Coral looking good but not growing

roadrashpaul · Sep 27, 2015

Anyone experience this? I feel like my tank is lacking something that I can't figure out. 95% of everything looks great but doesn't seem to be growing. Maybe it's just where I look at it everyday but I don't think so. All parameters look great. I see these completely full tanks and want to know what they are doing that I am not. I am only dosing 2 part. Is there something else I should be adding?

RareEarthCorals · Sep 28, 2015

If your tank looks 95% the you are almost there. Seriously if your looking for growth, lighting is your most important resource before anything else. I take progression photos to see growth. Looking everyday is like getting fatter. You dont know you are until you see yourself in photos. Back to serious, dosing should only be done if you are testing for it. Growing corals need certain elements for growth like calcium and magnesium just to name a few. Never dose unless you are testing for it. Overdose or underdose can be detrimental. So to recap, lighting is your most important resource followed by calcium and magnesium. There are a few other things but until you have the others in line and are testing to maintain appropriate levels anything else will not help and just complicate things.

Tahoe61 · Sep 28, 2015

What kind of corals?

You might consider posting your chemistry.

How old is your tank?

Remember it's an addiction and some tanks get stocked heavily with corals. I agree with RareEarthCorals, progression shots sometime put slow coral growth into perspective, some corals are painfully slow growers. Track you chemistry as well, helps to get growth dialed in with dosing.

I feed my corals, sps and lps.

pickupman66 · Sep 28, 2015

I truly thing the first two have nailed it here. it is very hard to see real growth looking every day. I try to have a good photo session with my tank once a month to once every two months. this helps me gauge the actual growth I may or may not have. At times though I have seen my sps tanks go thru spurts where they will not grow a whole lot and then all of the sudden it is like a massive growth event. just keep the stability there and it will come.

roadrashpaul · Sep 28, 2015

Thanks guys. This tank is only about a month old but all sand, rock , coral and livestock came from a 2 year old tank. Some things I can visibly see like my montis. They are encrusting and white on all edges. Others like a kryptonite candy has only had 3 heads for 2 years while by blues grow like crazy. My hammers and frogs pawn seem to grow huge heads but rarely any new branches or heads. Zoas look good mostly but don't spread much.

I know some of it is my husbandry. I was very lax in my other tank on doing water changes. I am trying to do better with this one. I also bought a dosing pump so I can keep that constant and am working on dialing it in.

I ran out of nitrate reagent about a month ago and my phosphate expired. Going to pick up another one soon. Mag was 1800, Cal 410 and Alk 8.1 a couple days ago. I want my Alk around 9 and Cal around 450 and am working with my dosing pump to get there. I run gfo 24/7 and run a scrubber. Maybe I am stripping my tank of phosphate and nitrate too much??? I know without a test kit no way to know.

I do have some dinos starting to show up on the sand bed and glass. Not much but I have to clean glass once a week. I have a lot of detritus from not having a cuc. I am ordering one today to fix that. Rambling a little but wanted to give some more info.

I am running leds over the tank. Reef radiance dm165e I believe. I run two of them. Whites at 40 and blues at 70.

dbl · Sep 28, 2015

Let me provide an example demonstrating the previous statements about being too close to our system to notice growth. I had some family members in town that hadn’t seen my tank in several months. While I’ve been happily moving along, thinking everything was doing well, but didn’t seem to be “growing” for the most part (some obvious exceptions). So we pulled up some old pictures and I quickly discovered there had been tremendous growth, just not so obvious to me since I see it every day.

I’m not an expert at any of this by any means, but I totally agree, stability is key!

ca2or · Sep 28, 2015

What kelvin are your lights? 20k is little growth and great color whole 6500 is great growth and little color. Most reef lights stick between 10k to 20k. Sweet spot for most is 14k

roadrashpaul · Sep 29, 2015

Honestly I am not sure. Good question.

Tahoe61 · Sep 29, 2015

Man your tank is so young. In 11 days my tank comes up on 2 months, I transferred straight over as well, I am just now getting some decent growth. Sps, dosing, ATO .....I would pleasantly surprised if I saw noticeable growth in a month old tank, just saying.

pickupman66 · Sep 29, 2015

Paul, at 70/40, you are in the 14k range from what I have found with mine.

rainmaker · Oct 3, 2015

I've got same lights running at 60 40 I will take the advice and bump them to 70- 40

commonstranger · Oct 18, 2015

1. SPS - Stability Promotes Success 2. Take a pic once a month on your phone but don't look at it till the next month. 3. Keep your hand out of your tank as much as possible. 4. Once you put a coral in your tank and its happy try not to move or frag it for at lease one year. And some of the best advice I ever heard (and trust me this guys tank was amazing). 5. If the coral doesn't keep its color and almost double in size in six months ditch it and find a new coral. At least in his tank everything was big and very colorful. Just food for thought and always keep it simple and fun !!

roadrashpaul · Oct 20, 2015

Great info. I honestly think my nitrates and phosphates are out of balance. Some of my sps is lacking color and I have some algae growth in the tank. I am going to pick up a new test kit next time I get somewhere. I bet my nitrates are really low and phosphates are higher. I run a huge ats and gfo. My water may be to clean. If my test kit shows that I am going to start dosing nitrates to get them up.

fishdoc11 · Oct 27, 2015

Too early to tell with the new tank IMO. Great advice above about taking pictures to be able to tell. How many fish do you have? Also regular water changes are the best way to make sure zoas do well IME. More important for zoas (at least some types, some types will grow like crazy no matter what) than SPS. Also my experience with LEDs the last couple of years leads me to believe SPS growth is quite a bit slower under LEDs than T5s or Halides. One other point is that when corals are smaller they grow much slower, growth is exponential so the bigger they are the faster they grow. Sometimes frags can take a year or more to really start taking off IME. Big take home is that if everything looks happy you are probably good

HTH, Chris