Help needed getting rich colors

[Rcollick]

Great ideas John. Do you think I placed them too close? It's a small tank so I wasn't going for huge colonies.

 

[john90009]

only issue i see is in the first picture there is an acan echinata i believe, and its pritty close to your sps, that will be a problem.

 

[Rcollick]

I kind of thought the same thing I'm just running out of room. I will move it. Any suggestions?

 

[john90009]

Those things are very hardy but my guess would be somewhere on the sand in a corner or crevice where you can control where its tentacles go with the flow. Really up to you tho, but they pack a powerful punch.

 

[Reefltx]

You have good color, you just need a orange filter or fix your white balance add more warmth

 

[BigJohnny]

how many fish do you have? .001 phosphate is within the margin of error for zero. If you only have that one clown i would add another fish (atleast but do so slowly) and feed heavier. Besides that it is just patience and stability. Just keep everything stable and wait. Sometimes it can take 6 months-2 years for acros to grow and color up to their full potential. How stable is your alk?

I think you probably just need a little heavier bioload and patience though. Dont chase numbers with phosphate but if you are only testing .001ppm and you only have 1 fish thats not enough.

 

[Rcollick]

how many fish do you have? .001 phosphate is within the margin of error for zero. If you only have that one clown i would add another fish (atleast but do so slowly) and feed heavier. Besides that it is just patience and stability. Just keep everything stable and wait. Sometimes it can take 6 months-2 years for acros to grow and color up to their full potential. How stable is your alk?

I think you probably just need a little heavier bioload and patience though. Dont chase numbers with phosphate but if you are only testing .001ppm and you only have 1 fish thats not enough.

 

[BigJohnny]

?

 

[Rcollick]

I have a pair of clown fish and one dottyback. I want to add another couple fish but my dottyback is pretty mean. My Alk is pretty stable at 8 I use 9 ml of 2 part daily. Its doses 4 times a day by a dosing pump. It might sound crazy but here is how I dose it. I dilute my 2 part solution down to 1 part alkalinity to 5 parts rodi water. So I really need 54 ml of solution per day. I break it up 13 ml every 6 hours. Same with my calcium. This has been working out very good for me so far. I'm not sure if there is any draw backs to this but so far it's been working for me.

 

[jda]

I agree with all of the suggestions to just wait. If you are still unhappy in 5-6 months, then of the top-ten things that you can do to improve color, numbers one through nine will be to get better lighting and number 10 will be to fine tune or chase some parameters.

 

[BigJohnny]

I have a pair of clown fish and one dottyback. I want to add another couple fish but my dottyback is pretty mean. My Alk is pretty stable at 8 I use 9 ml of 2 part daily. Its doses 4 times a day by a dosing pump. It might sound crazy but here is how I dose it. I dilute my 2 part solution down to 1 part alkalinity to 5 parts rodi water. So I really need 54 ml of solution per day. I break it up 13 ml every 6 hours. Same with my calcium. This has been working out very good for me so far. I'm not sure if there is any draw backs to this but so far it's been working for me.

Yeah unfortunately dottybacks (especially established) can be quite aggressive. I'm no expert as to what would be a good option, but 3 fish is certainly better than the one I thought you had. You could also try reducing your nutrient export methods, whether by strength or frequency.

Nothing wrong with your dosing strategy at all. In fact I like that strategy for smaller tanks as it allows you to be more precise (as long as you are diluting consistency) and reduces any swings caused by dosing pumps straying from calibration etc.

How stable is the dKH? Do you test daily?

 

[Rcollick]

I agree with all of the suggestions to just wait. If you are still unhappy in 5-6 months, then of the top-ten things that you can do to improve color, numbers one through nine will be to get better lighting and number 10 will be to fine tune or chase some parameters.

I'm not really sure what other light I could put over it to upgrade the lighting. I thought I had the whole light thing covered pretty good with 4 t5s and a hydra 26hd. Any suggestions?

 

[BigJohnny]

I'm not really sure what other light I could put over it to upgrade the lighting. I thought I had the whole light thing covered pretty good with 4 t5s and a hydra 26hd. Any suggestions?

If your using leds @jda will say you need better lighting ; )

 

[Rcollick]

Yeah unfortunately dottybacks (especially established) can be quite aggressive. I'm no expert as to what would be a good option, but 3 fish is certainly better than the one I thought you had. You could also try reducing your nutrient export methods, whether by strength or frequency.

Nothing wrong with your dosing strategy at all. In fact I like that strategy for smaller tanks as it allows you to be more precise (as long as you are diluting consistency) and reduces any swings caused by dosing pumps straying from calibration etc.

How stable is the dKH? Do you test daily?

Alk has never dropped below 7.8 and gone higher than 8.1 I test every other day using a hanna checker.

 

[jda]

I missed that you had T5s. Let the T5s do the heavy lifting and be on for 8-10 hours - this should get you most of the way there. If you want to upgrade, then get more of them and less Hydras.

 

[Rcollick]

I missed that you had T5s. Let the T5s do the heavy lifting and be on for 8-10 hours - this should get you most of the way there. If you want to upgrade, then get more of them and less Hydras.

That's what I was trying to do but after checking my par with only the t5s I'm only getting around 100 par running 2 blue plus 1 coral plus and 1 purple plus. I wouldof though it would of been much higher.

 

[BigJohnny]

Alk has never dropped below 7.8 and gone higher than 8.1 I test every other day using a hanna checker.

Great, definitely stable enough. Then just have patience my friend. Crank up the flow if you can, always good as long as corals close up or lose tissue. It will come, just keep doing what your doin

 

[jda]

I would have thought so too. There is probably an explanation for this. First, which PAR meter and sensor are you using? You might need to use a correction factor for it. Even though Aquatic Life are not PAR monsters like ATI, I would have expected at least twice that much.

Keep in mind that the T5s will have output below and above what your PAR meter can read that is beneficial to SPS. ...so there is more there than what you are reading.

 

[Rcollick]

I'm using a seneye.

 

[jda]

If it is the LUX meter, then it at least probably needs a 1.32 appiled to it. Can you borrow a Apogee to get another reading? The early Apogees also need a 1.32 applied to them, but the newer ones do not.