Why do you have to wait at leat 6 months for SPS?

[mmotown]

My tank has been established 4months. I have the right equipment and lighting on my system. About a week ago I bought a red montipora capri...coral. I have noticed that the red is fading and the coral is becoming white? Why do people suggest waiting 6 months before adding SPS's and what could be wrong with mine?

 

[bertoni]

Many of the stony corals are a lot touchier than the soft corals, so waiting for the tank to be stable is often recommended.

Your coral might be bleaching. Do you have it in full light? What are your water parameters?

 

[Entropy]

I suggest waiting a lot longer than six months for SPS unless your are starting a new tank from existing materials (upgrading to a bigger size for instance). SPS likes pristine water quality, excellent lighting, and a mature tank to thrive.

 

[mmotown]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6563734#post6563734 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bertoni
Many of the stony corals are a lot touchier than the soft corals, so waiting for the tank to be stable is often recommended.

Your coral might be bleaching. Do you have it in full light? What are your water parameters?

Yes I do have it in full light as that is what I thought SPS's needed. My water parameters are normal. Calc is around 490 and everything else is where it's suppose to be....Amonia 0, Nitrite/Nitrate 0, Ph 8.1-2, SG 1.026, ALK was 12 I believe.

 

[Fast Fred]

Just grasping at straws here to try and help you, but if you have a Monti Cap under 3x400wMH, that could be more light than it likes. My M.Caps all do well under the 175wMH from 1/2 way down, all the way to the bottom of the tank. Maybe try moving it down towards the bottom.

 

[TippyToeX]

6 months is also a good span of time to show how stable the tank is. SPS must have that to thrive.

 

[MiddletonMark]

It might be too much light, I agree. 400's are a LOT of light, and many things will need to acclimatized to it. IME, Monti caps do not need a huge amount of light [much less than most Acropora, and most Montipora].

The `wait 6 months' is a good suggestion, for the reasons stated above. In my tank, I found my Acropora/SPS-types really took off, colored up after a year of the tank running stable ... that while a few very hardy ones did ok before that period - the results I was wanting took longer to reach.

 

[Shooter7]

So, is it that monti caps are just more tolerant? I just recently started up my 120 gal and moved rock I had from my smaller tank into the bigger one. On one of these rocks was an orange monti cap that had been under PC lighting and doing reasonably well. The tank is now a little over 3 weeks old, but that monti cap is just exploding with growth under my MH lighting. I guess I'm gathering from this discussion that other SPS type corals would not fare as well as my monti cap?

 

[CAreefer]

The common advice of waiting 12 months before adding SPS, IMHO is to give the aquarist time to develop. Husbandry skills, water management and an eye for problems. It also provides time for the aquarist to learn. Research, research, research. Learn the needs of the types of corals you plan to keep, lighting, flow etc. A new tank takes >4 months for the bacteria population to stabilize, the water to ionically balance out and for parameters to become stable.

When adding new corals, be sure and take the time to acclimate. Lighting is just as critical if not more so than water chemistry. You need to know what type of lighting it was previously being kept under. Going from a VHO tank to 400 watt metal halides is equivalent to a red headed boy spending the entire first day of summer outside with no SPF. One difference, corals usually don't recover from a massive sunburn.

Again, this is JMHO.
CAReefer

 

[MiddletonMark]

Dave, in my experience it's tank to tank.

Monti caps tend to be fairly hardy, and besides overlighting, I've found them to react well to tanks that Acropora might not thrive as much in ... yet.

But it's tank to tank, and I'd tend to think having `previous tank' rock might help, as well as more experience keeping water quality high never is a bad thing. [like CAReefer's point]

While just a general guide, I tend to like the `when you have coralline grown as big as a quarter, Acropora will likely grow/do well' ... which is like the 6-month idea, varies a bit tank to tank.

If I set up a new tank again, I'd wait 6 months to start stocking frags [would add Pocillapora and Montipora a few months prior] ... and not really get gung-ho about Acropora until after a year. Figure I saw so little growth, mostly brown the first months with Acropora anyway ... but that's my one anecdotal experience, take it just as that.

Lots of wise advice in this thread ...

 

[Shooter7]

Yes, there is good advice in it. Very difficult not to start nabbing up corals now that I have a tank that I feel I could put them in. While I have over a year of experience in SW now, I'm still just learning with some of the water parameters. I haven't yet figured out just how I'm going to handle my pH and alk issues (both are on the low end of ok). Trying to discern between all the kalk and baking soda and washing soda and calcium reactors and two part additives and whatever all else is keeping my brain scrambled to say the least. I still have to figure out a top off system for the tank. But, seeing as how it'll probably take me the better part of a year to get those water parameters figured out, probably won't seem that long at all til I add some SPS. I'm just amazed, though, at how that monti cap is just going in leaps and bounds. It's grown more in the past 3 weeks than in the previous 3 months.

 

[zukihara]

I think this is probably a great explanation of maturity. I hope you get as much out of it as I did.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=249112