Getting ready to give up on SPS/Acros.

[MissyTwitch]

Yeah SPS are very touchy. Stability is definitely key. Just look at Australia reefs with minor temp changes and ph changes => massive white outs.

I’m sorry if this is long. Didn’t read what others have put but this is my experience after running a successful acro tank for three years.

I run a mostly acro only tank with some ricordeans and two torches. 300g display/200-300g sump/40g frag tank

Things I’ve had issues with:
- temp changes by >3’f lead to browning and white out. Any time the temp gets 80’f => browning and/ or white out. I keep my tank 76-78’f
- I keep my alk >8. 8-10. When it drops to less then 8 I get Tissue necrosis.
- rapid wide swings in Alk can cause browning out and/or TN/white out
- potassium plays a bigger part in acros than people expect. TN starts to happen at <400. Starts from base and works it’s way up. Keep K>400.
- Par. I run gen4 rads. Every acro is different but I start to run into problems when par drops below 200. Less coloration most stay brown. The base of my tank par is 250. Top my tank par is 600.
- toxins: [part 1] I know some people run mix tanks and have success but my experience is not so great. Espeacially if you have Zoas and leathers. They release a stupid amount of toxins that if your not running carbon or a ozone you can have acros randomly die off at a consistent rate.
- toxins: [part 2] even in an acro only tank sps fight and release toxins. As aquariums are very much a closed system the concentrations can build up. Running carbon and/or ozone can help prevent this. I’m sure water changes can help as well
- the larger the system the more stable your system
- phosphates and nitrates being mildly elevated causes browning. Phosphates and nitrates at zero will causes some random die off of acros
- other considerations:
** part 1: low nutrient systemslike zeovit have a lot of success stories with acros. I used that at first and kept a stable tank for about a year before costs got to great and I switched over to running a modified zeovit/algae scrubber/carbon/no protein skimmer. I had the best success with this system. Fed the acros about once a week. Kept mostly tangs and some other fish. Mostly herbivore predominant fish. So that they’d scavenge on the rocks to eat any algae that grows. Not feeding fish more than once a day with dry seaweed keeps tank clean and my fish don’t die. Fish poop ultimately is what can feed Acros.
** part 2: recently wanted clearer water so switched back to protein skimmer/algae scrubber => nitrates/phosphates zero’d out started to see TN. Turned off one of two algae scrubbers (had them on am/pm shifts to prevent night time ph swings). TN stopped. My fiancée wanted even clearer water so we expiramented with ozone. Despite perfect parameters had increased white out. Heard ozone caused increase in par. So I recehecked my par. Between restarting the protein skimmer and starting ozone my par had jumped to 350 on bottom and 800 on top........yeah had to turn my lights down. At least I saved in power.
- part 3: cultured colonies tolerate aquariums better than wild colonies. I’d say 8-9/10 frags from cultured survive transition to a new stable tank with similar parameters. Wild colonies don’t handle the transition well and are more susceptible to the minute changes in a tank. I’ve only been able to keep 2/10 wild colonies alive even in the most stable conditions
- part 4: start new frags at the lowest par in your tank 200-250 and work them up the tank slowly to where you will eventually place them. Low par kills slowly high or kills quickly
- part 4: larger the system more stable the tank and less problems.
- part 5: Flow matters more than you think. As acros grow in your tank the flow changes. Be aware of this as you might need to adjust placement of acros to increase flow or change placement of acros that are not tolerating change in flow. Moderate to high flow is best. Low flow is death to acros.
- Part 6: **** happens. No matter what you do, even in the most stable tank acros will sometimes randomly die off. I started a frag tank for this issue to keep back ups of my larger or fancier colonies.

Hope this helps

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Yeah SPS are very touchy. Stability is definitely key. Just look at Australia reefs with minor temp changes and ph changes => massive white outs.

I’m sorry if this is long. Didn’t read what others have put but this is my experience after running a successful acro tank for three years.

I run a mostly acro only tank with some ricordeans and two torches. 300g display/200-300g sump/40g frag tank

Things I’ve had issues with:
- temp changes by >3’f lead to browning and white out. Any time the temp gets 80’f => browning and/ or white out. I keep my tank 76-78’f
- I keep my alk >8. 8-10. When it drops to less then 8 I get Tissue necrosis.
- rapid wide swings in Alk can cause browning out and/or TN/white out
- potassium plays a bigger part in acros than people expect. TN starts to happen at <400. Starts from base and works it’s way up. Keep K>400.
- Par. I run gen4 rads. Every acro is different but I start to run into problems when par drops below 200. Less coloration most stay brown. The base of my tank par is 250. Top my tank par is 600.
- toxins: [part 1] I know some people run mix tanks and have success but my experience is not so great. Espeacially if you have Zoas and leathers. They release a stupid amount of toxins that if your not running carbon or a ozone you can have acros randomly die off at a consistent rate.
- toxins: [part 2] even in an acro only tank sps fight and release toxins. As aquariums are very much a closed system the concentrations can build up. Running carbon and/or ozone can help prevent this. I’m sure water changes can help as well
- the larger the system the more stable your system
- phosphates and nitrates being mildly elevated causes browning. Phosphates and nitrates at zero will causes some random die off of acros
- other considerations:
** part 1: low nutrient systemslike zeovit have a lot of success stories with acros. I used that at first and kept a stable tank for about a year before costs got to great and I switched over to running a modified zeovit/algae scrubber/carbon/no protein skimmer. I had the best success with this system. Fed the acros about once a week. Kept mostly tangs and some other fish. Mostly herbivore predominant fish. So that they’d scavenge on the rocks to eat any algae that grows. Not feeding fish more than once a day with dry seaweed keeps tank clean and my fish don’t die. Fish poop ultimately is what can feed Acros.
** part 2: recently wanted clearer water so switched back to protein skimmer/algae scrubber => nitrates/phosphates zero’d out started to see TN. Turned off one of two algae scrubbers (had them on am/pm shifts to prevent night time ph swings). TN stopped. My fiancée wanted even clearer water so we expiramented with ozone. Despite perfect parameters had increased white out. Heard ozone caused increase in par. So I recehecked my par. Between restarting the protein skimmer and starting ozone my par had jumped to 350 on bottom and 800 on top........yeah had to turn my lights down. At least I saved in power.
- part 3: cultured colonies tolerate aquariums better than wild colonies. I’d say 8-9/10 frags from cultured survive transition to a new stable tank with similar parameters. Wild colonies don’t handle the transition well and are more susceptible to the minute changes in a tank. I’ve only been able to keep 2/10 wild colonies alive even in the most stable conditions
- part 4: start new frags at the lowest par in your tank 200-250 and work them up the tank slowly to where you will eventually place them. Low par kills slowly high or kills quickly
- part 4: larger the system more stable the tank and less problems.
- part 5: Flow matters more than you think. As acros grow in your tank the flow changes. Be aware of this as you might need to adjust placement of acros to increase flow or change placement of acros that are not tolerating change in flow. Moderate to high flow is best. Low flow is death to acros.
- Part 6: **** happens. No matter what you do, even in the most stable tank acros will sometimes randomly die off. I started a frag tank for this issue to keep back ups of my larger or fancier colonies.

Hope this helps

Awesome post

 

[OriginalUserName]

Thanks for the input guys. I'm not one to give up so I'm very happy to have a few things to look at.

I just received my ICP test so that will help. My rock source supposedly doesn't contain much in the way of phosphates but maybe the curing container I used wasn't 100% food safe. I'll start monitoring them more closely. I will also crank up my fuge and skimmer if I'm not worried about starving anybody out.

I have the DOS for auto water changes so it's an easy matter for me to push it up to 20% weekly changes to help things stabilize. On paper I have plenty of flow but I've been toying with the idea of moving both WAVS to the overflow end and adding 2 MP10s to the far side.

I do have a poly filter I keep for emergencies. Is that worth tossing in and see what it pulls out?

A couple things: You're getting a lot of contrary advice here so you're going to have to do some of your own research and decide which to trust. So here is my opinion:

Bubble Algae - That stuff is the devil and I've tried everything including Fox Face, Tangs, Emerald Crabs, etc. The only thing that worked for me was Vibrant. If you use it, go VERY slow and know that it will take weeks or months to completely go away. Don't expect an overnight miracle.

Algae - I believe you have a Phosphate/Nitrate issue because of the ridiculous amount of algae. This is common with a new tank, so don't freak out and try a bunch of miracle cures like massive water changes and tons of reactor media. I'd start with a little GFO and see how it goes. You might also want to limit your feeding.

Bleaching - That's not bleaching, that's RTN/STN. Those are a goner I'm afraid. I had to laugh when I saw those pics. I've seen that too many times in my tank when I was starting out.

Lighting - I agree with those who say you don't have enough lighting for acros. 300 par at the surface ain't gonna cut it. My PAR is 350-500 at the acros. I don't even know what it is at the surface but far higher. IMO, most acros love light, the more the better. There are a few who like a bit lower PAR, but not as low as what you have. They also like coverage and those little pucks centered on the tank won't provide that for them. I'd suggesting adding a couple T5s on either side if you want to keep those lights, or just replace the lighting with something better. You can achieve good coverage with LED, but you will generally need double recommended. T5 provides better coverage at lower cost which is why many acro tanks have them. Many people who claim to do just fine with acros and LEDs run T5s as supplementation. I wonder if it's really the LEDs growing the coral, or the T5 supplements...

New Tank Syndrome - This pretty much covers all of the above. Your tank is new, too new for acros IMO. There is a lot of debate on this one, but I wouldn't even think of trying an acro in that tank until you hit the 12 month mark, possibly a little longer. Starting with dry rock (I prefer dry rock), extends the tank aging process. Try out a birdsnest or monti, but stay away from acros. You're just burning up your money until then. I know you don't want to hear that, I didn't either my first year. But after burning hundreds of dollars on acros which didn't make it, I know it to be true.

Don't give up!

Thanks, and yes, those are definitely RTN. I did have some bleaching a while back but I'm at a point where I know which way I'm failing....ha. I'm going to slowly tick my LEDs back up and

I used Vibrant way back on my old LPS tank and had no issues so I'll probably look back into that. And agreed. Of course we are all impatient to get started on corals that take years to really grow but I kept thinking I had issues nailed down. Going to go back to the drawing board and go extra slow. I'll just focus on building my fish stock and getting rid of this GD bubble algae. Bubble algae is the hardest thing I've dealt with in reefing. Bryopsis and hair algae are easy by comparison.

 

[Shooter6]

What lights? If led what is the uv set at?

 

[OriginalUserName]

What lights? If led what is the uv set at?

Kessil Ap700s. UV is set to however Kessil does their Kessil logic.

 

[Shooter6]

Ive seen a few issues with uv set to high with leds. Might want to cut it down to single digits for a while

 

[Dennis Cartier]

I would add T5 supplements as others have suggested. The aquatic life units allow you to mount an AP700 between the T5's (just barely). This will give you a good baseline. I find that LEDs give so much control to the end user that often results in tweaking which spells problems for SPS, especially acros. Equal amounts of Blue+ and Coral+ is what I would start with.

As others have mentioned light, flow and stability are what you need for acros. At this point, I would stop buying expensive acro frags. You need to be shopping in the $5 and $10 section. Having a browned out acro frag survive, start to grow and eventually colour up so you can see what you actually puchased, is a beautiful thing. Not having an expensive frag RTN before your eyes will also lessen your frustration.

I would also suggest sticking some easy SPS in like monticaps and digi's. When those start to become a nuisance because they are growing too fast, then you should be at the point where you can transition to acros.

As they say, SPS can also stand for Stability Precedes Success, and with acros it has never been more true.

Dennis

 

[phixman]

Following

 

[FishTruck]

I feel your pain. The same thing happened to me in my first year and I tried dipping, and all kinds of stuff with no luck. Every acro would RTN within a week while clams, LPS, fish, inverts all seemed fine. I tried looking for pests, doing every test known to man, and never really found the smoking gun. I learned to really stabilize my Alk and tuned my RO/DI source to keep the product TDS at ZERO and reduced my light cycle - but still did not achieve success.

At about year two, it turned around, and the LPS started to whither right when my first acro frags started to thrive. I have been pretty much all SPS since then. Due to stupidity, I just wiped out about 80% of my stuff again - but these days I can always keep enough alive that it will grow back.

 

[Keepswiming]

Definitely new tank syndrome that’s been started with all dry rock IMO.

I would start dosing a bacteria source (KZ, Microbacter, Prodibio, etc.), to help with new tank type issues. Get a couple urchins and turbos to take care of your algae.

I would love to see BRS start a dry rock tank with no bacteria source and then compare the success of it to their KZ 160 tanks success. My money would be that the non KZ dry rock tank would come nowhere close to the success of the KZ tank success in the first 18 months. So, what I’m saying is do some research on bacteria and then add accordingly. It doesn’t have to be a complete system like KZ and could be as simple as Microbacter7.

Add T5 like folks are saying and make the tubes all Bplus or get off the Kessil all together.

Use a good, reliable, powerful skimmer. Feed heavy and then feed some more all while managing your nutrient levels.

If you start with all dry rock, you in no way have to wait two years before adding SPS. I am convinced though that the average reefer would benefit greatly by adding bacteria during the first two years of the tank.

Hope you get it sorted out.

I was going through this thread thinking, "when is someone going to address the fundamental issue" that we (dry rock users) all deal with! Great post!

OP, If there is one thing I personally would listen to in your thread, it would be this^! Not saying the others didn't have great info, but this is the starting point assuming your basics of reefkeeping are adequate,

We are so quick to focus on our equipment but don't stop to think about how nature works these issues out... We start with dry rock and then add one source of bacteria, mabe two... Of course we acquire new strains through the livestock we introduce, but that takes time to reproduce to beneficial levels I believe. My tanks had the same issue as yours, as soon as I focused on adding as many different beneficial bacteria strains as I could, the tank started thriving shortly after. It's not going to be an immediate process for obvious reasons, but it WILL help assuming your main reef keeping parameters (ALK!!) and fundamentals (stability) are within normal limits. Although I am not going to jump into this because it has been echoed over and over. Do yourself a tremendous favor and invest in some quality bacteria to get your tank up and running without overthinking everything. I personally used Dr. tims one and only to start, then waste away for a period of time when my tank was like yours, and have recently been using Zeobak and Zeostart. Make sure to go slowly, I went half the recommended dose, and don't add all at once. There are plenty of other great bacteria products out, these are just what I used.

There are plenty of articles showing evidence to support this, including one that shows the corals consume certain bacteria. I can find the articles I read if you are interested. "Stick" in there, we need more sticks growing in personal tanks to in increase the hobbyist trade, because the retail side of things is starting to look grim! GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY REEFKEEPING!

 

[phixman]

So , I'm going through something similar. I broke down my tank that had been running for about 2.5 years. I had some very high sps pieces that were growing nicely. I had a red sea 350 that had been cycling for about 6 month when I put the first sps in there. To keep it short, I lost most of my sps ( 5 thousand in coral gone). For some reason sps hate new tanks, it seems the best route is to use live rock from an established tank you trust, or to use a bit of live rock, especially those with sponges. My tank is almost 1 year old now, and still have sps issues.

 

[FlyPenFly]

I was going through this thread thinking, "when is someone going to address the fundamental issue" that we (dry rock users) all deal with! Great post!

OP, If there is one thing I personally would listen to in your thread, it would be this^! Not saying the others didn't have great info, but this is the starting point assuming your basics of reefkeeping are adequate,

We are so quick to focus on our equipment but don't stop to think about how nature works these issues out... We start with dry rock and then add one source of bacteria, mabe two... Of course we acquire new strains through the livestock we introduce, but that takes time to reproduce to beneficial levels I believe. My tanks had the same issue as yours, as soon as I focused on adding as many different beneficial bacteria strains as I could, the tank started thriving shortly after. It's not going to be an immediate process for obvious reasons, but it WILL help assuming your main reef keeping parameters (ALK!!) and fundamentals (stability) are within normal limits. Although I am not going to jump into this because it has been echoed over and over. Do yourself a tremendous favor and invest in some quality bacteria to get your tank up and running without overthinking everything. I personally used Dr. tims one and only to start, then waste away for a period of time when my tank was like yours, and have recently been using Zeobak and Zeostart. Make sure to go slowly, I went half the recommended dose, and don't add all at once. There are plenty of other great bacteria products out, these are just what I used.

There are plenty of articles showing evidence to support this, including one that shows the corals consume certain bacteria. I can find the articles I read if you are interested. "Stick" in there, we need more sticks growing in personal tanks to in increase the hobbyist trade, because the retail side of things is starting to look grim! GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY REEFKEEPING!

I also get big LPS colonies from the LFS. Big lobos with huge skeletons are kind of like live rock from the ocean... just inspect very carefully and don't be afraid to cut cut cut pests off like vermatids or aptasia.