I would say Acro pora and SPS are easier than what people make them out to be. I was terrified to try them until someone gave me a couple frags and they just took off like weeds. I thought I was crazy for not trying them sooner. However... Just as fast as they grew... They also die just as fast.... I come to realize extreme changes in water quality can kill them faster than anything else. So, for every successful Acropora I've grown, I've killed much larger colonies in their place...
Even something as simple as montipora, I've killed. I should write a book, but the secrets to growing acropora is not calcium or alkalinity or chemistry (well a little of it is). After I lost a bunch of montipora, a large ball of a stylapora and noticed recession in my acropora at the same time, I sent my water for ICP test. I thought something drastic must have happened. OD of alk, or a rusty nail fell in the sump or something. . . No, my trace elements and alkalinity, calcium, magnesium were all fine, in check.. What was it? Phosphates. They had hit .55 ppm.
I lowered them SLOWLY! Over the course of 3 months and the acropora and montipora regrew. The stylapora was lost.
This year, I noticed my hammers all dieing, so monitored my phosphates more closely, they had hit .4 ppm. So, started, lowering them again. My last test came back .03 ppm. Nitrates at 23 ppm. My acropora was receeding because my phosphates got too low. I'm letting them slowly rise back up and although I lost parts of one colony, the rest of it is growing back over the dead skeleton now that there's some phosphates.
What's the secret to acropora. I was told the complete opposite of what I'm going to say now. So many reefers claimed ultra low nutrients to grow SPS. I don't know why other than they didn't want other hobbiests selling SPS? Maybe that was the case. .
The secret, in my very humble opinion and experience is to have phosphates!!! But not too many. The sweet spot I've found is .05 to .2. My Acropora grew like weeds in that range. My best growth for nitrates was between 10 and 25 ppm.
Below 10 nitrates and it'll die from what I've seen. Literally starve to death. What's funny is that now that I've lowered my phosphates, my xenia is dieing off.. (I'm o.k. with this) but goes to show that more corals than we realize need phosphates to survive both hard and soft corals.
The only coral that is looking amazingly better than it ever has in the last 3 years of having it is my acans. I'm thinking Acros like phosphates being higher, and Acans of all corals need ultra low phosphates and nitrates to grow...
I would argue a SPS grow out tank will require water conditions that LPS cannot thrive in. But softies would and do. I've got orange zuma mushroom corals coming out of my ears from just one frag. I now have close to 20 in under a year. It's all about the phoshates for softies and SPS. Who knew! And something that Coral companies don't want you to know...
That said, I actually like LPS more than SPS. However I've killed more LPS over the years than SPS. . . Go figure... That LPS are much more sensitive to water conditions than SPS.
