Help with my acros

[osteopth]

Polyp extension?

A. Total water volume ( Please include sump, etc.)
240 gal display, 300 gal total
B. What are your parameters? ( CA, ALK, PO4,Salinity, etc.)
CA 460
ALK 9
PO4 0.12
N03 0
Salinity 1.026
pH 8.2-8.3
Temp 78
MAG 1280
C. Type of lighting. Please include age, watts, and bulb/ballast name.
2 x 400 watt Radiums for 6 hrs daily, 2 x 54w t5 actinics
D. Filtration method (Skimmer, GFO, DSB, etc.)
Algae scrubber with remote DSB, GFO in reactor, carbon in sock, refugium
E. What types of corals do you keep other than SPS?
2 acans, frogspawn, hammer
F. How long has the tank been running?
2 years
G. What are you dosing? Dosing schedule?
Kalk in RO/DI ATO, Two-part 120ml/day, mag, strontium
H. Which brand of salt are you using?
Red sea for rare water changes
I. What brand of test kits are you employing?
Hanna checkers for PO4, Salifert for MG, API for N03...
J. What are you using for CA/ALK supplementation?
Kalk, BRS Two-part
K. What are you using for flow? (Pump names, how many, placement, etc.)
Vortech MP40w ES (2 on left wall, 1 on right wall) Vortech MP10w ES (2 on back wall), Reeflo Dart return.

I recently got rid of my softies and most of my LPS, and started with SPS. I set up a reefkeeper elite to keek my temp stable and adjusted my light schedule so my pH varies about 0.5. I use dosing pumps for C, A, M and S. I lost a few early colonies when I raised my Alk too quickly(and two colonies from that time have slowly withered from the base up despite fragging some of the good branches. ). Now I have about 20 frags that came from a stable tank. I lost one because it was in a hole where one of my old aggressive corals grew back around it. The corals almost all have darkened to nice deep colors in my tank and are slowly encrusting. (I added the GFO three weeks ago after getting my Hanna checker that showed PO4 of 0.63)

My bird nests have great polyp extension, but I have almost no PE from my acros. I have read that happy corals don't always have PE, but I'd like to see those pretty polyps. I just revisited the tank that I got my frags from. My colors are all darker than the colonies they came from. I like the colors in my tank better. He runs 14.5K bulbs. But all of his have good PE.

Should I lengthen my light time because my corals are dark? Or should I shorten it to make the corals hungrier?

Do you think the polyps will come out more if I get my PO4 down below 0.04?

Would iodine help? What type? How much?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance, Tim.​

 

[swannyson7]

What type of fish do you have in the tank? Some fish nip at SPS polyps which could cause the lack of PE. It could also be the drop in PO4... while your phosphate is still a bit high (less than 0.03 is ideal), they could be stressed from the change in parameters.

 

[cymaster007]

+1 on swannyson, Phosphate swing could deff be the culprit. Also check for pests, polyps will not extend if the coral is getting bothered, check for red bugs or any other irritant

 

[tike]

I found the addition of amino acids to my tank greatly improved sps polyp extension.

 

[Murfman]

A lot of SPS won't show a whole lot of PE, if they are fed well. Water flow, light and a bunch of other things mentioned all contribute to PE. Another thing, not all SPS PE the same as other species.

 

[osteopth]

swannyson7
What type of fish do you have in the tank? Some fish nip at SPS polyps which could cause the lack of PE. It could also be the drop in PO4... while your phosphate is still a bit high (less than 0.03 is ideal), they could be stressed from the change in parameters.

I have a pair of flame angels and an aptasia eating filefish. I have watched for nipping for hours and seen none, even on new corals that had their polyps out. Also, no PE at night while fish are asleep.

cymaster007
+1 on swannyson, Phosphate swing could deff be the culprit. Also check for pests, polyps will not extend if the coral is getting bothered, check for red bugs or any other irritant

I've dipped the corals that were withering from the base, and I've had an experienced SPS keeper over to look, no pests seen.

tike
I found the addition of amino acids to my tank greatly improved sps polyp extension.

I'll consider it after my PO4 is lower.

Murfman
A lot of SPS won't show a whole lot of PE, if they are fed well. Water flow, light and a bunch of other things mentioned all contribute to PE. Another thing, not all SPS PE the same as other species.

The mother colonies for these corals all have great PE and different (lighter) color. I'm thinking that they are getting fed well, possibly too well.

 

[Coral Theory]

Your phosphate does seem a bit high though an "acceptable range" differs from reefer to reefer. We aim to keep it around 0 ~ 0.02 in our SPS system. Which GFO brand are you using and have you tested the reactor's effuluent's PO4 vs tank's PO4 level to make sure it's being absorbed? Anything above 0.1, Lanthanum chloride is an effective solution as well; as long as you watch your alk levels. I would also try raising it slightly to 10 or 11dKH.

 

[osteopth]

I just ordered 2 of the large reactors from BRS for ROX 0.8 carbon and high capacity GFO. I'll see if I can overpower those phosphates.

 

[coolname1]

How do you test your P04? I have high level of PO4 in my tank as well but no problem with polyp extensions though. However there are certain sps that would take longer to acclimate to certain tanks.

 

[osteopth]

Hanna checker.

 

[RRaider]

I just ordered 2 of the large reactors from BRS for ROX 0.8 carbon and high capacity GFO. I'll see if I can overpower those phosphates.

Be VERY careful, both of those can strip the water very clean, very quickly causing major issues with your sps.

 

[osteopth]

I was thinking about starting to feed the corals blended oysters. I was thinking that might help prevent total stripping.

 

[osteopth]

I may have found my problem. My LFS told me that the Red Sea Magnesium Test was done when you saw a color change. So I've been dosing to the wrong results. I didn't feel comfortable with the lack of a solid end point, so I finally watched the you tube video from Red Sea. This time I waited for the first hint of blue and found my mag to be almost 2000!!!! Gonna do a 50% water change tomorrow and see where that gets me unless someone tells me I should do less.

 

[swannyson7]

I wouldn't do that large of a water change because a large swing in Mag can kill off your acros. I would stop dosing Mag and complete a few smaller water changes over the next couple weeks to slowly bring it down.

 

[subielover]

Yup I agree, bring it down slowly.

 

[osteopth]

Thanks. Does anybody know what mag that high does?

 

[jakem]

H. Which brand of salt are you using?
Red sea for rare water changes

I know water changes are key to my polyp extension.

 

[swannyson7]

A high mag level will lead to bleaching in acropora. One thing that I don't think has been pointed out yet is that PE is not necessarily a sign of a healthy coral. Coloration & growth are the best sings of overall health and PE just indicates that the coral is "hungry." Unfortunately, there is a very fine line between essentially starving the coral (thus leading to rediculous PE) and keeping your parameters in check. HTH

 

[kracer1025]

some pictures of the affected corals may help to see if there is a problem.

 

[returnofsid]

Extremely high Mg levels would bleach out all or most of your Zoanthids that are in direct light and most LPS corals that are in direct light. There's a correlation, between light and high Mg levels, that causes bleaching. I've found, when using Kent TechM, to battle Bryopsis, 2 different times, that Zoanthids and LPS that bleached, were always in direct light. The second treatment, I moved some of them into shaded areas and no bleaching occurred, even though the second treatment went to a higher Mg level. Zoanthids and LPS that were still receiving direct light, still bleached.