Starting SPS, any advice?

[hkgar]

Mostly I am looking for advice on photo period. My tank is a 180 with a 40 gallon sump. When I do the calculations for actual total water volume it come to 175 gallons. I have about 110 ponds of live rock, run a Life Reef Skimmer and have set up an Algae Turf Scrubber. I am dosing ALK (Randy's recipe 1) at about 45 ml per day with a dosing pump dosing every 3 hours and Calcium is added directly when needed. I am also running carbon in a TLF 150 reactor.

Tank Parameters:
ALK 8.7 dKh
Calcium 450
PO4 .01
Nitrate 0
Mag 1400
PH 7.9 to 8.2

I have very few coral at the present time. LPS and 2 Birdsnest and 3 small acro frags.

My lighting is 3 250 watt radium's that are on from noon to 8 PM and 2 54 Watt ATI t5 bulbs. One purple plus and one Actinic. The t5's come on at 10 AM and off at 9 PM

Tank has been up for 2.5 years.

 

[BryanS4]

Don't do it. Your wallet will hate you for getting into SPS, lol!!

While I'm running LED only, your photo period is very similar to what I'm running. My light pop on at noon and turn off at 10pm.

Maybe others while similar lightning will chime in.

 

[hkgar]

I am not a novice to SPS and had a 90 gallon SPS tank:



and it was lit by LED's (AI). After I got my 180 and upgraded my LED's I could just never get it to work. I have no idea why. My 180 has been disaster after another. Lost all coral I moved over from the 90. Then lost 9 of 11 fish due to an outbreak of Ick. Started back at it again and in January an unkillable form of GHA took over. Lost all fish and most corals. The fish an coral succumbed to treating the tank with Fauna Marin AlgaeX. I had treated also with high mag and Algae Fix. Finally took 3 days and removed all rock scrubbed them down, sprayed with Hydrogen Peroxide and a fresh water dip. Inadvertently scrubbed some Zoa's an they released their toxin and I ended up with 3 days in the hospital. Why am i still doing this?

Also my circulation is from 2 MP 40's (RC at 65%) and 2 Hydor 1400's. My sump is in the basement and is a long run so my return pump is an Awaki 100 and is performing at about 800 gallons per hour.