Corals are not doing good in new reef tank

[ReefBeta]

My tank size is 120cm L x 40cm D x 70cm Height, Visually the lights are very brightly hitting on sand bed. I have ordered for 2nr. MAXSPECT JUMP LI65 to replace my NICREW Hyper reef 50W. if that is the issue then it should be solved I suppose.

That's is a very tall tank. To give you and idea, my tank is 24" high, 60cm. With a single Radion XR15 at 80%, it's only doing less than 150 par on the sand bed. Your 50w LED is same to assume 1/3 as efficient as XR15, and it need to get down another 10cm. It's more likely to be 20ish par at the sand bed or lower.

Your new light is not very strong either. I think you will need to run all four of them if you want to be able to keep SPS.

Another angle to think about it, if your light is enough, with no coral, or even coraline, and 25 ppm nitrate 0.5 phosphate, you would have been in though fight with algae already. Yet there is not a speck of it.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Did you start with dead rock? If that’s the case it can take as long as a year for your tank to stabilize enough to support sps.

Five TDS is way to high. Might not sound like much but those five TDS could be copper for all you know. Get that down to zero.

I would also say that your lighting is on the weak side, it should be enough to support softies and some LPS but since you want to keep sps an upgrade is probably needed.
A cheap solution would be to retrofit some T5’s.

 

[askar]

I have to disagree. This is my 3 months old tank. It's younger than OP's. Tell me how it's not old enough to thrive?

Tank need to be matured to do coral is more of a myth. What need to be mature is the reefer and the husbandry skill and experience. Just leaving the tank be for more months won't magically make it thrive. If things are wrong, it should be addressed quick. The notion of not changing things fast is when things are doing OK. If things are dying, changing it slowly will just ensure their demise.

I completely agree with it. its true that it takes time to develop microbs but not six months. There must be some parametres we miss in terms of maturing a tank and this should be addressed. your corals are looking happy and healthy. could you give me your parameters, maintenance routine and tips ?

 

[LeftyReefer]

My tank is 5 months old.
Started with only dry rock and dry sand.
I have spots of coralline algae growing all over the place now.... Started seeing the first spots of it around 3 months.
First showed up on wave makers and plastic pump fittings, then rocks.
All my corals are doing fine. A couple SPS, a few LPS, and softies. All seem happy.

If you're tank isn't growing coralline algae yet, then I'm not surprised your corals are also struggling to grow... They both need the same thing to thrive. So I'd concentrate on getting your water quality/chemistry correct. When you have coralline algae growing, then try again with some easy/hardy corals and you should have better success.

Testing is the key.

 

[Brad_95]

I have to disagree. This is my 3 months old tank. It's younger than OP's. Tell me how it's not old enough to thrive?

Tank need to be matured to do coral is more of a myth. What need to be mature is the reefer and the husbandry skill and experience. Just leaving the tank be for more months won't magically make it thrive. If things are wrong, it should be addressed quick. The notion of not changing things fast is when things are doing OK. If things are dying, changing it slowly will just ensure their demise.

That’s exactly what I’m saying, if someone is new to the hobby, just dumping a bunch of coral into a 2 month old tank and expecting it to survive off of basic knowledge is ignorant. That’s why I said PAIRED with good husbandry, if you know what you’re doing and what swings in params to expect, then you will be fine. Because you already know what to expect. But if someone doesn’t know what they’re doing and just diving right in, they will almost certainly fail.

 

[Brad_95]

I am using RO water and TDS of it is about 5 only. Salt I am using Red Sea salt. I do have an ATO my salinity is always maintained in 1.025.

What RODI system are you using? 5TDS may seem like a lot but if that’s TDS is copper or any sort of metal, it will keep compounding into your system every time you top off the water.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Sorry but I disagree. 100 watts is plenty enough to grow a lot of different corals especially GSP and mushrooms. I have mushrooms literally growing in the dark in one of my tanks. I grew a ton of coral under stock biocube lights back in the day. There is something else going on here.

We can disagree, but those lights operated at 100% intensity in all channels only put out a maximum PAR of 125 measured at 24 niches in air and only directly under the light. Once you get 9 inches out from the light, you are down to 70 PAR. Again, this is measured in air. Once you measure that in water, you are probably getting less than half that amount of PAR.

The best thing the OP can do is get a PAR meter to use and verify the amount of light their corals are getting. Anything else is just guessing. The ICP test will tell a lot about the water quality and any toxins. It may be that the 5 TDS in his RO is the problem. Unless there is a big red flag in the ICP test, I would look at increasing the light.

To the OP, many reefers are successful with the parameters in your tank. Many are successful with higher and lower nutrients. There is no magic set of numbers that work, just general ranges. Chasing a hard set of numbers usually causes more problems and takes the fun out of the hobby for most. Try to keep it simple. All living things need food, and coral receive 85-90% of their nutrition from light.

 

[ReefBeta]

I completely agree with it. its true that it takes time to develop microbs but not six months. There must be some parametres we miss in terms of maturing a tank and this should be addressed. your corals are looking happy and healthy. could you give me your parameters, maintenance routine and tips ?

Most corals are doing fine. There is some hiccups with bio blocks and fighting with dino that lost me some couple frags, otherwise they're growing/encrusting.

Parameter wise I don't think you will find much use, but here they are:
Alk: 8.2 (want to keep it between 8.5-9, but the consumption got too high, still adjusting dosing)
Ca: 400
Mg: 1350
Nitrate: 10-20
Phosphate: 0.05-0.1
I don't think your water params have problem, unless it's swinging a lot.

The easiest way to test if light is the problem is to get a cheap GSP frag, put in right center under the light, top of the rock. If that start growing, it's the light.

 

[I’m Batman]

The easiest way to test if light is the problem is to get a cheap GSP frag, put in right center under the light, top of the rock. If that start growing, it's the light.

This is brilliant, however my GSP under AI Prime shriveled up for 14 months and remained shriveled with smaller than 1mm polyps until I started dosing NeoPhos. Two weeks after dosing they’re growing like crazy.

14 months ago at 0 Po4

Started dosing Po4 last month this is the GSP now.

 

[I’m Batman]

I don’t know if this is relevant or accurate but there’s a BRS chart somewhere, if your mag is low at 1250 and your dKH is 9.6, that would put your calc lower than 450. a teeter totter effect over dKH and Ca.

 

[Bepis]

It's true, but my case what is going on. while my tank one month old i had added frags of GSP and zoanthids in tank and it was doing good. apparently I added an anemoni in my tank, after a few days it was dead while I removed it was in to peices and spread all over my tank. it was netted as much i could and changed water about 30% next day. it was 2 months back and I did several water changes since then. since this happened my corals started closing slowly then even new corals i added were not opening. will this cause a long term issue ?

I’d throw on another nicrew or 2. Despite what they advertise the par chart says in small letter over open air. This means that over water the par is much lower since the water disrupts the light.