SPS bleaching

After following the video by hanna checker I forgot to hold down the button to start the timer which gave me a reading of 0.12. I franticly ran over got water in the other vile did a quick zero and put the one with reagent back in for the timer which gave me a reading of 0.09
 
Well one of the frags from my last RTN loss is fine so far, where as all the other frags n' bits of it are completely white.

I talked to some people at the LFS and they said to try for a 20k vs 10k like spectrum set my whites a 10% and my blues at 50-60% I've been running them at 10%-50% for about 3 days now and the purple tipped frogspawn looks more colorful. It could just be the now ~20k lighting but I think there is improvement perhaps with my zoas as well! I don't see any polyp extension on the red montipora but all my LPS (Duncans, frogspawn, & hammer coral) looks fairly open.
 
>> Hanna checker for alkalinity

Did you double check to make sure you did not have the bad pack of reagents?

Do yourself a favor and get the Salifert Alk kit and don't look back. I've made so many mistakes but the most important lesson I learned is to always have 2 Alk kits on hand to double check measurements.

Sorry if I missed you double checking Alk. :)
 
Most folks that run LEDs do tend to run a blue-heavy spectrum. That is the case with my tanks - the Radions typically run 18K - 20K during the photoperiod, and all-blue LEDs at the beginning and end of the cycle.

It isn't exactly clear why this color balance would be more successful with LED fixtures; whiter spectrums like 14K and 10K typically produce faster growth with Metal Halide fixtures than do bluer spectrums like 20K Radium bulbs.

It does sound like your lighting was considerably too strong from your observations. But there really isn't any way to assess this with any accuracy without a light meter. There isn't an easy way around it. If you LFS is fairly strong, you should talk to them about renting/borrowing a PAR meter. If there's a local reefing club, that's a good source for borrowing a PAR meter as well. Failing these two options, you're pretty much going to have to purchase one. As mentioned before, this is simply a drawback of LEDs; because of their diffuse-light nature, it's rarely absolutely required when running T5HO and/or Metal Halide fixtures.
 
Did you double check to make sure you did not have the bad pack of reagents?

Do yourself a favor and get the Salifert Alk kit and don't look back.
]

I double checked ALK with the LFS and I have tested nitrate with a Salifert Kit I just got which came out to 0.

I forgot to mention the LFS tested my water and Phosphate was undetectable on a Elos kit.

A guy (local SPS expert) at the LFS said to just keep doing what I'm doing SPS don't like change but I think I forgot to tell him how long the color loss has been going on for but I told the 3 other people at the LFS and showed them all photos. I always end up forgetting to say something to someone at the LFS. The store consensus was all my parameters are in check and that it probably has just been lighting and they wish me luck.

I still will keep the thread up to date with any changes.

Thanks for all the help and input thus far.
 

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