very slow growth, help?

[ogdogg]

All of my coral are doing fine, in fact my sps seems to be growing faster than my softies. I dont feed them anything or than weekly cyclopeeze and brine shrimp. Do I need to be feeding something daily. I do get growth, but literally one zoa poly every 3-4 months. Nothing is dying, just not propagating. Here are my parameters and coral types

55 g tank
temp 78
ph 8.2
salinity 1.026
alk 9.8
cal 400
mg 1400
no3 .1 ppm
po4 .03 ppm

two ectotech radions at 40% each


mushrooms, zoas, kenya tree, jasmine, pumping xenia, ricordia,

montis (red, gred), birdsnest

 

[ogdogg]

any suggestions?

 

[wireefman]

most softies live off organics and dissolved organics in the water... sps systems are too clean..

that's all I can give you

 

[sako818]

all of my mushrooms, zoas, kenya tree, pumping xenia, ricordia are growing like crazy. i just keep the water a lil dirty

 

[Poseidons frags]

try boosting your cal/alk lvls to 450ppm cal, and 11dkh alk.... and maintain them at those lvls via dosing a 2 part.. also as mentioned before lps love dirtier water..keep that phosphate low though!!

 

[Whiterabbitrage]

Your parameters look good to me. Calcium would be better at 420 but the rest, to me, look good. I keep spa and LPS and softies. I target feed almost every day. It's made a big difference in how much growth there is. If I want it to grow and spread I target feed.

 

[ogdogg]

what do you feed them? Thanks for all the replies

 

[kurfer]

Doesn't dirty water = nitrates?

Don't nitrates kill softies?

**** makes no sense to me.

 

[Poseidons frags]

nitrates kill sps, and softies just much higher to kill softies than sps

 

[ogdogg]

Dirty water seems to be a consistently debated topic. I've always tried to keep my tank really clean with weekly 10% water changes and running GFO/GAC. I am going to try and back off the water changes to every other week and see what happens.

 

[benjc]

How many fish do you have? I found my softies started growing more when I added more fish. Also, I feed BRS' reef chili 2-3 times a week.

 

[ogdogg]

two clowns and one tang.

 

[sako818]

Dirty water seems to be a consistently debated topic. I've always tried to keep my tank really clean with weekly 10% water changes and running GFO/GAC. I am going to try and back off the water changes to every other week and see what happens.

i do a 10% every 2 weeks. its works for me

 

[dattong]

maybe lighting?

 

[ogdogg]

I have two ectotech radions led at 40% each. My understanding is that each is one is equivalent to a 250 halide. So i think the lighting is plenty. Again, my acros are growing well, so i cant imagine i dont have enough light. Unless your suggesting I have too much light.

 

[Whiterabbitrage]

For Feeding Ricordia and Zoas, I get a piece of fresh salmon from the butcher. Trim off the skin, chop it fine and freeze it. To feed, I use a knife to shave the salmon very fine. Easy cause its frozen. Then I add other things. Sometimes Selcon, sometimes Reef Roids, sometimes I even break open a vitamin E capsule. Mush it up. Yum yum.

 

[IowaJeeping]

I agree with a little dirtier water grows them faster. I tried it in my softie tank by letting the water get alittle dirtier then my mix tank and wow talk about now really seeing growth