SPS experts, need some clarification....

rovster

rovster

Active member
This might be a dumb question, but I'll ask it anyway. I think its common knowledge that stability is needed to keep more demanding SPS species. What exactly does that mean?

Does that mean that the parameter has to stay at a specific value and not budge? Or does that mean no major swings or shifts?

The reason I'm asking is it seems the easy SPS grow great in my tank. I added 2 acros (one from Marvin, and one from LFS). The one from Marvins tank looks OK. The one from the LFS RTNd on me after 2 weeks in my tank just out of the blue.

My tank has been up and running for over a year, and I change the water 1-2 times / week religiously. For that last 2 months I've been dosing 2 part manualy. I was dosing once/day, but my Alk was slowly declining. Now I dose 5ml in the morning, and 5ml before bed and it seems to be keeping my Alk a bit more stable, although the number varies slightly.

I do want to venture into more acros in my upgrade, and I kind of want to figure this out now, not after having 10 frags of acros in my tank. I will be using a doser for the upgrade, so it should be even easier to have finer control and spread out the doses over the course of the day, and not just a heap in the morning and a heap at night. Anyone that could elaborate on this I'd appreciate it. Porko, Rogger, Marke, E, ????? TIA!:thumbsup:
 
In my experience... Alk needs to not shift more than 1kh over a 24 hour period. Dosers do make this easier. When you say it declined, how low did it get? Alk should be at a very minimum of 7kh... I prefer to keep mine around 9-10.
 
There is an acceptable range for each parameter, for example let use the scale of 1 – 10. You need to find your groove within that range, many people have success staying close to 1 and others prefer close to 10 but always staying constant. In my case I prefer 5 just in case of a variation up or down it will stay within range; this will still have an effect but at least is within range.
 
To put numbers on the matter, my alk varies between the high 7's and high 8's, but never more than 1dkH in one day. I usuallly test twice a week, but I will bump that to 3-4 for now and report my values for some more concrete numbers. SPS in my tank now are pocillipora, monti that grow like mad, and I have 3 birdsnest on the sandbed that are showing quite a bit of growth for the 3 weeks I've had them. The acro Marvin hooked me up with is starting to encrust. It doesnt look fabulous, but is improving and polyps do come out. The tip has colored up as well. Thanks again. Keep it coming!
 
Stability means no major swings. You have not given us enough info on your parameters like phosphate and nitrate. What is your alk at and what's your target? If all your sps including Marvin's are doing good except the one from the lfs then it may not be a parameter issue it could just have been one stressed coral. When u say the easy sps are ok. Does that mean they are thriving or surviving?
 
Acros from LFS a lot of times are from the wild and are not as resilient to changes. Example when i dumped 3 times the amount of kalk in my tank all the acros from LFS died in 1-3 days but every single acro from someones tank it browned or it got a little of rtn in some area but they all survived. I think your best bet is to get acros from people tanks and parameters don't have to be so perfect.
 
Easy SPS are thriving (at least that's what I believe). Monti and pocillipora needs to be trimmed back, some by me, some by my son ;)

I am kind of a newbie, especially with SPS. I don't have a "target" alk, but I try and keep it "in the 8's". If I need a more specific target, I can modify that. I havent tested for Nitrate and Phos in a long time. I havent seen algae or cyano in my tank for over 8 months, and the film algae that typically grows on the glass is very minimal. To give you an idea, I clean the glass once every 7-10 days, and even then, there is not a heavy film. I can test nitrate and phosphate, I just never did because things always "looked" good. Again, if I should be testing this stuff, I will. I've taken a very hands off approch to my tank, and as long as things keep looking good and growing, I just keep doing what I'm doing. I'll take a picture of the birdsnest frags tonight, so you can see how much they've grown in a few weeks for an idea.
 
Joshporksandwic said:
Acros from LFS a lot of times are from the wild and are not as resilient to changes. Example when i dumped 3 times the amount of kalk in my tank all the acros from LFS died in 1-3 days but every single acro from someones tank it browned or it got a little of rtn in some area but they all survived. I think your best bet is to get acros from people tanks and parameters don't have to be so perfect.
Click to expand...



THat's one thing I was considering as well. I posted on the SPS forum "Do some acros just die?" LOL! I do plan on getting most of the corals from you guys. However, this acro frag was just electric. It is now in my garbage can:headwallblue::hmm3:
 
By stability, it just means stable as in as little shift as possible. I like my Alk around 9.2 and try to keep it from getting below 8.9 and above 9.5. Your alk doesn't seem too bad although I think it would be better if you raise it a little and try to keep it as stable as possible. pH swings can also pose a problem, and pH can shift a lot between morning and night and quite a few other factors as well. How high are your phospates? Do you test for magnesium? What salt do you use? Diagnosing what is the cause for some of the problems with your acros most likely goes deeper than just alkalinity. If your doing water changes once or twice a week, your parameters should be pretty stable as long as you're using a decent salt. In fact, I'm pretty surprised that you need to dose anything considering you're doing 1-2 water changes a week and don't have too many SPS corals, unless you have a bunch of clams. It seems like your alk is fairly stable and not that low, so there's a chance that the problems you're having with acros lies somewhere else.
 
My opinion of frags, the fact that you lost a frag does not mean you are doing something wrong. You have to take into consideration the parameters of the tank they came from compared to yours. I used to run my tank with extremely low nutrients (Zeovit), each time I introduced a frag from a normal tank it would have to go through an adaptation process, sometimes this included RTN. That is the main reason I stopped using it, it worked great but had a hard time introducing frags from local tanks. Not as extreme but this same process applies within normal tanks; even if all the main parameters are the same (Temp, Salinity, Alk, Ca, Mg, NO3) add flow, light and a bunch of other stuff.
By value change of plus or minus 1 does not mean you can get away with -1 Monday to Thursday and +1 Friday to Sunday. Following that rule you can start at 9 Monday and end up at 6 on Thursday then work your way back to 9 by Sunday. Stable is 9 six out of the seven days and if you happen to be off one day not more than + or – 1.
 
canesfan44 said:
By stability, it just means stable as in as little shift as possible. I like my Alk around 9.2 and try to keep it from getting below 8.9 and above 9.5. Your alk doesn't seem too bad although I think it would be better if you raise it a little and try to keep it as stable as possible. pH swings can also pose a problem, and pH can shift a lot between morning and night and quite a few other factors as well. How high are your phospates? Do you test for magnesium? What salt do you use? Diagnosing what is the cause for some of the problems with your acros most likely goes deeper than just alkalinity. If your doing water changes once or twice a week, your parameters should be pretty stable as long as you're using a decent salt. In fact, I'm pretty surprised that you need to dose anything considering you're doing 1-2 water changes a week and don't have too many SPS corals, unless you have a bunch of clams. It seems like your alk is fairly stable and not that low, so there's a chance that the problems you're having with acros lies somewhere else.
Click to expand...

I use RSCP. My tank consumes A LOT of Alk. It is a nano at around 14 gallons, but I have a rather largh monti, poccilipora, hammer, brain, favia, cyphastrea, etc. Without dosing, my alk hovers in the 6's. I tested my fresh salt water, and its around 10dkH. I started with dosing 5ml of 2 part daily, and it got me to the high 6s-low 7s. I doubled the dose and it keeps me in the 8s and maybe flirts with 9s. My temp does fluctuate quite a bit, as with all biocubes, but its never been an issue. pH may be an issue, as its a closed hood, however, the 2 part and kalk should help with that. I can start testing pH as well if that would help. I'm not overly worried, but like I said, I want to figure this out before I wipe out 20 acro frags in my new tank, LOL!
 
Fish2reef said:
My opinion of frags, the fact that you lost a frag does not mean you are doing something wrong. You have to take into consideration the parameters of the tank they came from compared to yours. I used to run my tank with extremely low nutrients (Zeovit), each time I introduced a frag from a normal tank it would have to go through an adaptation process, sometimes this included RTN. That is the main reason I stopped using it, it worked great but had a hard time introducing frags from local tanks. Not as extreme but this same process applies within normal tanks; even if all the main parameters are the same (Temp, Salinity, Alk, Ca, Mg, NO3) add flow, light and a bunch of other stuff.
By value change of plus or minus 1 does not mean you can get away with -1 Monday to Thursday and +1 Friday to Sunday. Following that rule you can start at 9 Monday and end up at 6 on Thursday then work your way back to 9 by Sunday. Stable is 9 six out of the seven days and if you happen to be off one day not more than + or "“ 1.
Click to expand...

That definitely helps. I will start my daily testing again and track for a few weeks. Stay tuned for reports!
 
rovster said:
I use RSCP. My tank consumes A LOT of Alk. It is a nano at around 14 gallons, but I have a rather largh monti, poccilipora, hammer, brain, favia, cyphastrea, etc. Without dosing, my alk hovers in the 6's. I tested my fresh salt water, and its around 10dkH. I started with dosing 5ml of 2 part daily, and it got me to the high 6s-low 7s. I doubled the dose and it keeps me in the 8s and maybe flirts with 9s. My temp does fluctuate quite a bit, as with all biocubes, but its never been an issue. pH may be an issue, as its a closed hood, however, the 2 part and kalk should help with that. I can start testing pH as well if that would help. I'm not overly worried, but like I said, I want to figure this out before I wipe out 20 acro frags in my new tank, LOL!
Click to expand...



I didn't realize that your tank is only 14g. Keeping SPS in a tank that small will require a lot of work. At 14g and a fair amount of SPS, stability is going to take some work and a lot of testing. You'll probably need to test parameters a lot more frequently than you are. In a tank that small, it doesn't take very long for there to be a spike in any of the parameters. I now think you have a lot of SPS where I originally thought you didn't have very much because I thought you had a much bigger tank. You definitely need to test for phosphates and every other parameter a lot more frequently. If you only test when you notice algae growth, it's already too late. The idea is to test frequently, so you can prevent algae outbreaks from happening. Like Benjamin Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." What kind of lighting is on your tank?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

R
How is my chemistry looking?
Replies
1
Views
195
Uncle99
Uncle99
R
some random questions
Replies
1
Views
222
SantaMonica
S
oceangopher
Tankpocalypse Now
Replies
2
Views
160
Reefing102
Reefing102
D
Which sump would you choose?
Replies
5
Views
335
Devilphish
D
Perth_reefer
Temperature fluctuation for SPS
Replies
3
Views
337
Reefing102
Reefing102
Back
Top