What temp to keep sps?

[vietcu]

My sps corals seem to be getting narcrosis. I have my tank running usually at around 80. Talk to LFS today and he said that it was too high, that I should have it around 76 for sps. I had 6 total frags in my tank, with 2 doing really well IMO and the rest is dead or about to die. I don't know their names, but I attached some pictures for you guys to see.
These two are doing fine IMO, but not really sure

These two are on the verge of dying. Some tissues are starting to fall from the skeleton.

This one is just plain dead.

Lowered my temp down today, hopefully that will help. Those frags have been in my tank for about a month now.

 

[imcosmokramer]

I keep mine at 78. What are the rest of your params?

 

[Paul_PSU]

What do you use to read temp in your system? I wouldn't think 80 was to high.

 

[vietcu]

Well my answer prob wont help much. nitrate, nitrite, and ammonia is all zero. I do not have a test for calcium. My test for PH and Alkalinity is from Red Sea, and it is crap. I can't tell with the color chart that comes with it, so its just a waste to test Alkalinity and PH. I started to dose with lime water about 2 weeks ago. Everything else in my tank is doing fine, zoos, acans, anemone, and blastos.

 

[Paul_PSU]

You might want to buy a good alk test kit and make sure you didn't get big rise in alk levels quickly. I bet that could have cased your problems.

 

[SALT WATER CRAZ]

76-86 but the key is to not have swings to fast.


80 is not to high......

 

[Kreeger1]

Stability is the key to SPS. There should be very little change in any parm. for success. What LFS told you 76 degrees?
Erik

 

[vietcu]

Coral reef in Akron. I trust his words, I have been there shopping from him from the beginning. The guy wouldn't sell me stuff that I wanted to buy when my tank was first starting out. IMO I think 76 is a little low also, but hey might as well try it and see what happens. The way my tank is set up it prob wont get down to that temp anyways, more likely around 77-79 range. From the looks of things I think its the stability of my water. The temp in my tank would fluctuate quite a bit, is 1.5-2 degrees too much of a fluctuation? And also my other params, I think I need to get some quality test kits for my water. I do a water change with ro/di every other week %10.

 

[Burgman]

Hi,

Erik is right, stability is the best way to go. But for those of us who do not have chillers the temp may swing from 79 in the winter to 83 in the heat of the Summer. It's not uncommon for some Ocean reefs to get into the low to mid 80s during the Summer. 80 degrees is not too warm for SPS corals in MHO.

Dave

 

[Paul_PSU]

vietcu, do you use a controller or something else to read temp? The reason I ask is that before I put a temp controller on my system I used the coralife digital thermometer and it was defective..off by 10 degrees!! I thought my system was at 79-80 when it was actually 89-90. I lost several sps frags.

 

[vietcu]

I have a digital thermometer for my DT, and also one of those magnesium thermometer for my fuge. The one with the red line going up with the temp, not sure if its magnesium or not but hope you know what I mean. The display reads 78-81 depends on when lights come on, the one in the fuge always read around 82. I am getting a controller in the near future though, because my temp fluctuate a little too much for my comfort.

 

[Tswifty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13534369#post13534369 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by vietcu
Talk to LFS today and he said that it was too high, that I should have it around 76 for sps.

Plain and simple that's wrong... the worldwide avg temp for reefs is 82.

My tank swings from 77 to 82 day to night. Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with trying to keep a stable temperature with little to no swing, but you have to understand what your doing. IMO you are in fact crippling your system to a power failure or failed instrument. If you tank is not used to fluctuations, and all of a sudden you have one. You'll have much more drastic losses than another person's tank where a swing is a daily occurrence.

Here's a response from a guy who studies it for a living.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12904246#post12904246 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by greenbean36191
The worldwide average range for reefs is 77-86. The yearly average is about 82 with the growth optima for most species that have been studied being 82-84. There are no species in the hobby that are true reef animals that require temperatures colder than that.

There is no evidence that fluctuations are stressful to either reef fish or corals. Reefs are not thermally stable by any stretch of the imagination and fish do not move around the reef in search of constant temperatures. The typical daily range is 3-5 deg F, but some reefs see as much as 15 deg F per day. These are not slow changes either. It's well documented that minute-to-minute changes are often as much as half of the yearly variation. Also, the magnitude of variation tends to be very high within the first 3 ft or so, dropping off a bit and then increase with depth again down to about 90-120 ft. These are the conditions our animals, including SPS, evolved in and they do quite well.

The instability of reef temps has been a source of frustration for me since I study thermal stress in reef animals. I've had whole days of experimentation ruined because our chiller went down and the seawater we were pumping in from 50 ft deep was changing 4-5 degrees per hour. The animals don't care, but that's way too much to allow for accurate calibration of our instruments.

Now you certainly can stress animals with fluctuations if you acclimatize them to stability beforehand. You can do the same with the maximum temperature too. The overly simple version of the story is that the animals will first start to show stress at 2-4 deg F above the normal maximum they see, whether that's 78 or 84. Fluctuations increase the amount of change below that maximum and possibly above that that are acceptable. In other words, if you keep a tank at a rock solid 78 the animals will be much more susceptible to any future fluctuations than the same animals kept at say 78-82.

 

[Kreeger1]

Most if not all tanks running metal halides would need a chiller to keep temps at 76 all day. IMO branch out, try a few stores in the area that are well known and see what you think.
Erik

 

[Jeff Trout]

I get up to 84 all the time in my sps tank!!I had it hit 88 one time and I did lose a couple of corals.(Its always the nice ones you lose too!!)

 

[vietcu]

If temp is not my problem what could it be? My temp swing from about 79-81 before I lowered it. The first two sps and monticap does well, while the others aren't. I'm shooting in the dark here without proper testing kits for calcium or alkilinity, but with a low level of those two. Would that be the factor in killing my corals in less than a month? I thought it was my lights so switched to MH, but its too early to tell if that is the problem.

 

[Kreeger1]

It really could be so many things. Some corals don't take well to lighting changes, You usally have to do it slow IE run the mh light for 4 hours the first couple of days then slowly bump up the time to 8 give or take hours.

Do you dose any 2 parts or add any additives? Sometimes to much kalk causes problems. Or to low Alk.

 

[K' Family Reef]

here is an interesting read w/ dr ron shimek
discussing how reef temps are quite a bit higher then most reefers today typically strive for... due in part to commercial interests by the hobby industry (selling chillers etc)...

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic85520-11-1.aspx


recoms keeping our reefs at 82-86*

w/ problems starting at around 88*


this definitely seems to contradict 'conventional wisdom'
that most reefers 'think' is the correct temp...

we live in arizona
and over this last summer our reef stayed right in this 'range'... 80-82 during the nite and 86--87 during the day (there were a few days when it rose to 88 yet still w/ no probs)...

when first started reefing
anytime our system would go over 82* the corals would immediately start showing signs of stress... at that time we also had high phosphates... once a reactor was installed and nutrients were brought down... then every since have yet to notice any 'reaction' by the corals to rising temps (((whatsoever))) - even to include the few extra hot days over this past summer...

more then likely if you notice problems w/ corals
assoc w/ rising tank temps... then you might have some 'nutrient' issues to contend with... although we didnt like installing yet another piece of equipment (and yet another pump/heat)... we finally installed a po4 reactor and today would recom to everyone to get one installed when setting up a reef (in addition to a fuge).

also when measuring for phosphates
(if you have already tested) then quite often either the tests give inaccurate measurements or they results are 'read' (or interpreted) incorrectly... iow if the po4 tests are showing any 'color' whatsoever it means there IS a po4 problem VS trying to 'interpret' the degree (or measurement) of the problem based on how the color reads for the test... also a good idea to take a water sample in and get a test done using more advanced testing procedures (anytime one is having probs w/ their reef).

good luck

regards

 

[Kreeger1]

Take everything the good Dr. Ron writes with a grain of salt IMO

 

[vietcu]

Alright guys, thanks for all the reply's. But after reading all the replies, it seems that I have more issues with my water param than I originally thought. So I am not too concerned about the sps dying anymore but more worried about getting my water parameters in check. I have high phosphate, because after 7-8 months I am now getting cyano. Had to syphon a bit of it out of my tank just this past weekend, also having algae problem on glass and sandbed. Going to get a phosban reactor soon to see what that does. This all happened from my neighbor overfeeding my tank for 3 weeks. Thanks again for all the replies guys, always helpful.