Coral Growth

[Joedubyk]

My Ph varies from 8.0 at night to 8.2 during the day. I have all GHL equipment doing my monitoring and I have a CO2 scrubber in place that kicks on if the Ph drops below 8.

Another option you can try if getting more established LR from someone you trust's tank. Especially if it has sponges

 

[jim_fitz]

ive always been in the same situation, until recently. Im not 100% certain why but growth has taken off
the change i made was to remove live rock from the sump and replace it with maxspect bio media
but this allowed me to clean the sump completely. I removed a lot of very fine sludge
I work in the UK in sewage treatment and for the last three years all i have done has been to remove Total P (phosphorus).
We normally measure orthophosphate which is soluble, (and we remove by dosing ferric) but not the organic or inorganic solid phosphate. We have lots of problems due to re-release of phosphates across our sewage treatment
plants
It might be a coincidence but its the only thing i can think of

3 weeks between these pics that was only encrusted and had been for at least a year

 

[SeaDweller]

clean set up!

 

[Shredded]

@SeaDweller Thank you!. I saved for 2 years and bought equipment as I could afford it. Was supposed to be my dream tank. Dream Tank is obviously not synonymous with having any idea what you are doing.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

@Chaswood79 - Thank you!. The tank is 300 gallons and with tank and sump with rock and sand displacement worked out to exactly 300 gallons of water, not planned, just happened.

I had read up and tried the respiration program and then after the fact read that it is pretty much a waste of time. The boat I find myself in is that I would like to change things, but now I'm half afraid to as I from what I am hearing is set it, leave them alone and the corals will adjust. I do like your idea of getting rid of the respiration and using the weather settings. I have no tried playing with those yet but that's a great idea. Actually, jumping ahead to PAR, the center of my tank at the top of the rock is around 550. To the left and to the right sides of the tank I am looking at 350ish. Now, this is with a cheap par meter. I was thinking of renting one from BRS to get more accurate readings. Here are some screen snips of my current settings....


The first is a normal "high peak".
The second is a normal "low valley".
The third is my 2:00 mid afternoon peak.
The fourth is my spectrum at the 2:00 peak.
and lastly, the fifth is what I would like to try but am afraid to just change it.

I would definitely recommend renting a quality par meter, preferably the apogee 510. Those par numbers sound a little high considering my par is lower with my settings that are double yours and mine are over a much smaller volume of water.

 

[Shredded]

OK, so I ran home at lunch, got my first set of adjustments done to my water. FYI - Ati has a full line of trace elements that they sell to make adjustments with. They are about 20.00 per bottle. I thought this could get expensive, but so far, it is usually only 3 of them and I have only had to buy 5 at this point. And with the amount that it takes to make adjustments they will last for quite some time.
<<<<IDIOT ALERT>>>> <<<<IDIOT ALERT>>>> <<<<IDIOT ALERT>>>> <<<<IDIOT ALERT>>>> <<<<IDIOT ALERT>>>>
Well, while doing this and sharing this with you all, I was looking at my home page for ATI. I clicked on my main tank (which on the surface and translated from German to English, says Jeff's Tank, Net Volume 300.... when I drilled down I suddenly saw this... 300 L, Liters, not Gallons. So, their suggested adjustments were based on an 80 gallon tank. This is why I saw positive changes immediately following each adjustment but they didn't last. I was not nearly dosing enough. I called ATI, they adjusted my tank volume to 1140 liters and that changed my adjustments on the fly. Wow.

OK, so, lighting anyone? Oh, they are 12" off the surface of the water.
Jeff

 

[Shredded]

I am horrendous at photography, but while i was home I put my blue filter on my phone and snapped a few shots.
Birds nests, Bubble gum didgies, my Reverse Superman Monti, Jedi Mind Trick, seem to grow well... But, like the last picture, the Strawberry Shortcake in back, encrusts.. but all i get are the little branches. What's missing?

 

[Shredded]

Triton appears to be the same time line.
I think im going to try ATI as, I a week and half ago sent in a sample to triton,and from their communication last night, it appears for the second time They have lost my tubes of water and is VERY Inexcusable.

I have not had that happen with ATI yet. I did have one of the sample mailers go to California but then unknown to anyone's logic was sent to Connecticut for a short visit and then back to California. I guess the US Post Office thought my samples needed to see the country. ATI said the impact from the delay would be minimal, perhaps impacting nitrates and phosphates at most. (unfortunately that was two of the readings I was most interested in at the time)

 

[Shredded]

OK, so if anyone is still following, I made the dosing adjustments and I am adding a little Iodine every week so I don't get too low. I will send in another ATI test this week. Everything is going better, but the major change I made is the lighting. I just jumped in and made the change, turned the acclimation mode to 25% for 4 weeks and hoped for the best. I didn't move any corals and it does not appear that any were damaged and all are doing the same or better. The one really noticeable change was my big blue squamosa, he is open huge, mantle way out and putting on lots of shell which I would say is a great indication that I did the right thing. Now, whether I was just lucky, who knows but the way I went about doing this was to flip over to manual mode in MyAI and I played with the settings until the light spectrum looked like all of the graphs that you see all over the net.... So below is what I arrived at. I know that a lot of you do not use this much red or green, but to get the spectrum right, it had to come up. I have no nuisance algae of any kind.

I then cut out the middle section with all the up and down waves, leaving my ramp up and ramp down as was. (I like it and I dive and snorkel and to me it is a very realistic look to it.) and substituted the settings above for the middle of the day. The resulting look during the day is much brighter and not so blue with morning and evening still very blue. Compare this to the old schedule above and you can see what I have changed. My new resulting schedule looks like this...

Corals are encrusting faster and starting to shoot up. Calcium usage has gone way up. Comments? Suggestions?

 

[Elliottspsreef]

Looking good, now your dosing the right amounts of everything and things are stable your Usage of nutrients will also go up, just keep testing and you should be good! Also good things don’t happen overnight so be patient and I’m sure you will get the results you’re looking for

 

[dwest]

I am horrendous at photography, but while i was home I put my blue filter on my phone and snapped a few shots.
Birds nests, Bubble gum didgies, my Reverse Superman Monti, Jedi Mind Trick, seem to grow well... But, like the last picture, the Strawberry Shortcake in back, encrusts.. but all i get are the little branches. What's missing?

I don’t think you are missing anything. Your tank looks great. SSC acros take a long time to flourish. That monti digi is looking nice!