Acro base turning white
- Thread starter knd342
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I have a prime 16 hd over a 12” cube frag tank. Your par could be 500 or 50 depending on your mounting height and frag rack location
knd342
Community Member
Fair enough.
I have it mounted 12" off the surface of the water, which is about 19" off the top of the frag rack.
There are acans and digis and a scoly on the rack next to the acros. They are all doing great. Perhaps the par is too low for the acros?
Actually
Just noticed your blues are at 80
Probably very low par, but that wouldn’t stress them that soon. 0 no3 usually means very low Po4 as well. Your acros are going to starve without proper nutrition.
Just noticed your blues are at 80
Probably very low par, but that wouldn’t stress them that soon. 0 no3 usually means very low Po4 as well. Your acros are going to starve without proper nutrition.
I have tried to run coral QT / growout systems without fish. Softies and LPS were fine. Montipora and chalice OK.
Acropora can hang for a few weeks to a month but they were never happy even though I had ample mature live rock. They are just not that adaptive to ammonia deficient environments. They need fish respiration, pee, and poo. Along with the bacteria that process those ingredients.
Acropora can hang for a few weeks to a month but they were never happy even though I had ample mature live rock. They are just not that adaptive to ammonia deficient environments. They need fish respiration, pee, and poo. Along with the bacteria that process those ingredients.
Consider dosing some ammonium. It is not as scary as you think... people dose way scarier stuff like stump killer, driveway melt and all kinds of other things.
The acros cannot use nitrate for nitrogen without converting it at a huge cost which is something that only the most thriving corals can do. They get nitrogen from ammonia/ammonium or by catching something like bacteria in their slime coats (which also need ammonia/ammonium). Aminos might help, but I doubt it... and not as much as ammonium would.
Even some shrimp or crabs in there getting fed some pellets would help out.
The acros cannot use nitrate for nitrogen without converting it at a huge cost which is something that only the most thriving corals can do. They get nitrogen from ammonia/ammonium or by catching something like bacteria in their slime coats (which also need ammonia/ammonium). Aminos might help, but I doubt it... and not as much as ammonium would.
Even some shrimp or crabs in there getting fed some pellets would help out.
To expand, the hosts should be able to recycle building blocks to some degree to survive for a while, but they need new to grow and eventually even survive. Some water from your display might help with some waterborne fauna, some P and maybe some ammonia, but this might not be what you are looking for with a QT tank by perhaps constantly introducing potential pathogens from the display. Get some food in there and something to eat it and covert some waste.
While ammonium could take care of nitrogen a bit, it won't help with phosphate... dosing a single kind won't do what you think since there are many different types of organic/inorganic/phosphate/phosphorous and food will help with more kinds. Plus, the food will have a real swath of aminos and not just the unknown or limited ones in your dosing... the host and zoox will need the essential ones to function and I only know of one Amino supplement that even lists what is ACTUALLY in there and it is not all of the essentials. If you had a supplement that had all of the essentials, then this might be better if you are sure that the corals get them instead of the waterborne single cell organisms, bacteria, etc that make it a losing math battle for the corals just with surface area. Does your supplement list what you are adding?
Tanks are SO tricky without fish. You just cannot dose N and P like so many people think and have good results - these are not food and do not get building blocks to the corals the way that so many wrongly think. Take a mysis that a fish eats... it has all of the stuff that made the mysis grow and live and turn into a real animal... that gets recycled and released into the tank... the fish keeps about 1/3 and 2/3 move on down the line to get consumed by something else. Good luck.
While ammonium could take care of nitrogen a bit, it won't help with phosphate... dosing a single kind won't do what you think since there are many different types of organic/inorganic/phosphate/phosphorous and food will help with more kinds. Plus, the food will have a real swath of aminos and not just the unknown or limited ones in your dosing... the host and zoox will need the essential ones to function and I only know of one Amino supplement that even lists what is ACTUALLY in there and it is not all of the essentials. If you had a supplement that had all of the essentials, then this might be better if you are sure that the corals get them instead of the waterborne single cell organisms, bacteria, etc that make it a losing math battle for the corals just with surface area. Does your supplement list what you are adding?
Tanks are SO tricky without fish. You just cannot dose N and P like so many people think and have good results - these are not food and do not get building blocks to the corals the way that so many wrongly think. Take a mysis that a fish eats... it has all of the stuff that made the mysis grow and live and turn into a real animal... that gets recycled and released into the tank... the fish keeps about 1/3 and 2/3 move on down the line to get consumed by something else. Good luck.
knd342
Community Member
Maybe I will dip the acros again and then add them to my display. I dipped them and replaced the plugs when I received them, and I haven't seen any signs of pests in the last week. I will have to reread Humblefish's blog about Ich -- my biggest concern would be an ich cyst that gets released into my DT.
