Acropora- What Does It Really Take To Succeed?

[LegendaryCG]

So, Do NOT let me setup this tank without appropriate SPS gear
Specs:

80g 32x24x24
Versa M2 return
1x MP40
2x Radion XR15 G5
Eshopps Alpha 100 Sump
Reef Octopus Essenence skimmer
GHL 2.1 SA4 doser
Avast carbon reactor
25w UV


I don't mind adjusting for months to achieve greatness, I just don't want to forget something right off the bat.

You need another mp40 and a way to measure pH would be good. High pH promotes calcification.

 

[ScottB]

You need another mp40 and a way to measure pH would be good. High pH promotes calcification.

Beat me to it by 2 seconds.

Yes, a second MP40 or a couple of gyres.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Mojo, nothing else.

 

[LegendaryCG]

btw anyone who says you can’t grow acros in a young tank just doesn’t know what they are doing. That’s my 2 month old tank with rapidly growing acropora. Yes it’s harder to keep things balanced but it’s not like it’s impossible.

 

[Jon's Reef]

I agree with this completely. As a person that have owned the 3 XR30 Radions on a previous build i didn't truly understand the coverage issue until i started running into the problem.While they provide light...you want to make sure your corals are in the optimal area for best growth... you tend to need more than the recommended coverage in order to reduce these issues later on.

On my new build i am using 4 Orphek panels perpendicular to provide max coverage on a tank that's only 12.5 inches longer and 6.5 inches wider than my previous build. FYI previous build was 5 foot long and 2 foot wide i had 3 XR30's.

You might not be able to see it in the pictures but easily much better coverage....i can grow sps anywhere and it also minimizes the wierd growth patterns as well. I often get compliments on my coral corymbose shape... or very natural growth pattern. I attribute that to flow and lighting.

What is/ was your PAR and spectrum settings on the first tank? Those are G3 or G4 where the OP is going to use G5 blues. Significantly different in terms of spread and efficiency.

In general for the OP, using 2 gen5 XR15 blues is likely not going to limit the success or failure of the tank. As they have success with simpler corals, in the most ideal placements, they can add an LED bar.... t5 hybrid... another G5 XR15 blue... a kessil... etc.

 

[fcmatt]

btw anyone who says you can’t grow acros in a young tank just doesn’t know what they are doing. That’s my 2 month old tank with rapidly growing acropora. Yes it’s harder to keep things balanced but it’s not like it’s impossible.

What coral? Those nubs? I would not use that example as a glowing example of growing coral in a young tank... somebody needs to call this stuff out.

Here.. this is my frag rack. This is when crap gets out of hand with weeds and you don't really feel like dealing with the stuff. I barely try. Total coral warfare going on. This is mainly an anemone tank btw.

My point is... have some patience in the hobby. It is not a race. It is not a competition. Yes money helps. Enjoy the road and not the destination

 

[Sdot]

Love it, awesome look!
Many locals have done the same with the light bars.
From what I have seen the look of yours and others is similar to Halides, again very nice!

Thanks bro.... People often mistake these lights for Metal Halide based on the shimmer with the Kessils. That is until i lift the hood to show an all LED lighting. Not a fan of the blue look and i love the fact the Orpheks give me pop of blue with the look of 14k.

 

[FishTruck]

btw anyone who says you can’t grow acros in a young tank just doesn’t know what they are doing. That’s my 2 month old tank with rapidly growing acropora. Yes it’s harder to keep things balanced but it’s not like it’s impossible.

LOL... good for you! I was way past that when I thought I was a "six month sps pro"... lost all my SPS in a single month - colonies much bigger than that - all because I thought I new what I was doing - when I really didn't. That was 10 years ago and I am still learning. Looking forward to your updates in a year. Cheers.

 

[SifuMemphis]

Aside from what everyone else said about stability, etc etc. One of the thing's that helped me remove the "guess work" out, was buying a par meter and just measuring what my par is. No need to go extreme and buy one, but you can always rent one from LFS or BRS.

You will see through the forums, a lot of people will ask, "Is this light good enough? What intensity?" etc etc. If you run your 2XR15s and the par was within range of what you wanted. 250-400, then 2 works. If it's too low? Add more.

For my RsR 525XL, I run 2 XR30s and 1 XR15 blue. Average par measures out to around 350-400 pending which area. This is a good spot for me, but would be different for you, based on your rock scape, how how or low it is and so on.

Knowing the par for each spot of your tank will help you greatly imo, for a low cost of renting via BRS at $50?

 

[Variant]

Hey, I appreciate the heck out of your response. I would love for you to elaborate. Myself, I am going with CaribSea life rock and some other bacteria, so what you are saying is very important.

I can introduce actual live rock, just like anyone else, and I would love to hear the rationale. Wider variety of bacteria, overall diverse ecosystem, etc.

Thank you.

Man, I check back in and this thread has exploded! Great thoughts from the community as usual~

Since you asked me to elaborate some, thoughts I'd follow up even though there might be some duplicative content here now that this is now 6 pages long .

Realized I wrote a ton... so TL;DR; success can be as simple and straightforward or as complicated as you want it to be. If this is your first adventure in Acropora and you don't want headaches, I'd advise you to keep things super simple and stick to the basics and once you yourself are a master of the universe then think about optimizing your system and adding fancy equipment. There's nothing worse that spending $$$ on equipment and livestock to only bang your head on the wall for 12+ months without any definitive answers on what "works" or "doesn't". Hope this helps~

Water Parameter Stability
We know stability promotes success with acropora, but what does this actually mean. The most obvious is from water quality stability (alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, nitrate, phosphate, potassium, and the list goes on). The impact of instability in water quality is not equal across every element (e.g. swings in alkalinity are higher impact that perhaps nitrate when we think about just keeping acropora alive; obviously swings are not good to keep things thriving). I won't go into details on the parameters since that's widely available information.

Biological Stability
Now there is also biological stability. As we know certain "pests" are just a natural part of the equilibrium (e.g. Dinos, cyano, various algaes are always within our system). However, instability can cause one or more of these "pests" to get out of hand. So then, naturally one might ask "what is the right equilibrium?" or "how do I achieve the equilibrium?". I don't have an answer to this and if anyone tells you they do, it's largely anecdotal. You'll hear people say "throw in a little bit of this and a little bit of that". However, you shouldn't completely ignore anecdotal evidence, but make sure the source of the anecdotal evidence is from a trusted source.

In general, keeping water parameters stable is fairly straightforward and something we can measure. However, biological equilibrium is another story. So then it is up to you as the hobbyist to decide what path you want to take. Do you want to take the "easy straightforward success path" or the more adventurous "less straightforward and more mad scientist path"? If you want straightforward, go with what has worked for MANY years... live rock. I don't know what the heck is on live rock that makes achieving biological equilibrium so easy but it just works. People might say "oh it's the copepods, oh its the bacteria, etc" but we honestly just don't know. Now if you want to up the ante and be adventurous and be a trail blazer by using dry rock, prepare your soul as you'll be waiting a ton and spending money on various experimentation of supplements (various bacteria in bottles, farmed pods, phyto, etc.), hoping that something one day just "clicks".

In general I've had super early success with Acros with live rock. Literally tossed in some Battlecorals frags 1 day after putting cured live rock in my tank (literally started to rapidly encrust maybe 1 week in). I've also had poor early success with dry rock. Others have had great early success with dry rock but would say this is is probably the exception than a norm.

Equipment
You honestly don't need a lot here...I went through phases of being a total gear head to now going back to the basics. Here is what I think you need...
1. Good Strong Lighting (Halide and T5 are like live rock, they just work. LEDs also work but just need to do more research in spectrum settings, which are increasingly more available)
2. Strong Flow (just make sure the polyps are moving 90% of the time; so many variable in play that nobody can tell you the ideal wavemakers for you)
3. At least 1 Form of Filtration (filter socks, roller mats, algae reactor, turf scrubber, skimmer, refugium, etc.)
4. Temperature Monitor (something to regulate your temperature)
5. An automated way to keep up on elemental update (alk, ca, mag) such as dosers, calcium reactors, kalkwasster reactor, etc. You can do it manually, but this kind of automation is super helpful.
6. Auto Top Off. Let's be real, you're not going to be topping up your water consistently every day.

Things I think you don't necessarily need for success...
1.Any probe outside a temp probe. Monitoring is great but not necessary for tanks. Yes high ph is nice, but let's not get too ahead of ourselves. just get your tank to a good place and once your acros are doing well, then think about optimization.
2.Fancy high end controllers. Nice to have but there are other alternatives. Text notification, fancy maintenance logic, etc, are all nice to haves but not a pre-requisite for a nice tank.
3. Automatic testers (KHD, Trident, Mastertronic, etc.). Testing should make your live easier but at this point not necessary. The ROI on these devices are much higher when you have a wall to wall SPS tank that is sucking up elements like nobody's business. Then a single stress event that stunts growth can then lead to a chain reaction where your elements like Alkalinity can sky rocket. But if your tank is barely consuming alk (~0.5dkh/day), then it's not as big of a deal since you should catch it in your weekly maintenance plan.

So what do I do and what would I tell a best friend if they were to build an acropora tank?
1. Live rock + Sand
2. Skimmer
3. T5 + LED hybrid
4. Heater, Fan
5. Temperature probe (ph probe optional)
6. Doser for 2 part dosing (alk, ca, mag) using ESV as a more holistic approach as it contains other trace elements
7. ATO
8. Wave makers
9. Zeovit Reactor + basic Zeovit method
10. Two compartment sump, no socks. Some cleaned dry rock rubble in my sump for my cryptic sponges (they're out of control right now!). I just rinse small pieces of dry rock rubble. Boiled in RODI water. Let it soak in a 3 gallon bucket for a week in RODI changing water out every day in case of anything leaching. Freshwater folks do something similar with their hardscapes like rocks and wood; we should take a page out of their playbook...

Why Zeovit? Bacterial approach to maintaining healthy thriving aquariums have anecdotally proven to be good. Just having tuned into the Bulk Reef Supply live stream the other day, Ryan at BRS introduced tons of bacteria to solve some of his early tank issues. Zeovit has been doing this for a LONGGGG time. Does it suck that they don't tell you what's in their blue bottles? Sure. Is it straightforward and does it work? Absolutely. But with all things, research before implementation.

My personal approach is keeping things simple and buying less equipment but super nice equipment so that it feels gratifying to do maintenance. I can tell you that I get a tiny bit of joy cleaning my Royal Exclusiv Skimmer because of how nice it is (kind of like washing a nice sports car versus the Dad van).

 

[Sdot]

What is/ was your PAR and spectrum settings on the first tank? Those are G3 or G4 where the OP is going to use G5 blues. Significantly different in terms of spread and efficiency.

In general for the OP, using 2 gen5 XR15 blues is likely not going to limit the success or failure of the tank. As they have success with simpler corals, in the most ideal placements, they can add an LED bar.... t5 hybrid... another G5 XR15 blue... a kessil... etc.

These are G4's and i understand the g5's are better as far as spread... they still wont have the par at the fringes. The Par on my g4's running at 85% were around 350 near the top and 80 on the bottom(FYI they were mounted 8 inches above the water line). Orpheks on current setup is running 70% and you can see the par numbers yourself: These reading taken using an apogee mq-510. FYI Orpheks are mount 14 inches above the water line (Although par isnt the most important...these lights are par monsters).

 

[Brandon3152134]

patience

 

[Brandon3152134]

Had a small frag I've been waiting to start growing for months finally decided to move it up the rock a tad for some more light and flow. It got stung and was gone overnight. Legit woke up to a barren white stick. It takes alot of time and stability for these things to grow and it takes one day to loose the entire thing.

 

[fcmatt]

eh. this thread just inspired me to glue down those coral on the rack as I was reading through it. Used 3/4 of a hold fast stick doing it. lol. That big piece was gonna collapse the frag rack off the magnets soon. good luck on the rock surrounded by a ton of anemones. Lets see what happens in a year. I tossed the frag rack in the trash with whatever encrusted nonsense was left. Including that sad acro on the disc. Mostly dead due to montipora growth. That was a piece that broke off the main colony in the back a while ago. I had to use pliers to get the stuff off the rack.

More then likely bubble tips will ruin the base of each coral and they will have to reach for the sky to survive. Or maybe my lazy rear should remove a dozen bta. Sigh. Should have never added those 3 btas. Haddoni and gigs should have been the only additions. Too late now!

And this is what happens when you get what you want. Anemones splitting, coral growing you just toss in trash, coral fighting with each other, anemones fighting with coral, add more then 2 clowns fighting with each other, etc..

almost like the ocean is one big warzone.

 

[LegendaryCG]

What coral? Those nubs? I would not use that example as a glowing example of growing coral in a young tank... somebody needs to call this stuff out.

Here.. this is my frag rack. This is when crap gets out of hand with weeds and you don't really feel like dealing with the stuff. I barely try. Total coral warfare going on. This is mainly an anemone tank btw.

My point is... have some patience in the hobby. It is not a race. It is not a competition. Yes money helps. Enjoy the road and not the destination

yes like I said I started that tank in January. They are triple the size of when they were started. Obviously they arent huge yet but they will be.

 

[LegendaryCG]

LOL... good for you! I was way past that when I thought I was a "six month sps pro"... lost all my SPS in a single month - colonies much bigger than that - all because I thought I new what I was doing - when I really didn't. That was 10 years ago and I am still learning. Looking forward to your updates in a year. Cheers.

It’s my 5th tank I have a pretty good idea of what I’m doIng.

 

[FishTruck]

It’s my 5th tank I have a pretty good idea of what I’m doIng.

Like I said.. good for you man! Can't wait to see those dinner plate colonies in a few months!

 

[fcmatt]

yes like I said I started that tank in January. They are triple the size of when they were started. Obviously they arent huge yet but they will be.

Let me apologize. I realize some people can start a tank and toss in coral in a few months and away they go. It can work out that way. We probably both know that the average person who gets into the hobby cannot. Never a good idea to promote doing such things. In the end most will have all that coral over grown by algae or dead to a rookie mistake. That is a lot of money to lose for most people...

 

[Mellotang]

no Controllers
No Dosers
No LEDS
No DC pumps

lotta rocks
Lotta sand
Lotta flow
Lotta refuge
Lotta fish and coral Feeding
Lotta love

not saying the modern bells and whistles are not useful but It’s more beneficial if you learn your tank and understand the balances and what’s going On so You know what to
Expect. Cause and effect so to speak

take your time and remember to
Enjoy the ride

 

[Mellotang]

Grown from frags