The Dirty SPS Tank Club

[GroktheCube]

I feed heavily. Fish get one or two cubes frozen per day, along with a good amount of pellet food. Corals get target fed 3-5 nights a week (~3 cubes frozen, 6 heaping scoops reef chilli, a few scoops of ESV freeze dried phyto, some frozen roe). I run biopellets, an oversized skimmer, and GFO if I need to clean the glass more than once a week. TBH, I haven't tested NO3 or PO4 in a while, because everything is happy, healthy, and growing.

 

[creefer01]

This is a great thread. After having very little growth in my SPS, but great colors and stable params (420Ca, 7-7.5dkh, 1350mg, .04P04), I think that my biopellets have stalled growth. I have been feeding like crazy and am seeing my corals responding to the increased feeding. No increased growth yet, but we shall see.


Which way do you usually adjust the all when you start noticing the coralline algae growth slowing/halting out of curiosity? Do you take this as a sign that things are too low?

I've just, within the last 4 weeks, removed biopellets due to suspicion that they were stalling SPS growth. While I had other issues causing my system to be excessively dirty, color was outstanding. Since removal of pellets, color has gotten better and growth has really taken off. I dose 2-part, to be automated this weekend with Apex, and keep alk around 9, Ca 420-450.

I think it´s because the amount of nutrients VS Alkalinity, if your Alk reduce, the corals wont consume every nutrients that you have in the tank, and the algaes will use it to grow. When you raise the Alk, you raise the coral feeding and growth too and without so many nutrients the algaes will starve. This is just my 2 cent!!!

I completely agree with this as well from observations of my system.

 

[hkgar]

I think I am conviced. I have been dosing vinegar to get my PO4 & NO3 down to 0. They currently .04 and 1. I am going to continue vinegar at 30 ml in my 180 with 50 sump, not very much. My tank has been up for only 10 months so is still somewhat immature.

I find it interesting that I see no posts from anyone who is running ULNS. Maybe nothing to brag about. Too bad the difficulty in running side by side controlled experiments to scientifically determine the best methods. My poor little brain says there can only one best way, scientifically.

 

[Coral Head]

I just came across this thread. Fascinating information. I have subscribed.

 

[denis3366]

I have experienced coral growth in my 120 with recommended amounts from bulk reef supply 2 Part and believe me i use a little bit of every thing. po4 has always been at .03 (not too often, mostly after water changes) to .10 (but mostly around .06) I run High capacity GFO from BRS and i also do 55 gallon water changes every month with Red Sea Coral Pro Salt Mix. Started off softy tank But in the past five years have slowly integrated into a mixed reef mostly sps. i recommend GFO and water Changes and you'll see the just how much that helps

 

[Alex T.]

I think I am conviced. I have been dosing vinegar to get my PO4 & NO3 down to 0. They currently .04 and 1. I am going to continue vinegar at 30 ml in my 180 with 50 sump, not very much. My tank has been up for only 10 months so is still somewhat immature.

I find it interesting that I see no posts from anyone who is running ULNS. Maybe nothing to brag about. Too bad the difficulty in running side by side controlled experiments to scientifically determine the best methods. My poor little brain says there can only one best way, scientifically.

Gary, you may find it very hard to drop PO4 that much at all with your nitrates so low. You may see better results by slowly weaning your way off carbon dosing and continuing your gfo use. My guess is that your nitrates will climb, and PO4 should drop a little to a more manageable level. I was always confused in my last tank when I had absolutely no nitrates but the hair algae just got out of control. If I were ever to run a ULNS system methodology again, it would most likely be Zeovit as it accounts for ways to keep PO4 in check as well. However, I just find it easier to keep it a little dirty with the same net effect.

 

[Alex T.]

I have experienced coral growth in my 120 with recommended amounts from bulk reef supply 2 Part and believe me i use a little bit of every thing. po4 has always been at .03 (not too often, mostly after water changes) to .10 (but mostly around .06) I run High capacity GFO from BRS and i also do 55 gallon water changes every month with Red Sea Coral Pro Salt Mix. Started off softy tank But in the past five years have slowly integrated into a mixed reef mostly sps. i recommend GFO and water Changes and you'll see the just how much that helps

Wow, you've got some serious purple going on. Is that a valid? Garf Bonsai? I'd love to see a fts.

 

[Alex T.]

I have experienced coral growth in my 120 with recommended amounts from bulk reef supply 2 Part and believe me i use a little bit of every thing. po4 has always been at .03 (not too often, mostly after water changes) to .10 (but mostly around .06) I run High capacity GFO from BRS and i also do 55 gallon water changes every month with Red Sea Coral Pro Salt Mix. Started off softy tank But in the past five years have slowly integrated into a mixed reef mostly sps. i recommend GFO and water Changes and you'll see the just how much that helps

Sorry Dennis...meant Valida.

 

[biggles]

I find it interesting that I see no posts from anyone who is running ULNS. Maybe nothing to brag about. Too bad the difficulty in running side by side controlled experiments to scientifically determine the best methods. My poor little brain says there can only one best way, scientifically.

I run zero phos and nitrates at all times so i guess you'd call my reef a ULNS in the context of this discussion. The fish get 1 feed a day of mini pellets and some nori. The acros get 3 feeds of reef roids and one of cyclop-eeze a day at present and there's nothing at all wrong with my SPS colors. I'm glad that many are seeing positive results from running dirty water but don't assume those of us who don't, have lesser tanks simply because we don't post in a thread espousing coral husbandry techniques we don't follow personally.
Any discussions concerning helping others to achieve positive results with SPS colors are great IMO so i hope you guys work out what your tanks need to improve :beer:

 

[Alex T.]

I run zero phos and nitrates at all times so i guess you'd call my reef a ULNS in the context of this discussion. The fish get 1 feed a day of mini pellets and some nori. The acros get 3 feeds of reef roids and one of cyclop-eeze a day at present and there's nothing at all wrong with my SPS colors. I'm glad that many are seeing positive results from running dirty water but don't assume those of us who don't, have lesser tanks simply because we don't post in a thread espousing coral husbandry techniques we don't follow personally.
Any discussions concerning helping others to achieve positive results with SPS colors are great IMO so i hope you guys work out what your tanks need to improve :beer:

As was said earlier in the thread by Mammothreefer, the goal of many (like yourself) is to feed a lot and also to export what's needed so nutrients can remain not just low, but undetectable on our test kit results. The fact that you can manage pristine water quality while still feeding handsomely is admirable. I didn't want to turn this into a nutrient rich vs. nutrient poor methodology debate, but rather an insight as to what may be helping some with higher, measurable nitrates and phosphates achieve comparable (and sometimes better) coloration and growth than when they were running either an ultra low nutrient system (Zeovit or other bacteria driven system) or trying to match the importing with exporting of nutrients to keep undetectable levels of NO3 and PO4. Additionally, I'm trying to see if others are experiencing better growth and coloration with higher nutrients when they keep a higher alklalinity (over 9 dKH) and a longer photoperiod of primary lighting. Many who run ULNS systems seem to get pale colored SPS so the use of amino acids and other supplements are experimented. Giving them more light (in my case) made them either recede or die altogether when I ran ULNS in my last system. With available nutrients, I'm noticing that the more light I give them, the better the colors and polyp extension I get. Since observing so many TOTM profiles with ungodly amounts of light, extended photoperiods, and measurable nitrate and phosphate, I surmised that this may be more than just coincidence.

If you could, please post some pictures of your SPS, your water parameters your lighting, and photoperiod. I'm actually very happy with where the thread is going so far, and welcome your input as well as those who run "dirty" or full ULNS.

Thanks for posting!

 

[Bratyboy2]

Subscribed to this!

I'm seeing some great things from this which has been help to me as I have a few Sps in my tank that I would love to take off and look better. I believe my alk might be to low now and my lights on to long? I will be testing my tank this weekend after the busy work week to see where im at and see if I can duplicate the same here

 

[MarcWeaver]

From ULNS....

To "dirtier" tank(mine), Nitrates 2-6ppm, phos usually .03. A little under 2 months difference

 

[Bratyboy2]

Wow tremendous difference

 

[biggles]

I don't for a minute wish to derail your topic Alex, as i said earlier i think any discussion that assists reefers to achieve the results they wish in regards to SPS keeping is a good thing. I hope to see many struggling RC SPS reefers benefit from your topic mate as i see a great many frustrated reefers on RC who deserve to see tanks full of colorful corals considering the effort and money they are putting in to their systems.
I posted pics and details of my simple methods many months ago in a similar topic and received a reply asserting that all i do is load up my reef with colorful wild acros that will all go down hill over time and anyone can do what i do so i keep my views to myself now days Alex so please don't think i have any issue at all with you mate in not sharing pics or details of my setup in your topic. Just because i'm not a member of the Dirty SPS Tank Club doesn't mean i don't like reading how others achieve success so i'll be following along out of interest :thumbsup:

That table is looking nice now MarcWeaver, very yummy colors starting to show mate

 

[MammothReefer]

I think you might have taken what I said out of context a bit. These threads always worry me as it's easy to steer people down a dangerous path. People tend to mix up "dirty or nutrient rich (high phosphates, and nitrates)" with "Feeding your corals". Right now my nitrates are at 2.5 and my phosphates were at .15 (now .07). This is not where I want to be clearly I was over feeding based on what my tank can process. If I can feed and keep them as close to as possible 0'd, that tends to be ideal. If you end up with nutrient levels that are high you can stunt the coral growth, brown your corals, end up with algae and Cyano, the dreadful green boring algae, and even possibly kill your corals. Like I said earlier if you just tossed things into your sump and let them rot it wouldn't benefit you just to have elevated nitrate & phosphates. It's feeding that your corals that are going to improve things and the better you can strip things out and continue to feed the better off you will be. Yes you can also go the feed less route but you don't want to do that in conjunction with carbon dosing or other ULNS practices. It's sort of like this

In my experience this is what I have seen (or something along these lines)

Feed + Low Export = High Nutrients, Algae, brown corals, cyano, death
Feed + Medium Export = Slow growth, ok/good colours
Feed + High Export = Good colours, good growth
Low/No Food + Low Export = OK colours, good growth
Low/No Food + Medium Export = Pale colours, ok growth
Low/No Food + High Export = Bleached out corals (I never stuck around in this area very long so I can't speak to how growth is)

Of all the scenarios above the easiest is low food, low or medium export. The others all require you to walk a fine line. The biggest risk for me when it came to running at higher nutrients is everything would seem fine for some time but you would just sloowly start to get more algae and things would start to get worse and worse over time. But it can happen very gradually because you really have to walk a fine line when you are feeding so heavily. After a while I start to notice that all my corals sort of perk up when I do water changes, and If I get to a place where I do start to notice that my corals all sort of "perk up" after a water change, it's a sign to me that things are heading in the wrong direction, if I let it slip to far it's going to be a long uphill battle to get the tank to come back around.

Don't get me wrong if it works for you great, but for me it was to hard to balance "nutrient rich" and "excessive nutrients"

 

[biggles]

It's your fault i'm posting again when i said i was going to shutup MammothReefer lol..........

Your post is spot on mate. My ULNS is just zero with heavy feeding as i believe the closer to just zero with high numbers of feedings directed at the corals only will result in not only colorful acros but those colors are very saturated. There's zero and then there's zero when it comes to ULNS's and most don't seem to understand the difference. Mind you the more food the closer you're sailing to the wind in regards to problems so i don't recommend it for those who stress easily lol.
Having just detectable phos and nitrates merely makes it easy to see that you're feeding enough to be close to perfect in regards to nutrients in the water for your corals. The acros don't need measurable levels as mine do fine without but at those very low levels i don't think they do harm either. Keeping the levels at just zero is better done by eye after a whole lot of practice lol.
Hopefully i don't upset anyone with a few of the ideas i have but my ULNS is a lot closer to your dirty club tanks than many of you realise. If i have once again given someone the poops i'll go stand in the corner again. :fun4:

 

[Johnyman]

I started to feed more the corals and fish, my PO4 is alway above 0.04 (zero when do water change) i started to notice the corals are getting better color but im worried about my nitrates, they are between 10ppm and 25ppm (salifert) im dosing vinegar but without PO4 its hard to reduce NO3 using carbon. In "dirty tank" whats the NO3 level that start to be dangerous?

I do not have any algae problem and my colors are very happy with it but im worried about what MammothReefer said when if we just let it go...
My ideia it´s to gain control of the nutrient balance with the redfield ratio on spot adding if necessary carbon, nitrate and phosphate, if i control it i dont have problems in feeding and i can put the nutrient values on spot. What do you think about this type of control/balancing?

 

[Alex T.]

From ULNS....

To "dirtier" tank(mine), Nitrates 2-6ppm, phos usually .03. A little under 2 months difference

Wow Marc, that looks great. I may be wrong but it looks like you have a little cyanobacteria growing on the rocks.

I don't for a minute wish to derail your topic Alex, as i said earlier i think any discussion that assists reefers to achieve the results they wish in regards to SPS keeping is a good thing. I hope to see many struggling RC SPS reefers benefit from your topic mate as i see a great many frustrated reefers on RC who deserve to see tanks full of colorful corals considering the effort and money they are putting in to their systems.
I posted pics and details of my simple methods many months ago in a similar topic and received a reply asserting that all i do is load up my reef with colorful wild acros that will all go down hill over time and anyone can do what i do so i keep my views to myself now days Alex so please don't think i have any issue at all with you mate in not sharing pics or details of my setup in your topic. Just because i'm not a member of the Dirty SPS Tank Club doesn't mean i don't like reading how others achieve success so i'll be following along out of interest :thumbsup:

That table is looking nice now MarcWeaver, very yummy colors starting to show mate

No worries brother. I understand completely. I appreciate the input, and hope you follow along.

I think you might have taken what I said out of context a bit. These threads always worry me as it's easy to steer people down a dangerous path. People tend to mix up "dirty or nutrient rich (high phosphates, and nitrates)" with "Feeding your corals". Right now my nitrates are at 2.5 and my phosphates were at .15 (now .07). This is not where I want to be clearly I was over feeding based on what my tank can process. If I can feed and keep them as close to as possible 0'd, that tends to be ideal. If you end up with nutrient levels that are high you can stunt the coral growth, brown your corals, end up with algae and Cyano, the dreadful green boring algae, and even possibly kill your corals. Like I said earlier if you just tossed things into your sump and let them rot it wouldn't benefit you just to have elevated nitrate & phosphates. It's feeding that your corals that are going to improve things and the better you can strip things out and continue to feed the better off you will be. Yes you can also go the feed less route but you don't want to do that in conjunction with carbon dosing or other ULNS practices. It's sort of like this

In my experience this is what I have seen (or something along these lines)

Feed + Low Export = High Nutrients, Algae, brown corals, cyano, death
Feed + Medium Export = Slow growth, ok/good colours
Feed + High Export = Good colours, good growth
Low/No Food + Low Export = OK colours, good growth
Low/No Food + Medium Export = Pale colours, ok growth
Low/No Food + High Export = Bleached out corals (I never stuck around in this area very long so I can't speak to how growth is)

Of all the scenarios above the easiest is low food, low or medium export. The others all require you to walk a fine line. The biggest risk for me when it came to running at higher nutrients is everything would seem fine for some time but you would just sloowly start to get more algae and things would start to get worse and worse over time. But it can happen very gradually because you really have to walk a fine line when you are feeding so heavily. After a while I start to notice that all my corals sort of perk up when I do water changes, and If I get to a place where I do start to notice that my corals all sort of "perk up" after a water change, it's a sign to me that things are heading in the wrong direction, if I let it slip to far it's going to be a long uphill battle to get the tank to come back around.

Don't get me wrong if it works for you great, but for me it was to hard to balance "nutrient rich" and "excessive nutrients"

Sorry if I took it out of context...not my intent. I agree with you on most points, and don't want to debate a TOTM keeper because I'm nowhere on your level in skills just yet. In reference to your observations after a water change, I actually noticed some things the first year as well, but they were more positive. For a long time, I was using natural seawater that i pumped out of the mouth leading into the Atlantic City inlet at high tide. I would bring it home, heat it slowly to temperature and do a water change. My corals responded very well with full polyp extension, and for some reason my Anthias would go nuts darting back and forth as if there was something to eat. I don't know what it was, but it was all good. I've grown tired of lugging the container back and forth to the beach with my truck every week, so have gone back to using Instant Ocean for now. I don't see that response after a water change anymore, but I'm happy with the colors and growth so far.

With relation to the algae developing over time, I've taken a different approach. Having been fortunate enough to see a few wild reefs in my day, I can say that there was definitely some algae here and there that herbivore fish were chowing down on. I know that in our closed systems it can take over quickly, however I think the current trends we're seeing in reefkeeping are putting more stress on the reef keeper to keep perfect water and we're seeing much less importance placed on cleanup crews. I think that just because you're growing algae doesn't mean your system is on a downward spiral. If natural reef zones have algae growing in a much more ideal environment than our tanks, I don't want to stress the corals by doing everything possible to eradicate it completely. Adding cleanup crew members and replenishing them or adding to them over time can really help with algae control. Once the algae is in check, maybe a more realistic PO4 measurement can be taken when the algae isn't consuming so much of it and skewing our readings. If I can keep it in check while running a moderate amount of GFO, then I'm fine with it if my corals aren't suffering. I totally understand what you're saying, and it is a slippery slope if people think I'm subscribing to dumping mass amounts of food into their tanks haphazardly. I'm not saying that, and hope anyone reading along understands that.

It's your fault i'm posting again when i said i was going to shutup MammothReefer lol..........

Your post is spot on mate. My ULNS is just zero with heavy feeding as i believe the closer to just zero with high numbers of feedings directed at the corals only will result in not only colorful acros but those colors are very saturated. There's zero and then there's zero when it comes to ULNS's and most don't seem to understand the difference. Mind you the more food the closer you're sailing to the wind in regards to problems so i don't recommend it for those who stress easily lol.
Having just detectable phos and nitrates merely makes it easy to see that you're feeding enough to be close to perfect in regards to nutrients in the water for your corals. The acros don't need measurable levels as mine do fine without but at those very low levels i don't think they do harm either. Keeping the levels at just zero is better done by eye after a whole lot of practice lol.
Hopefully i don't upset anyone with a few of the ideas i have but my ULNS is a lot closer to your dirty club tanks than many of you realise. If i have once again given someone the poops i'll go stand in the corner again. :fun4:

I started to feed more the corals and fish, my PO4 is alway above 0.04 (zero when do water change) i started to notice the corals are getting better color but im worried about my nitrates, they are between 10ppm and 25ppm (salifert) im dosing vinegar but without PO4 its hard to reduce NO3 using carbon. In "dirty tank" whats the NO3 level that start to be dangerous?

I do not have any algae problem and my colors are very happy with it but im worried about what MammothReefer said when if we just let it go...
My ideia it´s to gain control of the nutrient balance with the redfield ratio on spot adding if necessary carbon, nitrate and phosphate, if i control it i dont have problems in feeding and i can put the nutrient values on spot. What do you think about this type of control/balancing?

I think approaching 20 ppm is about as far as the dirty scenario should play out. We're not trying to prove that any FOWLR tank can throw some more flow and lighting on it and have colorful sticks. You may want to just add a little more volume to your water changes and get NO3 down to around 10ppm. Since I'm not a large volume water change practitioner, I would personally add 20% to my water change volume weekly and see what the net effect is over 5 weeks or so. If it budges, then maybe keep doing the same thing. Shocking the system at this point would be more detrimental with too aggressive an approach.

 

[MammothReefer]

@Johnyman I don't know of an exact number per say lots of people have good results with different ranges. I just shoot for as low as I can with enough food to keep things Covered. I always strive for 0 but that's just me, but like biggles said there is 0 and then there is 0 our test kits aren't that accurate. I've always had algae growing in my tank often times to nuisance levels in my frag tank so I know I've been been at a true UNLS zero.

@Alex I'm the same guy as before. No reason not to discuss/debate me that's what these forums are about. I still have a ton to learn. I had good growth but nothing like guys like dvanacker, or copps or the level of colours many other people get. I still had a lot of brown corals that shouldn't have been brown.

What worries my about this approach is the long term. I just found it easier to shoot for 0 then add when pale then to try to walk that fine line. In my old system (500g) I tried to do this and I found everything was great for quite sometime but then my rocks, my sand everything got saturated and my tank started to go down hill. At first I would notice my corals would slowly look worse and worse from the time of my last water change to the next, then at some point I just sort of blinked and my nitrates/phosphates were massive. It was a very long and painful, and costly process to turn the tank back around. Granted I took things to the far end the other way really cut back on water changes and increased feeding but for the first few months the tank was doing great then it all sort of fell apart. I donnu I guess this is what I like about reefing there is more then one way to get great results and it's a lot of fun to experiment and try different methods or come up with your own sort of hybrid.

 

[Ptyochromis]

So, how are we defining nutrients? Edibles(zooplankton etc) vs N-P-K (phosphates, feces etc).

I like to think nutrients stems from the word nutrition. Either way it is somewhat ambiguous, is it too late to begin to distinguish between the two?

IMO if you are trying to make a tank devoid of 'nutrients', you only need to look to the Red Sea to see that these fabled 'nutrients' are in great supply.

Heck, my tank for the first 12 months of its life was skimmer-less. A large refugium, a plethora of microfauna and a distinct lack of mechanical filtration help. Just don't expect to have a tank teaming with fish; which is the reason I stuck a skimmer on.