30 Days Growth [Slower Coral]

[Rakie]

This is an AquaSD Rainbow Milli, that looks an awful lot like a Sunset Milli -- Someone I know has the same coral, from the same person, and it looks night and day different, so I've concluded that mine isn't as happy as it could be -- as the color is askew.

This one is a slower grower for me, or maybe I should say it hasn't hit it's stride yet. Either way, the ones I showed the other day had phenomenal growth, this one is more run of the mill for growth.

This coral hasn't hit it's stride yet. I notice some corals get to a point where they just take off and really start growing. Usually it's when they're fully encrusted ime.

 

[Ocelaris]

I just got a tiny nub of an ASD Rainbow milli and I would agree it's a slow grower. Where do you have yours, nutes and flow? I have a large t5 fixture, and it's at the top of the rocks, medium high flow, nitrates at 8, po4 at 0.04, alk 11, CA 430. It's encrusting, but very slowly and is pretty pale. But to be fair it was even paler when I got it a few weeks ago. Sorry, terrible picture, but it's at the very top right.

 

[Ocelaris]

I just got a tiny nub of an ASD Rainbow milli and I would agree it's a slow grower. Where do you have yours, nutes and flow? I have a large t5 fixture, and it's at the top of the rocks, medium high flow, nitrates at 8, po4 at 0.04, alk 11, CA 430. It's encrusting, but very slowly and is pretty pale. But to be fair it was even paler when I got it a few weeks ago. Sorry, terrible picture, but it's at the very top right.

 

[Rakie]

@Ocelaris -- Picture didn't come through!

I put this up because I had another thread, which garnered some PM's and lots of questions. I had some phenomenal growth from a couple corals, head and shoulders above the rest in a short time frame. So I figured it's only fair to post one that didn't grow at that exceedingly impressive rate


From my other thread

Lights: ATI 6x24 (3B+, 2C+, 1P+)
Feeding: I overfeed my fish like nobody you've ever met. I've got like 10 fish in my cube, and I feed 4-6x per day. And each feeding is pretty heavy...
Food a mix of: Hikari Spirulina Brine/Mysis, LOTS of reef chili, reef nutrition arctic pods, PE pellets, reef nutrition pellets, OVA, Rods Eggs, and sometimes V2O pellets (it has red/green algae flakes and algae pellets mixed in)
Vitamins HUFA: Selco boost, Selcon, Aquaforest FishV
Flow: 2 Sicce xstream 1800gph pumps, 1 sicce syncra 4.0 1000gph return, Tunze 1200gph pump, all in a 45g cube -- Adding a 6095 to replace the small tunze and run 5-6 second pulses at 2500gph
Alk: 8.6
Cal: 440
Mag: 1300 (it's chronically low, i'm working on it)
no3: 25
po4: 0.1 - 0.08

 

[sil40sx]

Mine didn't do squat for 6 months, then just exploded this month. Only change in my tank is I started dosing Fuel and fed Oyster feast 2-3 months ago. I don't know it was those two things that helped, or its just cycle.

December 2016

June 2017

Oct 2017 (Sorry, different angle, but you get the idea.)

 

[Rakie]

Mine didn't do squat for 6 months, then just exploded this month. Only change in my tank is I started dosing Fuel and fed Oyster feast 2-3 months ago. I don't know it was those two things that helped, or its just cycle.

Interesting! That's kind of what mine was doing. It just kinda sat there slowly encrusting, and coincidentally when I made some changes it just grew a whole bunch of little arms and some height

 

[sil40sx]

I checked your build thread, nice tank and corals.

I haven't read the whole thread, but change did you do, and how long before it started growing faster?

 

[Rakie]

I checked your build thread, nice tank and corals.

I haven't read the whole thread, but change did you do, and how long before it started growing faster?

My timeline isn't exact, but switching to ME Corals 2-part helped a little while back, but switching to ATI Essentials 3-part about 6-7 weeks ago made a huge difference in my corals. Everything had a notable positive impact after about 3'ish weeks. My first few weeks using ATI my dosing wasn't spot on, this led to some rapid rise/fall in alk, and cal a little too. Once that got balanced out they started showing improvement straight away.

The impact ATI Essentials had has definitely made me take much better note of changes made.

 

[sil40sx]

Oh nice,. good to know its working out for your tank

 

[Ocelaris]

Sorry, didn't upload earlier. It's the small speck of a nub in the top right. It's got good pe for such a small thing, but everything around it is growing well.
Thanks for all the details! I do brs 2 part z but just started red sea elements about a week ago, so we'll see how that goes.

I'm curious the cost of some of these proprietary 2 part solutions VS. Generic. I use about 130ml a day of Randy's formulas. Do they give some idea of the strength of the formulas to get started? Ie 10ml will provide 50ppm calcium in 1000L?

 

[CoralWealth]

this is a very slow grower for me too compared to my other SPS.

I also do not get the PE on this coral like I do the other millis or in general other SPS in my tank. It is coloring up more but still has awhile to go. Mine has done nothing over the past couple months besides color up some and get some encrusting, while others of the same size have doubled in size.

 

[Peng]

this makes me want one AquaSD Rainbow ;Drool