Increasing the colours on my corals

vetteguy53081 · Apr 3, 2020

maxwell said:
Which Tropic Marin salt are you using

TM actif

windemerejack · Apr 3, 2020

Passedyouby said:
Okay. Was simply curious. I run 1ppm, but like the idea of running higher

Every tank is different as you know so if the tank is looking healthy then I wouldn't change anything, you might end up regretting 'chasing' that ultimate look as it might turn into a disaster.
Personally i think your tank looks very nice as it is, but that's just my opinion, so think hard about changing things as it might not turn out how you want it too.
I upped my nitrates because the tank looked dull and boring, yours is far from dull and boring and i'm sure quite a few people would be happy to have a tank like that.

Fishwife · Apr 3, 2020

What about adding Amino acids? My coral growth and color has improved by a lot since I started using Fuel.

Stigigemla · Apr 4, 2020

As You are using nopox to hold the nitrate down i believe You have enough organic matters in the water to feed the corals.
In order to get the phosphate down I suggest to use an iron based phosphate remover until the value is under 0,1.
In that time You cant dose nopox because it will clog the phosphate remover into a rock.
When the phosphate is down under 0,1 it is time to see if the nitrate has increased. Any value between 1 and 10 is good.
The next subject is the light. Cree white Leds is having a lot of yellow in it so I am not certain if the light is optimal.
It depends of which mixture of led colours Your light has. Many corals need a lot of light (especially blue) to form the chromoproteins that give them the best colour.

Twisted1990s · Apr 4, 2020

Coral Amino from Brightwell.

mucky1957 · Apr 4, 2020

Stigigemla said:
As You are using nopox to hold the nitrate down i believe You have enough organic matters in the water to feed the corals.
In order to get the phosphate down I suggest to use an iron based phosphate remover until the value is under 0,1.
In that time You cant dose nopox because it will clog the phosphate remover into a rock.
When the phosphate is down under 0,1 it is time to see if the nitrate has increased. Any value between 1 and 10 is good.
The next subject is the light. Cree white Leds is having a lot of yellow in it so I am not certain if the light is optimal.
It depends of which mixture of led colours Your light has. Many corals need a lot of light (especially blue) to form the chromoproteins that give them the best colour.

1. I'm happy to stop the Nopox for a while to see if the nitrates rise slightly and help to lower the phos.
2. As stated I am only running the whites at a max of 25% at any time and are only on for about 8hr a day..the blues are on at various percentages for 16hr a day.
3. If you look at my posted video the tank is doing really well ( I think so anyway ). I'm just looking to try and get more colour without changing the lighting.

mucky1957 · Apr 4, 2020

Twisted1990s said:
Coral Amino from Brightwell.

Will have a look at this..thanks. I only have about 200lt of water in the tank although as you can see the tank is fairly well populated with coral. So a dose of 1ml per day would be about right ???

mucky1957 · Apr 4, 2020

Fishwife said:
What about adding Amino acids? My coral growth and color has improved by a lot since I started using Fuel.

will look at this. Thanks

mucky1957 · Apr 4, 2020

windemerejack said:
Every tank is different as you know so if the tank is looking healthy then I wouldn't change anything, you might end up regretting 'chasing' that ultimate look as it might turn into a disaster.
Personally i think your tank looks very nice as it is, but that's just my opinion, so think hard about changing things as it might not turn out how you want it too.
I upped my nitrates because the tank looked dull and boring, yours is far from dull and boring and i'm sure quite a few people would be happy to have a tank like that.

thats the worry. The phrase that comes to mind is ...'don't change something if it works' ......A few have suggested trying amino acids..so will look into this.

mucky1957 · Apr 4, 2020

kamar said:
I think your tank looks amazing! What's the taller, branching corals in the back . . . finger leather?

yes..grows like topsy. I am forever having to cut it hard back as it leans forward over the rest of the corals and blocks the light.

IT reef keeper · Apr 11, 2020

Passedyouby said:
With high nitrates, would that equate to more algae? I'm at that phase where I want better colors, but have always run low NO3 NO4 for fear of GHA, which always seems to pop up when I let the numbers creep.

Not really in straight relation, if u keep those within the right ratio algae will not develop. My personal experience nitrates on 5 to 10 is not an issue at all. PO4 up to 0.1 again no issues. What has been slowing down with those values was coralline algae growth rate.