Corals Look Dull and Not Growing

[Salty_Northerner]

Pics are almost useless they’re so blue

What phone do you have? If you have a pro mode within your camera look for white balance and select 7500k and all the way up to 10,000 k and take a picture and that will get rid of a lot of the blue that messes up with your photo.

 

[kayman1124]

Yes definitely adding more animals will definitely bring the nutrients up.

See I have the opposite problem. I can always tell when my wife feeds the fish. She says she doesn't but a quick phosphorus check tells a different story LOL. Then once we start to feed less than the phosphorus drops off pretty quickly.

Do you have any Reef roids or anything like that laying around?

Yeah I feed Reef roofs once a week about 1/8 tsp and dose AB+ a few times a week. Unfortunately I have vermitid snails and I feel like the reef roofs is steroids to them more than the corals lol so try not to feed too much

 

[kayman1124]

Have u tried dosing some aminos? I agree with others here it sounds like your corals are starving. I don't think it's a PAR issue..my par is lower than yours and my mixed reef is growing but my nutrients are much higher. Nitrates 15 and phosphate .1

What do you think about corals looking worse when dosing Neophos? I also tried dozing ESV Nitrate and stopped for same reason corals looked worse! Honestly turned around by it all

 

[kayman1124]

What phone do you have? If you have a pro mode within your camera look for white balance and select 7500k and all the way up to 10,000 k and take a picture and that will get rid of a lot of the blue that messes up with your photo.

iPhone 14 I can try this!

 

[Salty_Northerner]

What do you think about corals looking worse when dosing Neophos? I also tried dozing ESV Nitrate and stopped for same reason corals looked worse! Honestly turned around by it all

I'm learning myself and really have not much experience at all when it comes to dosing that stuff. If my new trends are too high I'll do a water change or I just add some Fritz zyme 9 to the system and that brings down my nitrate.. I do those Red Sea baby plus aminos on a daily basis but I shut my return pump off for at least 15 minutes. I haven't had any outbreaks of bacteria thankfully but I'm not dosing very hard neither. The only time I go crazy dosing is when I spot feed and that will generally bring up my levels for a short period of time. Sometimes things are just a coincidence so that's why I can't really give you any information on why your Coral seems to react the way they do when you are adding those additives to bring up your phosphate.

 

[MrGisonni]

My mixed reef seems to look the best with nitrates between 20 and 30ppm FWIW. Bad things happened when I let nitrates bottom out. Feeding reef roids and Ab+ also a bad combination for my reef. You have to find that sweet spot. My reef took a long, long time to mature.i believe it was because of the dry rock I used. I also run bare bottom. Like I said before some of my sps took forever to color up.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Lou from tropic Marin was saying on BRS TV that if you're phosphate is low going by the cheapest flake food you can find. The cheaper the better, they use phosphorus as a preservative and he suggested just throwing in some of that food to raise your nutrient level.

It wasn't long ago that I got back into the hobby and my Zoa's started to Brown out or just basically lose all their color. The problem was I was doing way too many water changes and my nutrients bottomed right out. I thought maybe it was my lighting and I found out down the road that my lighting was fine. I started to feed more and I let my nitrates rise around 15 and I still struggled. It wasn't until I was guided to purchase the phosphorus tester. I was very low like yourself and started dosing ab+ and started feeding more often and after time everything regained its color. It didn't happen overnight, it took about 2 months for them to adjust and be happy again.

 

[Lavey29]

What would you suggest par go up to?

I keep my SPS in 300 to 350. Some easy ones can grow in 250 but most of mine in 300 to 350. I have my XR15 lights at 100% intensity. You need nitrates at 10 and phosphate. 05 to
1 ppm

 

[Doogs]

Calcium and Phosphate seem low - more so on the Phosphate