks for 23 years and it's always been pretty much a snap.
My last tank, I set up 3 years ago was an unmitigated disaster.. I had to take a step back and start over using waaaay more patience... It worked for me..

Just one observation: you have a calcium of 550 in your tank and you are about to change over to a salt with a kh of over 12... That could be a funky transition.. And imo, over 12 is just too high.. Many (JBNY for one) use muriatic acid in their premixed salt water to drop kh to a more manageable level.. I've tried it and it is very effective...
 
I thought the high alk was a bit strange as well but I am kind of planning ahead. for one I havent heard any bad press about that brand of salt, and for two, the LFS I plan on buying 90% of my livestock from uses that in their tanks so it should be an easy transition for acclimating new corals
 
Instant Ocean is my favorite, heh... Very close to my ideal 8 Alk, 420 Calc, and the Mg is easily/cheaply bumped up... Also far cheaper...
 
Every SPS tank I have run has been ULNS and the one variable I never change is feeding the corals constantly. My biggest SPS success was feeding with Aquavitro Fuel and KZ Coral Vitalizer. I would basically alternate the two every day. If I stopped feeding for a week I would see changes immediately. Full zeo systems while they are ULNS if you go by their instructions you actually have to feed the corals constantly.
 
not reading the thread but after seeing pics your rock looks like it is not yet cycled which would be reason for your troubles
 
ridetheducati said:
Post number 13 looks like signs of dinos, which is not a good sign and could be a factor worth considering.
Click to expand...

I asked my Lfs about that and he said it was just diatoms and would go away. After looking up what dinoflagellates look like I'd say that's what it is. I added a couple pieces of live rock from my Lfs coral system to my dump to help out the bacterial part. Found a couple bristle worms in them so I'm sure I'll have more. This tank is going to Be the death of me. I'm sure of it
 
WaReefer458 said:
I asked my Lfs about that and he said it was just diatoms and would go away. After looking up what dinoflagellates look like I'd say that's what it is. I added a couple pieces of live rock from my Lfs coral system to my dump to help out the bacterial part. Found a couple bristle worms in them so I'm sure I'll have more. This tank is going to Be the death of me. I'm sure of it
Click to expand...

No it will all work out, you just made a goof, I did the same thing in the past, that is how I identified where the problem was, I knew once I asked about the rock, that it likely started dead, but you made the same mistake I did, which was not to completely treat the rock before you started the reef. Bacterial seeding is what you would do to kick start life on dead rock, however, you still would be battling trying to work out the phosphate bound within the rock, due to the die off, rock is more porous than you think. I still feel the rock should be removed and replaced with fresh live rock, that is if you want to see sps in this tank before springtime. Otherwise, pull the rock and treat it properly, you may be ready in about six months, especially if you you put the treated rock in a tank with established live rock. Either way you will do whatever you decide to do, I would just warn against the issues you don't see now that will happen down the road. Good luck, keep us updated and Happy Reefing :)
 
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I set up my tank with decade old live rock from a system which had excess po4. It sat in a barrel, dry for a year before I used it without any treatment..
I have had excess po4 unless when I used some bacterial/carbon means to pull it down.. Right now I have n of 1ish ppm and p of .14.. And am not using any Carbon or pellets.. Just cheato and dsb..
After a year in its current configuration, the corals are doing quite well with good colour and pe.. Granted, I have all sorts of algea issues but the corals are happy.. It takes time and some tweaking.. But mostly, it takes time and stability.. And herbivores!

Bristle worms are great to have. They are amazing detrivores. Useful addition to the reef ecology.
 
Don't let bristle worms stress you out. They are fine and even helpful. There's a big one that comes out of my yasha/pistol's burrow sometimes and they just ignore it. I figure if it's not bothering them, why let it bother me? :) They keep my chaeto clean too!
 
Personally, I suspect you've got water chemistry issues, not lighting/nutrient issues.

As others have noted here, Acros demand stable water conditions. And that means stable everything. Here's the really inexpensive troubleshooting I'd do:

1) Test your LFS's water from the tanks you're buying SPS from with your kits. Those tests should be Ca, Alk, NO3, sp. gr., and temperature. Ask him how he maintains these - dosing, very frequent water changes (not unusual for an LFS) and/or calcium reactor. You don't need to duplicate his methods, just get a feel for the swings his water chemistry is going through.

2) Test your tank's water for the same parameters every other day between water changes, and before the water change and after the water change on the day that you do it.

3) Ensure that you have proper calibration on your physical parameters - you've already taken care of the refractometer, but you should also check your temperature probe(s), and the fluctuations the temperature undergoes.
 
dkeller_nc said:
Personally, I suspect you've got water chemistry issues, not lighting/nutrient issues.

As others have noted here, Acros demand stable water conditions. And that means stable everything. Here's the really inexpensive troubleshooting I'd do:

1) Test your LFS's water from the tanks you're buying SPS from with your kits. Those tests should be Ca, Alk, NO3, sp. gr., and temperature. Ask him how he maintains these - dosing, very frequent water changes (not unusual for an LFS) and/or calcium reactor. You don't need to duplicate his methods, just get a feel for the swings his water chemistry is going through.

2) Test your tank's water for the same parameters every other day between water changes, and before the water change and after the water change on the day that you do it.

3) Ensure that you have proper calibration on your physical parameters - you've already taken care of the refractometer, but you should also check your temperature probe(s), and the fluctuations the temperature undergoes.
Click to expand...

His tank is on a dosing pump and he does a 15 gallon water change every two weeks on a 150 gal tank. My parameters are almost identical except for the fact he runs his tanks at lower temps than reccomended. All his tanks are 74 deg I believe. The only downside to his sps tank is it grows some nasty thick algae that he has a sea hare in there to keep it under control. And for a 150 gal display he only has 3 fish in it. 6 line wrasse, tomini tang and a pseudo chromis he accidentally put in there and just didn't want to tear the tank apart to catch.

As far as the testing goes, I check nitrate, phos, cal, salinity weekly before and after my water change( which I do on Sunday's). I check alk every couple days because I just like to know where it is at. My temp stays between 78 and 78.3 at all times. I check my ph every now and then but don't pay much attention to it.
 
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IMO new sps reefer should use MH or T5 to start with. 10yrs ago when I start kepping sps with MH light with little experience and everything is growing and color up nicely. lately I've been using led and it just harder to keep sps, It not impossible but it's just I have to put more time into it. With MH my water doesn't have to be perfect via led I need my water to be top notch or else it's going downhill fast.
 
I had similar issues that drove me nuts. No growth, and some corals would just brown and die. Torched quite a few.

I was actually surprised to find that turning my radion gen3 rw30 down resolved the issue. I was running too hot for too long.

One of the guys I speak to online and drool over his tank laughed at me and told me to google photo inhibition. Lol
 
I had my tank for 3 years before I could keep SPS. I had the same problem although I had some Phosphates and I couldn't figure out why they kept dying. Then a few months ago at reefapalooza, I got 3 little SPS frags and they've been flourishing and showing great growth. And I'm running a 120$ LED fixture on my 30 gallon. SPS are fickle little things but I'd keep trying of I were you.
 
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