SERIOUSLY!? CANT KEEP SPS

[Tench1]

For carbon I don't use anything fancy just the stuff from petsmart, I think it's marineland?

For flow I have 2x MP10 running about 25% on reefcrest mode

My take on your current situation;

since your current LPS corals and Fishes are doing well. Don't make any significance changes to your set up ( might affect current Livestocks)

GFO etc should be kept for Po4 extraction. (Maybe check when you last change the GFO, it might be time to change it)

1. Check ur parameters SPS are more sensitive. You might want to check all the parameters like (NO3/Po4/KH/Ca/MG)

2. Add easy SPS to try out first. Like Montipora/ digi / poci / Birdnest are pretty good for starter.

3. SPS loves flow. Good flow is key for SPS to thrive but bad for LPS. You need to adjust to meet both requirement.

4. What temp range are you keeping your corals at?

5. You might to want to try removing Carbon first and water change Weekly. I used to add carbon before keeping SPS. But found it to have reaction to my SPS. Ever since then, I had no added carbon. (Except for Red Sea nopox to reduce nutrients)

 

[Fercho]

I had pale sps problems not long ago.
I did the following to fix this:

Completely removed GFO & Carbon.
My No3 & Po4 were almost zero, so i dosed nitrates to raise to 5.
(I clean the glass every 2 days with No3 at 5)
I feed every day changing the type of food at a time between 3 cubes of mysis, nory, and food pellets.
My Radions LEDs are 10 inches from the water line.
I dont dose any suplements besides the normal big 3,Alk, Cal, Mag, only coral colors from read sea but im not even sure if it helps at all. Maybe alittle.
I have 8 fish is my 90 gal tank. I had 10 but removed 2 since they were bad for my reef. I did noticed a difference on the No3 level dropping to 1 from five from removing just two fish. So i think is important to have enough fish to keep detectable and steady No3 levels.
I changed salt mix from red sea pro to regular red sea, the blue bucket, because i like low alk better, at 7.7dkh.
My skimmer is on 24/7 btw.

My sps colored up nicely and have retained colors nicely.
Good polyp extension and decent growth.

Hope this helps.

 

[Shawn.B]

I'm in the same boat. I have amazing LPS, Zoa Gardens and very nice pocillopora and birdsnest...but when it comes to my Acros they are all losing color.
My tank:
125g display
Cal: 430 Alk: 8dkh Mg: 1360 No3: 5-10ppm PO4: .02 Temp. 78.2-78.5 Salinity: 1.025
4 Ecotech Radion G2 and two ATI blue plus T5 Bulbs
2 MP40 Ecotech wavemakers and Vectra M1 pump.

I have a PAR meter and most of my Acros are around 180-220 PAR... I honestly can't think of what I'm doing wrong. Thinking of maybe switching to T5 only

I can't even keep a birdsnest We must be able to figure this out! Maybe the key is higher Alk when you aren't running absolute Lie nutrients... but I've seen plenty of exceptions to this idea

 

[markalot]

How about ... You're a low nutrient freak and ironically enough while this may work for LPS and softies it doesn't work well for SPS. 'SPS like low nutrient levels' is one of those short often quoted hobby statements that confused the heck out of me when I was new to SPS.

Lights: blackbox LED - modded with 10x445nm, 6x420nm, 2x410nm, 2x395nm, lenses removed.running 50%B - 10%W ... any higher and I bleach stuff
Skimmer: bubble Magnus Nac6
Biopellets ~100ml
Doser for Ca, Alk, Mg
Carbon once a month (usually)
GFO monthly - has been removed for the past 2 months

Parameters:
Ca 450 ppm-- rock solid - salifert
Alk 7.8 DHK-- rock solid - Hanna
Mg 1380 ppm -- rock solid - salifert
PO4 0.02ppm - Hanna
NO3 3ppm
​

.02 PO4 is low, 7.8 KH is a little high but not bad. You are carbon dosing with biopellets so your skimmate stinks and the water has a higher bacterial load than normal. When SPS are added it's like being placed in a desert, they start begging for water. Keep the bottled water coming and they stay alive but don't look very good and get a bad sunburn. No water (food) and they croak. My latest horrible analogy.

The primary clue: Turning up the lights bleaches stuff. That is a sure sign of lack of available resources to handle the higher PAR.

I have two tanks, a 40 breeder with 5 small fish and a 150 with ... a decent number of fish. I have to feed reef roids to the silly 40 gallon every single morning AND afternoon or my SPS pale out. It's maddening. This also means I have to do more water changes or tolerate algae growing on the tank walls to make up for any lack of export. Small tanks drive me nuts. My 150 gets maybe 4 water changes a year, fed coral food 2 or 3 times a week, behaves completely different from the smaller tank.

I have had to move Blastos into my 40 because they start to show light stress in the big tank. If I stop feeding the SPS pale out but the little sensitive blastos do just fine. Sounds crazy right? I believe the answer is in the feeding habits. LPS can take advantage of few feedings by consuming a lot of food when available, SPS require a more constant smaller amount of food to stay healthy. In larger tanks, packed with well fed fish, food is relatively constant while in small tanks, which tend to have small fish and less of them, the water column is often devoid of food.

There's nothing quite like a big ole tang turd getting sucked up by an MP40 and spraying the water column with coral food. Corals also prefer ammonia over other forms of nitrate so having a lot of fish tends to produce better colors, probably due to the higher (yet still very small) availability of ammonia.

If you follow any forums specializing in nano reefs you will note a common recipe for success with SPS is heavy feeding.

Lot's of probablys and maybes but in the end I think you'll find keeping KH at natural levels and feeding small regular amounts of food will help.

 

[markalot]

Here's my 40. I hesitate to show it because I cheat with smaller tangs, replacing them on a regular basis. You can't do this in a 20 long, and it's a questionable practice in a 40. I'm not even sure it helps that much since by the time they are big enough to put a dent in the algae it's time to go. I still have to scrape and clean on a regular basis. Note algae covered left and rear tank walls. I have a little pygmy wrasse that picks at bugs in the algae ... that's my excuse.

 

[Shawn.B]

Here's my 40. I hesitate to show it because I cheat with smaller tangs, replacing them on a regular basis. You can't do this in a 20 long, and it's a questionable practice in a 40. I'm not even sure it helps that much since by the time they are big enough to put a dent in the algae it's time to go. I still have to scrape and clean on a regular basis. Note algae covered left and rear tank walls. I have a little pygmy wrasse that picks at bugs in the algae ... that's my excuse.

Thanks Mark! looks like I have a plan, I'm glad someone could help me confirm my suspicion of low nutrients... I honestly cant wait to get my levels up
furthermore the relation between LPS eating and thriving in low nutrients is supported because I recently got a beauty of a rainbow Acan- I currently cant get the thing to eat! thus its not looking very good

should I continue to run my pellets? I don't want to make too many changes to the system while raising nutients- I suppose worst case is I will just burn through them faster? meh a small price to pay...
but you are most defiantly right about my skimate smelling! if I clean it in the basement while the furnace is on and it blows the smell through the house there is hell to pay!

As for the GFO & Carbon many people have mentioned, I am no longer going to use GFO its too hard to control exact levels and once my PO4 creeps up it will be controlled with a liquid phos remover so I can better control the export. I've purchased Seachem Matrix Carbon which I will run as needed for a "polish"

DHK will be brought down, im currenty only adding 4ml/day of alk.. I will reduce to 3ml and Aim for 7.2-7.0DHK
for someone who NEVER owned a test kit over 8 years of reefing I now test religiously

 

[markalot]

Hi Shawn,

hope it works for you. I would be hesitant to take the biopellets offline as well, hard to understand what change that would make. I just learned a few months ago that skimmate doesn't stink nearly as bad when not running carbon. I had the same issue as you, with the wife wondering what died when I would pour it down the drain. P U! I was vinegar dosing and slowly weaned the tank off of it and never looked back. I use Seachem Matrix (little white rocks) for Nitrate control. It took months but now I have trouble maintaining Nitrates. I loaded a large TLF Phosban reactor with them.

I always had a hard time with media that needs changed so I tried to move to things that either never wear out or that require daily dosing. I love doing daily drops, my brain can handle that. I even bought a bunch of droppers off Amazon to load up things I like to dose daily. In my 150 it's:
4 drops PhosphateRx (lanthanum chloride)
2 drops MicroE (trace elements)
2 drops Kalum (Potassium)
5 drops SpongePower (who knows!)
3 drops AcroPower

It's a big tank and 4 drops PhosphateRx keeps it a .05 or below so be careful with such a small amount of water volume.

I do one drop a day PhosphateRx in my 40 but I also feed a pinch of Reef Roids at the same time, every morning.

I hope things work well for you!

 

[Shawn.B]

KNO3 & the NO3 test kit came in yesterday, I tested my NO3 and it was somewhere around 3ppm, I dosed 6ml and got the level up between 10 & 25ppm. my biopellets all stuck together and stopped tumbling almost instantly. I will see how things are today when I get home... probabuly just going to take them offline

Ca 440
Alk 7.5
Mg 1400
PO4 0.08
NO3 10-25

 

[reefwiser]

You are adding just 4 ml of Alk a day? How many SPS are in your tank? Or how many have you had since you are having RTN issues.
I have a 40 gallon tank and dose a total of 42 ml a day. This is 7 doses of 6 ml spaced out across the day and night. At 4 ml a day what you are seeing is SPS hanging on to life barely. In my case I spent time look for causes to my plight. I "was" using a good LED radion with they best schedule and used a Par meter to adjust its settings. After discussions with many of my old SPS friends we determined my lighting wasn't helping my situation. So I removed the Radion and put a 150 watt MH/LED fixture from Reefbrite on the tank. An with in a week I was seeing my Alk consuming start to tread up as my previous dosing amount of 20 ml a day was not keeping up with the SPS in the tank. If you see your Alk consumption stay constant then you need to get growth going by seeing what is lacking in your aquarium. In my case it was lighting. I went back to MH because it is the gold standard.
A 20k MH bulb will grow SPS and is proven tried and true. I knew that if I had problems with that bulb then I would really have something off the wall causing the problem. I would go full t5 or MH and your tank would be better for it.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

You are adding just 4 ml of Alk a day? How many SPS are in your tank? Or how many have you had since you are having RTN issues.
I have a 40 gallon tank and dose a total of 42 ml a day. This is 7 doses of 6 ml spaced out across the day and night. At 4 ml a day what you are seeing is SPS hanging on to life barely. In my case I spent time look for causes to my plight. I "was" using a good LED radion with they best schedule and used a Par meter to adjust its settings. After discussions with many of my old SPS friends we determined my lighting wasn't helping my situation. So I removed the Radion and put a 150 watt MH/LED fixture from Reefbrite on the tank. An with in a week I was seeing my Alk consuming start to tread up as my previous dosing amount of 20 ml a day was not keeping up with the SPS in the tank. If you see your Alk consumption stay constant then you need to get growth going by seeing what is lacking in your aquarium. In my case it was lighting. I went back to MH because it is the gold standard.
A 20k MH bulb will grow SPS and is proven tried and true. I knew that if I had problems with that bulb then I would really have something off the wall causing the problem. I would go full t5 or MH and your tank would be better for it.

Hi ED. Your running the same par numbers now as the Radions I assume.

 

[reefwiser]

Yes I am but I am getting growth and no stn from the MH that I would have gotten with the Radion. Nothing else has changed in my system except the lighting type from MH to LED. Low alk consumption is a good sign of SPS being in poor health.

 

[Shawn.B]

haha oh I can guarantee my SPS are just hanging on for dear life I wont argue that. I'm just not sure its the lighting..
this being said I am looking at T5 fixtures.. I just cant bring myself to spend $300 on a 24" fixture and then change $150 worth of bulbs every 9months, I know you didn't have much luck with Radions but I am keeping my eye out for a used one, or maybe a T5

ive even looked at getting a $100 odyssea fixture just to rule out my lighting - let the odyssea bashing begin!

 

[tripdad]

Just to cover an old base, how old is the Marineland carbon?

 

[Shawn.B]

Just to cover an old base, how old is the Marineland carbon?

I am no longer running it, but it was newly purchased this year and changed every month or so

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Yes I am but I am getting growth and no stn from the MH that I would have gotten with the Radion. Nothing else has changed in my system except the lighting type from MH to LED. Low alk consumption is a good sign of SPS being in poor health.

I got cheated here in San Diego. It's usually cool enough to run my halide for 6 or 7 months. I have a beautiful of 150 coralife that's perfect for the cube.
I'm still trying like make to explain possible spectral differences but.
Taking my cues from the mh guys and the led guys and the old mh that now run led.
From what I've seen of of sps and just plain higher light use and success w led even spread and even coverage is soooo important.
I don't play with the little slider thingys. Only the intensity. No presets. Everything to full and set the par with intensity only. Weird color mixing skews par IMO. I do make a living mixing colors of light after all.
And then just start blasting it.
What I've done For a lighting nutrient alk reset is get it stable and start increasing the light. The nutrients will drop the alk will drop so you have to keep up. Once you hit full intensity it'll level off a bit. You may even stop before you hit full if the corals are happy. But this takes weeks to do.
Def still a high light newb relative to many but So far it's worked for me.

 

[Luke Schnabel]

Yea I've upped my feeding and took carbon offline as well. All levels are 100% spot on even par is around 180-220 on my Acros. But still browning out and now I have a massive cyano outbreak on my sand.

 

[reefwiser]

The problem people have is that they use "Their" eye's and use terms like "I like this look" to determine what lighting the corals are getting. Well the corals for centuries have grown to accept a full spectrum light from the sun that is a total defused not using prism diffusion.
One must give corals what they need not give them what "WE" think they need or what is cool or look at how they glow.

 

[Luke Schnabel]

The problem people have is that they use "Their" eye's and use terms like "I like this look" to determine what lighting the corals are getting. Well the corals for centuries have grown to accept a full spectrum light from the sun that is a total defused not using prism diffusion.
One must give corals what they need not give them what "WE" think they need or what is cool or look at how they glow.

So you think replacing my radions with a T5 fixture or a MH would help everything... I mean I've seen tons of tanks with LEDs doing great though

 

[markalot]

So you think replacing my radions with a T5 fixture or a MH would help everything... I mean I've seen tons of tanks with LEDs doing great though

Unfortunately that stat by itself is kind of meaningless. My 40 all LED tank is doing well unless I add acros, which brown out and look horrible. I have the spectrum wrong but I don't have the equipment to figure out what it is. My main tank is the same LED's but with T5's as well and everything is doing really well. It's a balance between the energy going into the tank, how much food is provided, and if export is good enough to keep the tank healthy. Like I said above, I could get decent results under all LED if I fed heavily, but if export can't keep up with heavy feeding tank health will decline. As I gain more and more experience it's become obvious that the number one skill is understanding the balance of each tank. Lighting determines import requirements which determines export requirements. If any part is out of balance a negative reaction will occur. Too little import leads to pale struggling corals, too little export leads to algae and other water quality issues.

Add to that the fact you can play with the LED knobs and adjust the lighting and you can begin to understand why people start to have issues. LED also introduces other gotchas ... like the fact dimming tends to alter the spectrum and there tends to not be enough spread to keep some corals, like acros, healthy unless enough fixtures are used.

But I agree, there are plenty of high quality LED lit tanks.

So if we would analyze your problem it seems likely that your export is not good enough to handle the import required to keep the corals healthy. In my experience, and knowledge gained by reading what other people have done, it may be possible to slowly increase import and allow the tank to adjust. Even if you have good export methods a sudden increase in feeding will tend to knock things out of balance. I've been surprised how much food I've been able to feed my little 40 gallon without it exploding with problems. I tried to do increase slowly and it seemed to help ... but everything is always fine until it isn't. I tend to tolerate more algae than most which helps consume any extra nutrients.

This is all my opinion of course.

 

[reefwiser]

LED's can work but they have a long long way to go there are just too too much variables to make them plug and grow lights like T5 and MH. Ecotech is using lenses to try to fix their problems but I think they need to take a step back and really look at their design. Its not like I have not had LED's I have Kessils ,Radions and black box unit. The tanks that people say are doing good with LED if they would change to MH they would really be taking off and seeing a whole level to there corals without a doubt.