BoomCorals
2500 Club Member
I carry quite a few easy SPS Corals:
Hulk Green slimer, cliffs acropora, spongodes monti, ORA neon green birdsnest, purple tip slimer, minefield cyphastrea, mystic sunset monti, RR nautispiral
Many more too.
Keeping Acros...
- Thread starter ShaunRobinson
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Hulk Green slimer, cliffs acropora, spongodes monti, ORA neon green birdsnest, purple tip slimer, minefield cyphastrea, mystic sunset monti, RR nautispiral
Many more too.
OP
OP
ShaunRobinson
Active Member
I would love to take some of those off you but unfortunately I'm across the pond!
2Wheelsonly
Valuable Member
This is dead on; it's the pests. Acros (even the fancy expensive ones) are really not that hard to keep. The trick is to actually simplify your system (less things to go wrong); people go to LFS and LFS tells them to buy all this fancy stuff and dose all this garbage when the reality is you need consistent WC, good lights, good flow and that's pretty much it. The only thing to dose is the big 3 (calc, alk, mag) based on consumption. I never ever struggled growing frags into colonies (I don't buy wild colonies).
I wiped my tank out twice due to pests, even with an investment into a good QT some can slip in. I feel the larger the tank and more acros you're bringing in the higher chance you have. My 300G had over 175 SPS frags at one point with most growing into mini colonies as well as some larger ones that grew over 3 years. Once I got a pest, it was very hard to recover.
If you buy frags from an LFS that doesn't specialize in coral sales then you're going to get pests. A simple way to tell if they are for real is ask to see a propagation system or QT. If they don't have that then it means they take trade ins off the street and put them in their main tanks. You WILL get pests from that 100%.
I order my SPS from reputable places only now and I have a few trust worthy personal fraggers I met on the forums that I trust.
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SashimiTurtle
Turtle
I'm adding this to my signature...
BoomCorals
2500 Club Member
haha i love itI'm adding this to my signature...
Bouncingsoul39
Valuable Member
Having 5ppm or higher Nitrate is not a requirement of keeping healthy Acropora nor would we find that level on a natural reef. I won't say that having 5ppm+ of nitrate is going to stop you from being successful with SPS but the statement is not correct that it's needs to be that and only that. Undetectable or somewhere between 0-1ppm with hobbyist test kits works fine too as long as the tank is being fed appropriately. Red Sea recommends from 0.25-2ppm of No3 maximum and that is more in line with the accepted practices.
Flippers4pups
Fins up since 1993
I would respectfully disagree. I've seen way too many reefers struggle to keep acros and sps in general due to starving them with 0 nutrients over the years. This compounding with extreme light intensities with no means of measuring PAR. Not every hobbyist will have the time to spot feed them, nor dosing elements or AA's.
Natural reef eco systems have a abundance of micro fauna and foods to feed corals, not our glass boxes.
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Flippers4pups
Fins up since 1993
@Bouncingsoul39,
I guess these guys are wrong too:
https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/tank-parameters-of-some-masters.263/
BoomCorals
2500 Club Member
All my tanks are at .25 - 2 nitrate. And I grow acros like crazy with fantastic PE and colors. To say 5ppm + nitrate is a requirement of any tank to keep acros simply isn't true. Which is all that Bouncingsoul was saying. You can have successful healthy SPS tanks with a wide range of nutrient levels.
zsuzsu
Active Member
fully disagree
ihave 3 reefs 1 berlin, one full zeovit, one red sea program. until i allowed nitrate and phoshate to rise (5-10 nitrate, .02 p04) my acros were pale and starving, since the nutrient increase everything is colorful and growing, and it was really a quick turn around once the nutrients were elevated. zsu
Flippers4pups
Fins up since 1993
I never said it's a "requirement", but as a caveat I could have said
"if running ULNS you need your tank to be dosed with additives".
Running low to no detectable N03 is like riding a razors edge in my and a ton of other reefers book. Can it be done, of course, if your willing to invest in time, effort and added expense in additives to do so. Not everyone is going to do that. Period.
As I stated, with countless forum posts regarding trouble keeping Acropora and SPS in general alive, the majority were running no detectable nutrients and some in conjunction with too much light.
Read the masters water pramameter article I posted and decide for yourself what you think is best for your tank. UNLS - No way will I ever go back to that way of keeping SPS.
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BoomCorals
2500 Club Member
I don't dose additives. All we are saying is we should avoid broad generalizations as requirements.
There are a LOT of factors that go into healthy acros, and the level of your nitrates is only one piece. There is a lot of different ways to run a successful reef tank. What works for some doesn't work for others, and so on.
After reading a lot of disagreement on nutrient level, I have been thinking of the following might be true:-
NSW contains detectable NO3/PO4 simply because they are quickly depleted but the same time it's addition are as quick as being used. In our tank, the amount of time to produce the exact amount of nutrients might not be as good as the ocean. Some might experiencing imbalance between usage and production, hence the issues we are seeing.
I think its about right time somebody should design a NO3/PO4 monitoring (just like KHG, Alkatronic etc) with auto dosing and solve this mystery (or should I say disagreement) forever.
NSW contains detectable NO3/PO4 simply because they are quickly depleted but the same time it's addition are as quick as being used. In our tank, the amount of time to produce the exact amount of nutrients might not be as good as the ocean. Some might experiencing imbalance between usage and production, hence the issues we are seeing.
I think its about right time somebody should design a NO3/PO4 monitoring (just like KHG, Alkatronic etc) with auto dosing and solve this mystery (or should I say disagreement) forever.
BoomCorals
2500 Club Member
Truth be told, of many people I have helped on the forums with their SPS issues, many were looking at lights and nutrient levels, because that seems to be what everyone jumps at first. And in the end it turned out that not enough flow was their problem. Flow is probably the most overlooked right now.
I just did a search "on the line" and downloaded an excel file called "aquarium log" that someone made for logging aquarium parameters.
I highlight for the limits I want to stay within, however you can set up excel to highlight a particular color when a value is entered beyond a certain range/parameter.
Jerzyray
Active Member
You got that wright. i'v bin in the sps game for 6 months and i can;t stop buying. once you get you water wright and see stuff grow your hookedHow long have the existing sps frags been in the tank? If it's been a while, say 3 mos. then go ahead and give the new ones a try. Until you can keep a monti alive for at least that long I would hold off. It's not hard, just requires attention to detail and rock solid stability of parameters. Be careful, it's an addiction with no known cure.
Flippers4pups
Fins up since 1993
Being devils advocate here, unless those you have helped have a flow meter at their disposal, how do you know that information was correct? Lol. It's based on your experience and what others have experienced and what manufacturers state on their pumps. X times turnover in your DT.........etc, but flow will not directly in itself "feed" your corals.
Does it help with the boundary layer around them, yes. Does it help get nutrients to them, yes. Exact numbers needed....... that's debatable.
I've watched Dana Riddles presentation at the Macna 2016 and everyone here right now should too if you haven't already.
My original post speaks to flow as well, as being very important.
I agree what works for me, may not work for you, but unless you have very little flow in your tank and your SPS is pale, no polyp extension or bleaching out. Your lights are too strong, have very little flow and low nutrients or all of the above .
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Bouncingsoul39
Valuable Member
It sounds like the problem you guys had running UNLS, ZEO whatever is that you didn't feed enough, dose aminos, feed the corals so of course you had issues. I mean just take a look at the hundreds of successful full zeo systems over the years with undetectable nitrates that have stunning color and growth. Look at the BRS 160 tank at the end of their run with Zeo. It has excellent color and growth without the paling to pastels because they didn't use ZeoSpur. Ryan said that tank ran full zeo, had undetectable nutrients but was not a ULNS, it was a HIGH nutrient system with low residual nutrients that they fed the heck out of every day.
I'm sorry but you just can't argue against proven results and proven methods. Also, you can't argue against nature. There is no need to keep elevated Nitrate or Phosphate levels in an SPS tank. Can you do it? Sure. But it's not better for the corals. There are scientific studies that prove that Phosphate limits calcification in stony corals, you will end up with weak, brittle SPS running phosphate. See how easy it is to frag an Acropora grow in nutrient rich water. You could break your own skin before you could snap of a branch of Acropora grown in the ocean and I've tested this with Mariculture colonies vs captive grown SPS colonies. Mariculture colonies have dense strong skeletons, corals grown in high nutrients have brittle skeletons that are easy to break.
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