SPS not coloring up

jimrawr

jimrawr

New member
Ok I know this question has been asked one million times, but I really cant find an answer. My system has been running now for a year and a half. For awhile I had a big GHA problem that I ended up doing a full rock swap to get rid of it all. At that time my SPS had lost a lot if not all of the color they had, which I believe was caused by the GHA eating up all the necessary nutrients in the tank. The GHA I had was really bad as in nothing would kill it, I tried quite a number of things, changing gfo out every 3 days for 2 months was one of them. Now since April 23rd my tank has all new live rock and no algae to be found anywhere. I maintain alk/ca by 2 part dosing with a pump that doses 24 times per day. I try to maintain 9.5dkh and 420ca but they do swing a bit but not in short periods.

My system:

92g corner tank with Aqueon model 3 sump
400w MH Radium 20k with Icecap Ballast
2 Mp10's and 2 Koralia 4's
SWC 180 skimmer

ca: 400
alk:9.5
mag:1450
nitrates: not detectable (maybe this API kit is garbage? I could never detect nitrates)
po4: .11 (hanna)
Temp: 77-82
sg: 1.025 (recently order calibration fluid to be sure)

I keep my halides on 6 hours and my t5's on for 12 hours.

My sps do seem to be growing at a good rate but the color one some of them just isnt coming back. Also I have lost some color on some LPS that I have. I have a nice favia that was pink with green rim and now its all purple, and also a lobo pink with green rim also now all purple. As far as growth I had a few sps frags that I mounted straight onto the rock and the base has grown from a frag to around one inch diameter in 1.5 months.

I get pretty good polyp extension on the ones that are happy, and then the browned out ones aren't showing much PE at all.

My MP10s are on the sides of the tank pointing to the middle, and the Koralias are all the way in the back of the tank down low pointing forward as to not let detritus build up in the back of the tank since the corner tanks are really deep. I have Chaeto in the sump which refuses to grow at all I think due to being a LNS right now. I had a large ball of chaeto to start with, it died after about 2 months, and then I got another large ball which is slowly dying again.

I also started to run Vodka when I had the GHA problem and I am dosing 3ml per day right now. I think I will stop this but over a few week period wean off of it.

I would really appreciate any advise.

This pic is around a month and a half old

newtank.jpg
 
Everything seems to be in order ,but your PO4 reading is very high,and SPS will not color up until you get it down.Try to get it down to 0.03 or less.
 
.11 is considered high? ill refresh the GFO but ive seen some tanks in the .8-1.0 range with nice colors
 
Ok I just refreshed the GFO will try to keep on top of that. Ive been changing it about every 3 weeks as of late. Any reason I could have PO4 but no nitrates? I would imagine if you have one then you should probably have the other
 
Well there are a few things to think about.

You mention buying calibration fluid for your refractometer. They can go out and should be checked somewhat regularly. Your SG could be off.

Also, you mention some Alk swing. Not sure what timeframe you are talking about, but that could also be bother some SPS. They usually like a very steady ALK.

You dose Vodka. Many times people also dose a type of bacteria as well to feed off of the carbon source such as MB7. You might try doing that as that might help get your Phosphate levels to drop. If Cheato is dying, possibly there just is not much nutrient for your corals but with that high of phosphate I would lean to that Not being the case, but also something to chew on.

Not really sure why you would be showing 0 Nitrates with a higher phos level. You might cross check that level just to take that out of the equation, or to possibly find out if they are high and your test kit is wrong.

Just my two cents and food for thought.
 
purge43 said:
I would consider that 400w bulb over a small tank suspect, but I dont know the depth.
Click to expand...

I have the same lamp over a 40gallon. Colors look great, but my PO4 does get over .2 and i hand feed the colonies at night.

What about a temp swing as well? Do you have a dramatic high and low temp thro the day?

2010-05-08155437.jpg
 
I would guess to much light. Maybe cut the actinics back a few hrs to 10 hr on. Mh at 6 seems right on but 400Wt is lots of light for 25" tall tank. How high is the bulb above the water line?
 
I think I may have found a problem. So yesterday when I was testing my water, I had alk 10dkh and ca 390. 390 is a bit low so I wanted to raise it to 430. So I dosed the proper amount, and then today I retested my water. My CA raised to 430 which was what I intended, and then while I was rummaging around I found an older salifert kit that wasnt completely finish and didnt expire till 2014. So I ran a test with salifert and found ma CA to be 365, so then I retested and again 365.

Elos: 430
Salifert: 365

So when my ELOS was testing 390 my calcium with the salifert was probably somewhere around 310-320. I am going to try to get another test kit tomorrow to confirm
 
Wow that is a big difference in Calcium readings. Curious to see what happens when you test with another test kit.
I prefer Salifert test kits all the way..
 
jimrawr said:
I think I may have found a problem. So yesterday when I was testing my water, I had alk 10dkh and ca 390. 390 is a bit low so I wanted to raise it to 430. So I dosed the proper amount, and then today I retested my water. My CA raised to 430 which was what I intended, and then while I was rummaging around I found an older salifert kit that wasnt completely finish and didnt expire till 2014. So I ran a test with salifert and found ma CA to be 365, so then I retested and again 365.

Elos: 430
Salifert: 365

So when my ELOS was testing 390 my calcium with the salifert was probably somewhere around 310-320. I am going to try to get another test kit tomorrow to confirm
Click to expand...
I have an Elos Mag kit and it tests higher than the Salifert mag test, weird.
 
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??
 
No opinion on the bulbs but if you've been running gfo 24/7 you might want to take it off line for a bit and do some wc to get the po4 down. Gfo is really aggressive stripping the water column of good nuetreints. I took mine off line 2 months ago and my corals are looking a lot better.
 
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