Softies And LPS Don't Do Well In My Tank. Why?

joeychitwood

Volkl Yokel
Staff member
RC Mod
I have a 54 gallon corner tank with a 250 watt Giesemann pendant halide light fixture and a 14K Phoenix bulb. My clams, SPS and fish do well in the tank, but mushrooms, Colt corals, meat corals and almost all other softies and LPS seem to shrivel and blanch their color in the tank. The exceptions are my Red and Green Open Brain corals.

The mushrooms which have migrated into the shade on the LR look pretty good. I see so many other tanks on RC with MH lighting and thriving softies and LPS corals. Can anyone suggest why my tank cannot support these corals? When I had PC lighting on a 55, I cut thirteen generations of frags from a Colt coral.
 
This is just a guess, but maybe you are having a little chemical warfare going on. Do you run carbon at all?
 
nutrient poor?

Whatever is up,my setup works kind of like that. I never could keep a colt and most xenia either. and my pink redsea are just fading away. mushrooms and zoos kind of limp along,unless they eat :D, then they are fat n sassy. pretty much all leathers are like that actually, sarcos, lobos, kenya tree, even S. dura sits like a lump. I have several lumps of leathers that are 4-5 years old :D they do absolutely nothing.

the only softy that grows really fast for me is green sinularia, and as mentioned, the softies that eat. maybe they eat too? not sure.

did you feed your LPS?
 
LPS and Softies like very nutrient rich water. I'm the opposite, I can get softies and LPS to grow like crazy, but I can't get SPS to grow to save my life. I have a very nutrient rich tank. That's also why you don't see to many tanks that have everything. Usually people keep SPS or they keep LPS and Softies. Can you keep everything? Yes, but you have to find the right balance. Your Clams are doing well because of the lighting. They would do better with more nutrients though.
 
Too much light for the lps. Beaching is a concept that means the algae in the corals have been put on over drive--producing too much food to quick causing the coral to expel them---once they are expelled the colour is gone from the coral and it looks bleached
also have you checked the water temp--on that size of tank you could be heating the water over 83 degress--corals start to be affected by that.
Capn_H
 
The Giesemann hangs 9-11 inches above the water surface, depending on the season. The water temps vary from 78-80 degrees. I run carbon, and add B-Ionic calcium and buffer solutions. The water is probably relatively nutrient-poor, as I skim heavily and feed the fish sparingly.
 
that is fine light for softies, I don't think it is light.
i would blame weird water chemistry before light.
those corner cubes are deep and the light is getting pretty thin. I had a corner cube set up for a while on the system.(anybody need a corner cube drilled in the 45º pane :D? it's the one in the gorg spawning pics of way long ago) it had softies in the bottom and frag racks up near the top. lots of shrooms below. no fish, 250w AB 10kK 3" off the water and 4 2 foot VHO actinics laying on eggcrate supports right on the tank. 24" of water eats up the light, for real.
 
Your light is fine. The bleaching is not due to too much light. If anything, not enough. How old is your MH bulb? Softies will actually do better with more light. I have a 92 Corner. I have a 250w, 10,000K MH about 8" off of the water. I have 375w in additional VHO. My LPS are low and high in the tank and do very well. My Xenia is at surface level and is right under the MH. It grows so fast I can barely keep it cut back. The problem is going to be in your water. How much are you skimming. You may be over skimming. SPS do very well with lots of skimming, where LPS and SPS like less.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9818203#post9818203 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Subliminal
Maybe to much flow?
Could be. I'm running two modified Tunze Nano 6025 pumps each putting out about 1100 gph.

The fact that the softies seem to do better in the shade is what made me think that perhaps the problem is due to too much light or the wrong color in Kelvin.
 
I have 250W MH and PC actinic on my 54 corner as well. The LPS I have do fine with the light. I have moved them to a little less flow and they did better, so I'd vote for the flow, except my frogspawn seems to love a lot of flow.
 
Yes, less flow would be good. Softies, LPS, and even Clams don't like to be blasted. They like to be gently waving back and forth.
 
My clams don't seem to mind it, but my PH are high in my tank since thats were my SPS are. All my LPS are on the bottom.
 
Yeah, that was a total guess on my part. I've had saltwater for under 4 months, so i'm pretty much a n00b. Just a guess though, as I've always heard SPS love flow and softies don't necessarily like it quite as much.
 
Easy way to experiment. Move some of the corals to a shade area or if that can not be done put a piece of egg crate or shade cloth over an area and see how they do.
What is your sG/salinity? Softies do like more dissolved organics in the water.
I have one Tunze Nano stream in my 20l plus a 200gph filter.

Now get back to the lounge!:D
 
My SG is 1.026 and it is very stable. Between the carbon an the Remora skimmer, I don't think I have much in the way of organics in the water.

(Hobster, are you packing when you venture out like this?)
 
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