SPS not coloring up

[allsps40]

Glad to hear you are getting the colors you want. My sps are getting to the point where I am happy with them as well.

 

[brob22]

im starting to learn that having a little bit of nitrate is a good thing. from wut i heard it gives the coeals a constant food source and help binds out the remaining phosphate when carbon dosing.

 

[cham]

I think my tank is nitrate low but phosphate high. That might be my problem, isn't amino acids full of nitrate? Would this help to dose it?

 

[brob22]

i really dont know much about amino acid and not sure what is in it, so i dont dose it.
i dose potassium nitrate, this way i know exactly what im putting in my tank and the nitrate levels are guarenteed to go up cuz ur adding it directly. there is some sort of ratio
that in order to lower phosphates to the lowest levels possible there needs to be nitrate present to bind it up by bacteria. not exactly sure how it works just know that this is the case

 

[cham]

I think I heard someone say one time to increase nitrates just feed more.

 

[brob22]

thats one way to do it, but u will also be adding phosphate

 

[smokenax]

Turns out the elos kit was correct and salivary was wrong. I tested against two more test kits and both matches my elos kit. Also I was at a lfs and he suggested I change my bulb from the radium 20k 400w se, to a ushio 400w 14k bulb. All I read about radiums is super positive but he was very critical of the bulb and stressed that they are not good bulbs for growing sps

Ay opinions on this??

stay with the elos,ive had nothing but good results with their test kits.my corals are more colorful than ever.

 

[aqua80]

Ok wanted to revisit this thread as its been almost a month to give an update.

I went to Europe for 25 days, and in that time I had someone watching my tank and feeding daily one cube of either mysis/brine/blood worms. I didnt do a water change for a month, and when I returned my SPS definitely colored up pretty nicely to the point where I am satisfied with the colors. The only thing that changed was that, as previously stated I stopped running GFO, and I changed my light bulbs from Radiums to Ushios.

I am not happy with the color of the water now due to the Ushios being pretty yellow. So I switched back to the Radiums. If I see color loss then I will know it was the bulb, if I dont see color loss then I know it was too sterile water. It definitely wasn't the PO4 levels as some had suggested because now they are even higher yet sps colors are great. If it turns out being the lighting then I will probably end up changing over to a vertex LED system.

so how things are going now ?
still with the radiums ?

 

[brettblackwell]

i finally found the thread that i have been searching for ! my tank is suffering from a nutrient deficiency too and i just haven't been able to find a thread that has my exact problem, so thanks for having a problem and then being able to fix it !

 

[jimrawr]

Problem wasnt nutrients or nutrient diffeciency. After using the Ushio 14k bulb and getting great colors, I changed back to the 400w radiums and everything started to turn brown again. So I went to a LED system, which browned out everything even more. Literally everything lost their color completely. So I changed out the LED for an ATI Sunpower 6x24w T5 system.

After using the t5 for about 3 weeks now, corals have improved a lot. I am not back to GREAT colors, but I would say after using the LED they are back to 50-60% of their full potential.

My problem was definitely lighting and after quite a few tries I am certain I got it right this time. Really happy with my T5 only system right now. Its amazing how a 400w bulb didnt bleach any of the LPS on the sandbed, neither did a Vertex Illumina 260. The ATI Sunpower did start to bleach things after only a week and I had to raise the light up higher. The light this puts out is fantastic