SPS noob needs some help!

[PDR]

I apologize in advance for what is likely to be a small book of a post. I also apologize for the terrible pictures, I can try and get some better ones after lights out if needed.

I recently acquired several frags of SPS for my previously softy/lps tank. All of them have been struggling, some more than others, and I would like some feedback on what you think the issues are and what I could possibly try to help them out.

Scroll down past the bold sentence to get to the actual problems.

Some history on the tank: stony corals have never done well, except for euphyllia. I have had a torch for almost a year that looks great, but I can't tell that it's grown much. I have also had a war coral and acan echinata for about 6 months that are surviving but clearly not growing. All previous lps throughout the years slowly lost tissue and died.

I had chalked this up to my chronically low PH which would peak around 7.7 according to my hanna ph meter and salifert test kit. I recently (November) installed a skimmer and ran the airline outside. My PH has been 7.9-8.1 ever since. Since then, I can't tell that my LPS has grown but they don't seem to be getting worse and still extend feeding tentacles at night.

Tank: RSR 350 - 3 years old this past December

Lighting: 3 Kessil A160's at 100% intensity and 40% color - par (converted from lux) measures about 80-100 on the sand and around 150-220 where the sps are (the acros are in the highest par area). I know this is a little low, but from what I have read should not be resulting in the issues I am having. I also have a small chaeto reactor running on a reverse lighting schedule.

Flow: 4x jebao ow-10's in else (random) mode - I just purchased two ow-25's that I plan on replacing two of the 0w-10's with. I have the flow arranged in such a way to where the sps (imo) get a decent amount of random flow.

Parameters:
Alk - 9.4 - rock solid for the past 3-4 weeks (when I started dosing 2 part)
Ca - 425~
Mg - 1500~
N03 - 3-5 ppm - steady for the last 2-3 months
P04 - .03-.05 - steady for the last 2-3 months
Salinity - 1.026 - always been steady
PH - 7.9-8.1

Maintenance: 2% water change done daily (all at once, done manually through the sump in the evening) - I have stopped water changes for the past few days to let things "settle" while I try and figure out how to proceed. Dose 2 part manually, my tank only uses about .5 dkh a day. I have dosing pumps on the way. I run BRS rox .8 carbon that is changed every 2 weeks.

Full details on my tank can be found in the first post of my build thread found here. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/pdrs-reefer-350-transitioning-to-mixed-reef.401687/

With all that background info out of the way, we can get on to the problems.

All of my SPS have no polyp extension during the day and minimal during lights out. I have not noticed any pests or any of my inhabitants picking on them and I have spent quite a while looking at the tank lately. They have all had great polyp extension when first introduced for the first 3-4 days, then nothing.

As of today, I have noticed some flesh peeling off of the tips of my acros - (ORA Joe the Coral and ORA Red Planet - only had them for 2-3 weeks) - the joe the coral is by far the worst but was also recently handled the most as I had to re-epoxy it in place 2-3 days ago (but so were all the others except the red monti cap and digitata).





I have had the red monti cap and digitata for about 2-3 months, but they have been in two different tanks and have only been set in place and left alone for the past 3-4 weeks. I have noticed very little growth on each. The digitata only shows some minor growth at the base and new tissue growth at the top where it broke during shipping and the monti cap shows some very little new growth around the edges.





The green stylo has noticeably less green on it and less polyp extension than it did when I got it 2-3 weeks ago.


This ORA blue polyp monti has paled considerably (was in much higher light and was recently moved to lower light to see if it would make a difference). I have never seen its polyps come out and it starts to grow some small amount of brown film algae on it by the end of most days (I blow it off in the evening). Not much though, maybe covering some of the edges, and maybe 5% of the coral.


Issues/events worth considering:

Over the last few days, I had been stirring up small amounts of my 1 1/2" - 2" sand bed daily to help "clean" it. It had been fully vacuumed (multiple times) about 2-3 months ago, so it shouldn't have had a chance to accumulate too many toxins. But the last time I did this, it did affect some of my zoas (lost color). I have since stopped messing with the sand. I think this could maybe have caused some of the latest issues with the acros, but all the other issues were happening before I started messing with the sand.

I have had brown diatom type algae on my sand bed for the past few months. I run a 7 stage BRS RO/DI unit with all new filters and media, so I doubt it could be anything coming from my source water. I don't think it is dinos, mainly because it never gets all that bad, my tangs and CUC eat it and it is always gone by the morning. That being said, I really don't know what it is or what would be causing it.

Well if you've made it this far you deserve some kind of special award! lol

I appreciate any and all help you can give me!

Thanks!

 

[Robink]

The only thing I can see is that your alk could be a little lower. I try to keep mine between 8 and 9. When I first started keeping sps I struggled also.
When I upgraded my skimmer to keep the sps happy I lost some lps.
How's your flow?

 

[PDR]

The only thing I can see is that your alk could be a little lower. I try to keep mine between 8 and 9. When I first started keeping sps I struggled also.
When I upgraded my skimmer to keep the sps happy I lost some lps.
How's your flow?

I should have mentioned this, but I am in the process of bringing my alk down to around 8.5. I was planning to just let it naturally fall for a few days then start dosing again.

Flow appears to be fairly strong and chaotic around the sps, but I am planning on upgrading to larger powerheads on Sunday.

I also wanted to mention that I believe some have suggested issues with leathers and SPS, and well I have a few large leathers. Here is a current FTS for reference. All the sps is on the center top rock.

 

[Rcollick]

Your parameters look pretty good but like others have said maybe try lowering your alk down to around 8 I use to use rox .08 also but didn't like the results. I know there have been mixed reviews on it from some people. You might be stripping your water too much. What salt are you using?

 

[Robink]

Nice tank. Could be the leathers. I also went from softies to sps and killed a lot before having success. Now I have mostly sps and quite a few lps, chalices, favia, zoas, a torch and frogspawn. Mostly everything is happy.
I keep my nutrients a little higher, n03 at 20 and p04 0.4, my alk is low 8's.

 

[PDR]

Your parameters look pretty good but like others have said maybe try lowering your alk down to around 8 I use to use rox .08 also but didn't like the results. I know there have been mixed reviews on it from some people. You might be stripping your water too much. What salt are you using?

I have been using the LiveAquaria Reef salt (ie Fritz). I have always liked the rox carbon. I run less than suggested in a filter bag, and I feed a lot, so I don't think I'm stripping the water too much, but I could be wrong.

 

[biophilia]

How far are the Kessils mounted from the water surface? I'd be hesitant to fully trust the lux->PAR conversion. Stony corals will retract their polyps and fade in response to excessive light, but whether or not this is your issue will be hard to test without turning the lights down a bit and waiting a month or more.

In my own tank -- which has a bunch of stony corals mixed with a bunch of soft corals and LED lights mounted fairly close to the surface -- I've noticed both the above phenomenon, and also had issues with acros retracting polyps and losing color due to what I believe is proteins in the water from all of the soft corals. I've had good luck solving both issues by lowering light intensity a bit and ramping up the amount of carbon used by quite a bit.

If your alk is below 12-13DKH it likely is not an issue. The difference between 8.5DKH and 9.5DKH is so little that most hobby grade test kits can't reliably differentiate between the two anyway...

 

[PDR]

Nice tank. Could be the leathers. I also went from softies to sps and killed a lot before having success. Now I have mostly sps and quite a few lps, chalices, favia, zoas, a torch and frogspawn. Mostly everything is happy.
I keep my nutrients a little higher, n03 at 20 and p04 0.4, my alk is low 8's.

I was hoping running carbon fairly regularly would help mitigate any issues from the leathers. I honestly don't do anything to keep my nutrients lower (intentionally), I feed a ton, didn't skim for years, but even now I skim super dry, and only recently started the algae reactor to see if it would help with the algae on the sand. If anything nutrients are higher than they were a few months ago, and the softies have always had great growth.

 

[Robink]

I recently had an alk spike to 9.5 and some of my sps lost color. Just my .02 .
Reference your lighting, did you use a par meter to get the readings? If not your lights could be too high at 100%. I have radions and run them at 50% and have good color and pe.

 

[PDR]

How far are the Kessils mounted from the water surface? I'd be hesitant to fully trust the lux->PAR conversion. Stony corals will retract their polyps and fade in response to excessive light, but whether or not this is your issue will be hard to test without turning the lights down a bit and waiting a month or more.

In my own tank -- which has a bunch of stony corals mixed with a bunch of soft corals and LED lights mounted fairly close to the surface -- I've noticed both the above phenomenon, and also had issues with acros retracting polyps and losing color due to what I believe is proteins in the water from all of the soft corals. I've had good luck solving both issues by lowering light intensity a bit and ramping up the amount of carbon used by quite a bit.

If your alk is below 12-13DKH it likely is not an issue. The difference between 8.5DKH and 9.5DKH is so little that most hobby grade test kits can't reliably differentiate between the two anyway...

To be honest, I don't really trust the lux/par conversion either, but I took the data from the study BRS did on the A360 on a 48" tank with three lights and divided the par numbers at various depths by 0.44 (A360 is a 90w light and A160 is a 40w light - 40/90=.44). While not perfect, it did yield very similar results to my lux conversion so I believe it to be very close. I run them about 6" above the surface.

I agree about the alk, I'd just feel better at 8.5 which was my initial goal. It just seemed to settle at 9.4 for some reason. Any changes I make will be slow.

I can try running more carbon and see if it helps.

 

[Robink]

try turning the lights down some and see if that helps. They're close to the water, mine are about 11-12 inches above, however I don't have kessils.

 

[PDR]

I also wanted to ask, what would this be considered? STN, RTN, burnt tips? Is there anything I should do to help them? Are they already too far gone?

 

[Robink]

Looks like maybe just a little bleaching and just overall unhappy. I do believe they might be happier if you turn down the lights and raise them a little higher over the water. I'd turn them down to 50%, see how that goes and gradually raise them if need be till you find the sweet spot.

 

[PDR]

Looks like maybe just a little bleaching and just overall unhappy. I do believe they might be happier if you turn down the lights and raise them a little higher over the water. I'd turn them down to 50%, see how that goes and gradually raise them if need be till you find the sweet spot.

I really appreciate the advice. To be honest I am a little hesitant to change anything with my lighting as it has been the same for quite some time and everything else seems happy. I have also research kessil lighting a lot and generally speaking they are pretty underpowered (which is a good thing imo) to most other LED options.

Let's throw out the lux readings for now. According to the BRS study if I had 3 A360's at 100% the par would be just under 300 where these sps are. These lights are less than half that powerful, so in reality, the sps are probably only getting closer to 130-150 par. I have a hard time believing that 150 par would bleach sps. Am I wrong in this assumption?

 

[Robink]

I agree, I don't think 150 par would bleach them. I did have an acro recently that wasn't doing well as I had started it low and it needed more light.
Moved it up higher and seems to be happy.
If you have a local club in your area that you could join, they may have a par meter that you can borrow that way you'd know for sure.
And you're welcome!

 

[biophilia]

FWIW when I put AI Primes above my nano tank, I set them to the BRS AB+ settings which I expected to be in the ~180-230ish PAR range based on their videos and spent over a year adjusting every other parameter I could think of to no avail and found that acropora would lose polyp extension and look "dry" and faded after about a week or so. Finally turned the light down from 29W of AB+ lighting to 21W or so and was magically able to get healthy growth and PE with SPS. Recently tweaked the light up to 23W to see what the upper limit was and (one week later) PE is gone and color is starting to fade. I think LEDs are much more powerful than we give them credit for and the PAR numbers alone don't tell the whole story. I didn't see any change in color or growth of any of my LPS/softies when dimming the light. Also, surprisingly, my daily alk consumption stayed the same.

 

[Daniel Waters]

I'll throw in my 2 cents. For what it's worth, I used to do mostly softies and LPS and could grow them quite well. My transition to sps corals was pretty much a failure for several months before I got certain things adjusted, so i can understand your frustration and pain. So my observations,

(1) your alk is okay, but I find a lower alk is more "forgiving"
(2) flow to me is just as important than lighting for my SPS- what would you estimate your total flow at per hour (so internal powerheads + return pump)? I run my tank around 40-50x (although my return pump is only about 5x turnover). I know some people run even more than that with SPS. You may not need near that same level of flow, but with sps, I have found as long as you aren't blasting flow directly at them, the more the better. That's one issue with running mixed tanks. My LPS always liked slower pulsing type flow, and my sps do better with strong chaotic flow. It makes it hard to mix the two sometimes.
(3) lighting- your par approximations seem reasonable, but I am almost certain that the A160 len's angle is less than the A360's. So while the 4/9 approximation based on wattage is probably a good approximation, a 6" mounting height may be giving you a bit of a hot spot in certain areas with the A160s that you might not get with the A360s.
(4) you mention about not seeing much growth after a few weeks. For some sps, you should be making observations on growth over periods of months not weeks. I realize some people can throw sticks in their tanks and grow these great big mature colonies in what seems like no time at all, but I've had some sps literally not do anything for months before they settle in. Sometimes a new coral can take a long time to really settle into a new tank. Heck, I've heard people talk about some corals having a small issue and taking months just to color back up. I had one coral that literally took a year before it did anything. Thus, seeing growth is certainly a good indication of health but not the only thing you should observe.
(5) you talk about not much PE- some corals won't show much PE. If you have a known coral that should show a lot of PE (like most millis), do they show retracted PE also? I have some corals that are growing very well and nice color and no PE and corals 4" over that look like a hairy beast...just differences in some corals. I do think increased flow helped increase the PE in my corals.

Also, you have a flame angel in your tank from your tank picture. Those are nippers and going to keep your corals a little more closed up (and I don't care if you've never seen him nip your SPS...I assure you it does).

Anyway, I hope some of my comments may be helpful. You have a nice looking tank!

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

They look to me like they are starving from not enough light. 90% of sps nutrition is from the sugars provided by the algae during photosynthesis. I had many acros perish last year from starving corals. I thought a single hydra 52 HD was enough for my 50 gallon cube but after I finally bought a par meter I found out that it wasn’t nearly as powerful as I thought. So I now I have 2-52 HD’s cranked up to 100 watts each over a 24”x24” area. As soon as I did that and stopped chasing low nutrients my acros started thriving. The tissue on your acros looks just like the tissue on the ones that died on me. Thin, dark, dried out with no polyp extension.

 

[Daniel Waters]

I will amend my previous comment on lighting. I didn't realize the red sea reefer 350 is 48" long. 3 A160s on that tank are probably fine for softies and lps, but sps would probably need to be placed in the middle of the tank and higher up. I think par measurements are needed. I used to run 3 A360s and 4 A160s on my 6 foot tank and I thought I had plenty of light...until i actually tested my par. I wasn't near where I needed to be for some of my acropora to stay alive, much less thrive

 

[PDR]

I will amend my previous comment on lighting. I didn't realize the red sea reefer 350 is 48" long. 3 A160s on that tank are probably fine for softies and lps, but sps would probably need to be placed in the middle of the tank and higher up. I think par measurements are needed. I used to run 3 A360s and 4 A160s on my 6 foot tank and I thought I had plenty of light...until i actually tested my par. I wasn't near where I needed to be for some of my acropora to stay alive, much less thrive

I really appreciate the time you took to reply! Thank you!

I am in the process of adding new powerheads (today). After they are added, my turnover should be in the 50x-60x range. It's about 30-40x now.

For reference, the SPS are placed 9" under the water line directly under the center fixture. Ideally, I would have more light, but I tried to choose some SPS that others have had luck with in lower par. I have also done quite a bit more research on these lights (a lot of which I had already read when I was setting them up) and my approximations are right in line with what others have found with a par meter.

As of today, the red planet seems about the same, but the Joe the Coral is looking worse. There is more tissue recession on the tips and it is starting to grow some brown algae on the tips. Should I go ahead and frag the tips?

I don't doubt the flame angel may occasionally nip some of them, but no more than I have seem my tangs "nip" at them. That may explain the polyp extension issue, and otherwise, my red cap and digitata seem healthy. The stylo also seems more or less ok.

Here are some pictures I took after lights out, hopefully you can see the condition a little better.







I went ahead and changed my carbon out a few days early. I have not done any water changes or dosed anything in the last few days. I plan to start dosing 2 part again today as the levels should be right where I want them now.

Also worth pointing out, when I would dose my alk at night, the powerheads would blow the "white alk cloud" directly over all the sps before dissolving fully. Any way that could have caused issues?