my soft corals don't grow!

[EHerbert]

It's been my experience that softies do not like a pristine environment. Try feeding your fish a bit more with a combination of frozen and flakes and beef up your CUC but still be careful of overfeeding. I also feed Reef Roids once/twice a week leaving all pumps off for about 30 minutes and daily doses of Red Sea's Reef Energy. Good luck.

 

[Alexreefer]

You can get some oyster feast to help bring up po4 also might help your corals a bit

 

[Ashley Kekua]

I was having the same issues as you describe. In my case, ICP tests confirmed the root cause as a heavy metals issue. Zinc was 20 times higher than normal and Tin 60 times higher than normal.

can carbon to remove such things?

 

[Land Shark]

can carbon to remove such things?

No go Ashley. I tried Carbon and other metal absorbers like cuprisorb. The cuprisorb is good for copper and even took out the lead but the Tin and Zinc remained. ATI and Triton both recommended water changes and that worked. I found rust inside a an aluminum light fixture. There was one strip of metal on the inside of the fixture that wasn't aluminum and rusted over time.

 

[Ashley Kekua]

No go Ashley. I tried Carbon and other metal absorbers like cuprisorb. The cuprisorb is good for copper and even took out the lead but the Tin and Zinc remained. ATI and Triton both recommended water changes and that worked. I found rust inside a an aluminum light fixture. There was one strip of metal on the inside of the fixture that wasn't aluminum and rusted over time.

Glad for you to have fixed such a devastating situation. Smart on you!

 

[reef22]

I run my nitrates higher, around 10-20 and my phos a little lower. My softies are exploding.

 

[Musovski]

oh man, this is going to sound terrible... but i run nitrates at around 40-60ppm. Oof.. i know... Phosphate is just below 1.0..... I also run carbon 24/7. No skimmer as of two weeks ago. Apparently the SPS i added to my softie dominant tank loves it... But dont worry. Zoas and palys will grow like nuts unless its Paly Grandis. Other than that Leathers take a while.

 

[Mark]

I wouldn’t worry about increasing phosphates. Just feed a little more and maybe dose a little bit of nitrates to ensure the ratio of P to N favors the corals more than cyano.

 

[TobysTank]

I was having the same issues as you describe. In my case, ICP tests confirmed the root cause as a heavy metals issue. Zinc was 20 times higher than normal and Tin 60 times higher than normal.

I am about to send my water out to an icp test and have a bunch were gonna have the same. What did you find was causing it and how did you lower it? My softies are not doing well.