REACHING OUT TO EXPERIENCED SPS REEFERS

[DereksReef77]

Some pics of established sps in my system.

 

[bios]

Wonderfull..
So you just know the issue...

 

[DereksReef77]

Light burn I guess. I will get them looking as nice as my other sps. Thanks

 

[alten78]

How do your other established coral look during this same time frame, are they showing the same symptoms as these new ones? Moving up and down the tank and being subjected to brighter lights was my guess as well but If I read the first post correctly, you are dosing 33 ml every 4 hours? Have you measured PH throughout the day?

 

[DereksReef77]

I am dosing alk for 30 min then cal for 30 min four times a day.
Alk 3am
Cal 4am
Alk 9am
Cal 10am
Alk 3pm
Cal 4pm
Alk 9pm
Cal 10pm
All my other corals still look great. My ph is 8.3 via Hannah hand held ph/temp meter.

 

[DereksReef77]

I also test everyday same time for
Mag
Alk
Cal
Nitrate
Phosphate
Salinity
And just started testing strontium and potassium a couple of days ago.

 

[therman]

In my opinion you are more likely to kill them chasing numbers and worrying about coloration on a bunch of diverse micro frags like that. Keep them healthy with good polyp extension and watch for encrustation. If it is happening, don't move them, even if they look like a brown blob. If you are trying to make a tiny frag like that color up, your are stressing it out, exceeding the point of photosaturation and forcing it to decrease the density of zooxanthellae, depriving it of food and energy. There are PLENTY of amazing Acropora out there that look like nothing until they are 2-3" across. Once they are that size and sprouting new branches is the time to worry about tweaking coloration.

 

[hybridazn]

In my opinion you are more likely to kill them chasing numbers and worrying about coloration on a bunch of diverse micro frags like that. Keep them healthy with good polyp extension and watch for encrustation. If it is happening, don't move them, even if they look like a brown blob. If you are trying to make a tiny frag like that color up, your are stressing it out, exceeding the point of photosaturation and forcing it to decrease the density of zooxanthellae, depriving it of food and energy. There are PLENTY of amazing Acropora out there that look like nothing until they are 2-3" across. Once they are that size and sprouting new branches is the time to worry about tweaking coloration.

preach it brother....

 

[wranodj]

Feed the frags.

 

[DereksReef77]

In my opinion you are more likely to kill them chasing numbers and worrying about coloration on a bunch of diverse micro frags like that. Keep them healthy with good polyp extension and watch for encrustation. If it is happening, don't move them, even if they look like a brown blob. If you are trying to make a tiny frag like that color up, your are stressing it out, exceeding the point of photosaturation and forcing it to decrease the density of zooxanthellae, depriving it of food and energy. There are PLENTY of amazing Acropora out there that look like nothing until they are 2-3" across. Once they are that size and sprouting new branches is the time to worry about tweaking coloration.

Thanks for your opinion. I don't know why a couple of responses think or feel that I am chasing numbers cause I am not. Question for you sir, do you test for mag, alk, and calcium? Do you keep them at natural seawater numbers or slightly elevated? Do you call that chasing numbers? Just because I started testing for strontium and potassium doesn't in any way signify that I am chasing "numbers" I simply wanted to see where they came in in my tank number wise and after testing numbers came out lower than they should be. Even tested the new batch of IO and the numbers are the same... low compared to natural seawater. Excuse me for thinking they should match nsw. I've had problems keeping intense blues and I'm sure it's the low potassium. Never did I imply that I'm trying to intensely color my micro frags. More so for my other blue sps that are not frags. Don't know where you got confused in my op but that's why I called out EXPERIENCED SPS KEEPERS who would take the time to read my whole post not just skim thru a couple of sentences. Thanks again.

 

[reefwiser]

You say you dose for 30 minutes at a time. What is the ml value? Does this value change over time? Are having to adjust the ml amount regularly to keep the 8.75 dkh? If you don't have to regularly change the ml dosing then your corals are not growing. Many of your high frags love light so keeping your T5's replaced on a regular schedule is a good thing to do. Our eye's are terrible at detecting light intensity.

 

[DereksReef77]

I currently have the brs 1.1 ml dosers setup but have a vertex libra doser that I haven't gotten around to using it yet. I believe that I have found my problem, a faulty calcium test kit. As I stated in the original post I started checking strontium and the salifert strontium kit also tests calcium and I was getting conflicting readings on that versus the salifert calcium test kit I've been using so I checked with a new salifert calcium test kit and got the same reading as with the strontium calcium test kit. So calcium has been low in the low 400's. Brought up the calcium slowly yesterday and will be monitoring it closely for the next week. I'm fairly confident that I fixed my issues.

 

[tripdad]

Just so you know.......Therman IS probably one of the most experienced reefers out there and he was only trying to help you. He has been doing this longer than most.

 

[therman]

Ok so a little about my tank.
They started to look much better and measured par with my par meter and was getting like 200-250 par. I will state that the bulbs were very old like 2 years old so I thought I should change some and ended swapping out 2 blue+,purple+,and a coral+. Corals seemed fine with the change and actually looked a lot nicer. So I started researching more here on r2r and almost everyone is saying 350par+ for acros so I started moving frag racks higher up to get into the higher par numbers but I started to notice less polyp extension which doesn't happen in my tank. Polyp extension is always huge in my tank 24/7. Also noticed that they started to get pale colors so I moved them back down to200-280 par. Alot of them look pretty good to me now but I also started testing strontium and potassium as my research indicated and I got potassium of 350 and strontium of 0-3 with salifert test kits.

The PAR numbers are the numbers you seemed to be chasing from your original post. You stated the frags looked "better" and "fine" and "a lot nicer," then decided to move all of them because of something you read on an internet forum about what PAR was appropriate for Acropora. Acropora is a very large genus with species from a variety of depths, water clarity, etc. You have a variety of species in your photographs which will probably vary in their optimal conditions for growth, coloration, etc. as others have noted.

Thanks for your opinion. I don't know why a couple of responses think or feel that I am chasing numbers cause I am not. Question for you sir, do you test for mag, alk, and calcium? Do you keep them at natural seawater numbers or slightly elevated? Do you call that chasing numbers? Just because I started testing for strontium and potassium doesn't in any way signify that I am chasing "numbers" I simply wanted to see where they came in in my tank number wise and after testing numbers came out lower than they should be. Even tested the new batch of IO and the numbers are the same... low compared to natural seawater. Excuse me for thinking they should match nsw. I've had problems keeping intense blues and I'm sure it's the low potassium. Never did I imply that I'm trying to intensely color my micro frags. More so for my other blue sps that are not frags. Don't know where you got confused in my op but that's why I called out EXPERIENCED SPS KEEPERS who would take the time to read my whole post not just skim thru a couple of sentences. Thanks again.

I do test alkalinity once or twice per week, calcium not as often as I run a calcium reactor and they vary in equal proportion. Magnesium even less frequently, maybe a few times per year. Fluctuations in calcium level do not seem to affect the corals I keep nearly as much as alkalinity, and perhaps pH. Stability is much more important than the number, and you can find thriving, beautiful SPS tanks with alkalinity anywhere from 7 to 11 dKH, and probably even higher. I have never tested strontium or potassium in the 15+ years I've been keeping SPS. Most of the information on coral coloration you will find on the internet is not based on science, but rather hobbyist experiences with a huge range of controls for confounding variables and a healthy dose of snake oil promotion.

Good luck with your tank.

Tim

 

[therman]

I currently have the brs 1.1 ml dosers setup but have a vertex libra doser that I haven't gotten around to using it yet. I believe that I have found my problem, a faulty calcium test kit. As I stated in the original post I started checking strontium and the salifert strontium kit also tests calcium and I was getting conflicting readings on that versus the salifert calcium test kit I've been using so I checked with a new salifert calcium test kit and got the same reading as with the strontium calcium test kit. So calcium has been low in the low 400's. Brought up the calcium slowly yesterday and will be monitoring it closely for the next week. I'm fairly confident that I fixed my issues.

My alkalinity is usually 8-9 dKH and calcium in the low to mid 400s. Faulty calcium test kits can be disastrous though, I have had a heck of a time with them, namely Salifert. You might want to try Elos kits. They are NIST traceable and very consistent, so I have switched completely to them.

 

[Bacon505]

How can you tell if they are deep water or shallow water acros? They are all RR pieces.

Deep water acro has smooth skin and they dont have dense corallites