Your tank looks very dim.
Sorry if I missed it can you post your light specs and schedule?
4x AI hydras running BRS tested recommendations for spacing, intensity, and color. I don’t have access to my par numbers at the moment but they range from 150-200 on the sand up to like 500’s high up on the rock work. My last acro order did well for several months on coral racks around the 200’s. Some were even expanding outwards on the rack. Then, overnight one bleached. Then another and another with no changes to any parameters. I moved a few doing well to where I wanted them with slightly higher par like 250-300’s and those died pretty quickly. I’ve definitely killed SPS with too much light off the bat in the past in other tanks, but this last batch was heartbreaking because they did so well for so long then just died.
You can have high end tenuis in a startup tank within 4-6 months - if you know what you are doing ^-^
I will not publicly comment on one of those tests companies.
Do you wish to start with low bullet proof acros or do you wish to run mid or high tenuis? This will help determine your hands off or hands on approach.
You will get a plethora responses on what to do. Just find a mentor/success acro keeper (who has the type of acros tank you want) and do what he/she says. This is the fastest, less head-heart-wallet ache approach.
I live in a relatively small town and our only reef store closed down aside from Petco. So R2R, BRS, etc. are our mentors and online stores provide the livestock. I guess perhaps starting with the heartiest of acro’s and SPS might be a better place to start than buying a bunch of different things. What would be on your list? We’ve killed birdsnest’s, monti’s, pocillopora’s, a bunch of different acro’s, etc. We do have an encrusting orange spotted monti that’s expanding but it’s lost color from where it started. Our goal is bright colors and branching, plating corals.
Agreed with what has been said. Up your nitrates and definitely your phosphates. No phosphates is a SPS killer unless you are extremely heavy in/heavy out. Buy cheaper frags and get good at growing those. Later when you have the cheapies growing like weeds you can focus on the designer corals. Tank looks good btw get some more fish to stare at though (again cheap like chromis, damsels, cardinals). If you’re not already doing so feed a variety of foods.
It’s hard to say whether our system is high in/high out or not. What I can tell you is that we’ve got 3 autofeeders with flakes and pellets along with a forest of green hair algae in the sump/refugium. We’re not overstocked; yellow tang, powder brown, Kole tang, 2 clowns, 9 demoiselle’s and a few small gobies and other small fish. In theory pellets and flakes should be high in nutrients and we’ve only gone up in feedings over time.
More tank info:
Little to no mechanical filtration. We have shallow 3D printed filter cups but put just enough floss in that enough water flows around it to eliminate the need for regular floss changes. I basically just change the floss when I feel like it, a few times a month.
I’ve used Fritz salt in the past but now that all salt costs an arm and a leg I’ve switched to Red Sea since it’s the same price. Zero TDS.
Auto water change 2 gallons per day. When I filled the system I came up with around 135 gallons of actual water volume. Might be accurate, might not, but 2 gallons per day would equate to roughly 10% per week.
Refugium is super “dirty” with green hair algae and some macro but none of that has made its way into the tank, at least not that the fish allow. I feel like I’ve got a good ecosystem going in this respect. Again, ULNS wasn’t a decision, it’s just how this tank rolls. We’re running a skimmer but it collects like an inch of stuff over the course of months; which is great because I love low maintenance.
Oddly, I never see copepods in my DT. We’ve spent hundreds of dollars on copepods and have a refugium for them to live in with rock, bioblocks, etc. I see tons of copepods in our coral/invert QT (no fish), but I don’t know if I’m just not seeing them given the tank’s size, or if they’re just not there. To be fair, at night the DT is dark and the refugium is lighted, plus the glass is really thick, so maybe we’re just not seeing them. How could we possibly not have them in a tank this mature?
But it is not free chlorine, but technically it could be, I think.
