SPS noob needs some help!

[Ashish Patel]

I had a monti completely bleach on me and pretty much dead. I threw it behind the rockwork and it found its way into a dark cave. Just being lazy I left it there for a week and then moved it to a better spot. Too my surprise it was regaining its color and regrowing over STN section and made a full recovery. After seeing this same pattern with a tri-color valida I realize we are all burning our corals too early and not realizing their needs the first 2-4 weeks is just slow acclimation to our system.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I had a monti completely bleach on me and pretty much dead. I threw it behind the rockwork and it found its way into a dark cave. Just being lazy I left it there for a week and then moved it to a better spot. Too my surprise it was regaining its color and regrowing over STN section and made a full recovery. After seeing this same pattern with a tri-color valida I realize we are all burning our corals too early and not realizing their needs the first 2-4 weeks is just slow acclimation to our system.

I agree and completely disagree. First of all have you read through the entire thread? The OP “estimates” he is delivering 220 par, but there is no way those lights on that tank at that depth are delivering 220 par. It’s most likely around 100. Second, the frags have been struggling for some a couple weeks, because the are starving from a lack of energy provided by the sugars produced during photosynthesis. You’re somewhat correct that corals don’t need a lot of light, which is 350+, but acros eventually will need more than 100 par. 200 par is not a lot of light. That is minimum recommended amount for acropora to survive. I have 300 par on my sandbed so my acros get 350 plus, all led btw, right out of the bag to the frag rack. I agree too much light too soon can stress them but 200 par is not too much, it’s barely enough.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I had a monti completely bleach on me and pretty much dead. I threw it behind the rockwork and it found its way into a dark cave. Just being lazy I left it there for a week and then moved it to a better spot. Too my surprise it was regaining its color and regrowing over STN section and made a full recovery. After seeing this same pattern with a tri-color valida I realize we are all burning our corals too early and not realizing their needs the first 2-4 weeks is just slow acclimation to our system.

My montis are getting 350-500. Absolutely no problems at all. In fact they are growing too fast and encrusting over everything

 

[Daniel 123]

I recently have received a couple of sps frags from world wide corals, I didn't test the water from WWC nor did I take a temp reading and I know they got bounced around, however they were in darkness near 24 hours. I imagine the water parameters were good as WWC knows what they are doing too. I dipped then put the frags in our tank about 24" from a 4 bulb T5 unit and led tech light, within the hour the polyp extension was tremendous.
What changed.. temperature and light, is this the final answer I don't know... Im just making an observation, I don't believe my water parameters were anything special, and if bouncing around with ups for 24hours was really that stressful I wouldn't think polyps would immediately come out as they did, which brings me back to temp and light...

One thing to recognize if you have your tank lights with the blues up and reds yellows/white down your not seeing your fixtures 40 watts... One more thing to consider companies are probably rating the light fixture as the power before the leds forward voltage and any other transients are taken into account... meaning your losing voltage per led that is needed just to turn the diode "on", it produces no light, so if the manufacturer says 40watts Id say actual light wattage is... lower.
Just food for thought I don't know what your problem is.. but everyone here seems like they want to help you.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I recently have received a couple of sps frags from world wide corals, I didn't test the water from WWC nor did I take a temp reading and I know they got bounced around, however they were in darkness near 24 hours. I imagine the water parameters were good as WWC knows what they are doing too. I dipped then put the frags in our tank about 24" from a 4 bulb T5 unit and led tech light, within the hour the polyp extension was tremendous.
What changed.. temperature and light, is this the final answer I don't know... Im just making an observation, I don't believe my water parameters were anything special, and if bouncing around with ups for 24hours was really that stressful I wouldn't think polyps would immediately come out as they did, which brings me back to temp and light...

One thing to recognize if you have your tank lights with the blues up and reds yellows/white down your not seeing your fixtures 40 watts... One more thing to consider companies are probably rating the light fixture as the power before the leds forward voltage and any other transients are taken into account... meaning your losing voltage per led that is needed just to turn the diode "on", it produces no light, so if the manufacturer says 40watts Id say actual light wattage is... lower.
Just food for thought I don't know what your problem is.. but everyone here seems like they want to help you.

When I was having all my issues last year with acropora, 95% of them looked fantastic in the bag. Polyp extension, good color, no slime or tissue necrosis and they would look good for a week but then they would slowly start to retract their polyps, then their tissue would look thin and darker, followed by stn on the tips with brown algae/slime until they turned into just a skeleton. Most ppl told me I had too much light, they were being burned alive, turn your light down, that’s too much light for that tank, so I did, and they started perishing faster. When I bought my par meter my hydra 52 HD’s was 12” above the water, set to about a 20k spectrum, and 80 watts, and that was providing a little more than 200 par 5” below the surface and 100-150 were the acros were dieing. I then maxed it out to full power and that brought the par up to 300 at the top but it had a spot light effect and the dropped significantly outside the cone, so I bought a second 52 hd. Since then my acros finally started encrusting, growing and changing into some crazy colors. I was unknowingly starving them because they were not getting enough light, which is way more important than reef roids, oyster feast, etc. 90% of their energy comes from light and we can’t substitude that with feedings.

 

[iTread]

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.

Curious...do you run your Radions at 50 % intensity per point? or 50 % power (orange bar)?

 

[Robink]

Curious...do you run your Radions at 50 % intensity per point? or 50 % power (orange bar)?

50% power which runs them at about 37% light I believe. Currently in the process of raising them slightly as I have acquired a few acros that seem to prefer higher light.

 

[PDR]

Before we get started I want to set the record straight. I did not purchase the joe the coral acro, it was a gift. I would not have purchased this particular acro since it does require higher lighting. I did purchase the red planet as I was told it did well in lower lighting. I also purchased the other sps that I am having issues with as well, but everyone seems hung up on the acros. The ORA monti is just about totally bleached out at this point and I don't believe anyone has even addressed it.

I have had the acros and ORA monti for less than two weeks. I know some people take much longer than two weeks acclimating in a lower light area of the tank, so I do not personally believe reduced lighting would result is starving the coral in such a short period of time (especially considering how much I feed and the available nutrients in the tank), but I may be wrong.

The other sps (red digitata, red monti cap, green stylo) appear healthy besides the lack of PE and growth over a couple of months.



Let's get started!

Well, I didn't really feel like taking the time to justify my reasoning, but as it seems like some are getting hung up on the lighting...here goes.

First off, in my first post, I originally estimated the sps were receiving 150-220. That was just a ballpark from what I remembered when I first did my research. I then revised it to 180-200 at the most. My sps are at 9 inches directly underneath the light and as high as 7 inches deep not directly under the light.

Here is how I came up with those numbers.

LUX:
While I don't really think the lux-par conversion is great, it's the only light measurement tool I have access to, so it is what it is. Lux at the surface of the water reads 40,000. Using Dana Riddle's new article, at 9" deep, the par value should be approximately 26.7% of that. Using a conversion factor of 60 (I decided on 60 after researching, at length, lux to par conversion with LED's), that bring us to....178 par. This also coincides with the readings I have taken at that depth with the meter.

BRS info:
I'm not sure if everyone realized this (it's ok, I know my first post was long) but I have 3 of the Kessil A160's mounted 12 inches apart, center to center. The sps are underneath the center fixture, but they are also receiving light from those other two fixtures. These are charts of par readings done by BRS from 3 A360's mounted at 8" from the surface, 12" apart.





If you average the 6 center par readings, you get 387 at 6" and 283 at 12". Since 9" is directly between those readings, that comes to 335 par. The A160's have 40 watts to the A360's 90 watts, so A160's are 44% the power. 335*.44= 147.4. The problem is that this is assuming a mounting height of 8", where my lights are at 6.5". I have also read that the A160 may have a narrower lens, which would increase par slightly, but I have not been able to confirm this.

This is where things get a little more speculative.

I forgot to copy the graphs from the video, but BRS measured a single A360 at 6.5" vs 8". If you average the center 4 par readings here is what you get.

Mounted at 6.5" - 300 par at 6" depth, 161.5 at 12" depth.
Mounted at 8.0" - 241 par at 6" depth, 136.5 at 12" depth.

To be honest, I may not have the math perfect on this, but if you average it out, do the conversions, etc. it comes out to about 15 more par at a 9" depth which comes to 162 par at a 9" depth.


Having reviewed the data, I will correct my assumption to 160-180 par.

Is that still less than ideal for acros? Yes, it is, but take a look at this thread. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/whats-your-lowest-successful-par-level.327468/. You can see numerous accounts of people who were/are growing various types of sps (even some acros) under far less than 160 par.

I would love to use a par meter to double check these assumptions, but as I have previously stated, I cannot afford to buy one atm, and I do not have access to one (BRS rentals are out of stock, no local club, LFS doesn't rent them).

That's all I have for now! I hope I have made a compelling case for my reasoning and if not, well I hope you at least enjoyed the post!

 

[PDR]

@PDR my only other suggestion for you would be to do some broadcast feeding a a couple times a week (if you're not already doing so). Coral frenzy, reef roids, reef chili, or some similar type of coral food.

In regards to lighting, I did better with my acros under T5 lighting than I ever did with just LEDs. However, this might also be because I was not getting the same amount of par when I was running just LEDs. Plenty of people run successful tanks under just kessils, so I'm not sure you can point to that as a cause if your issues.

In many cases I think it may just take time for your tank to mature longer. Is it at least a year old? I'm not sure what magically happens during this maturation period, but I do think there is some truth to it. We are dealing with mini eco systems, so it wouldn't surprise me that there are multitudes of inner workings and relationships that we can't fully understand or measure. Lighting, flow, alk, nitrates, po4, and such get a lot of attention because we are able to quantify these things.

I do feed quite a lot of food, most of which has some coral food mixed in (reef frenzy). The problem is I almost never see any PE even at night in any of the sps, don't they need some PE in order to feed?

The tank is over 3 years old.

I recently have received a couple of sps frags from world wide corals, I didn't test the water from WWC nor did I take a temp reading and I know they got bounced around, however they were in darkness near 24 hours. I imagine the water parameters were good as WWC knows what they are doing too. I dipped then put the frags in our tank about 24" from a 4 bulb T5 unit and led tech light, within the hour the polyp extension was tremendous.
What changed.. temperature and light, is this the final answer I don't know... Im just making an observation, I don't believe my water parameters were anything special, and if bouncing around with ups for 24hours was really that stressful I wouldn't think polyps would immediately come out as they did, which brings me back to temp and light...

One thing to recognize if you have your tank lights with the blues up and reds yellows/white down your not seeing your fixtures 40 watts... One more thing to consider companies are probably rating the light fixture as the power before the leds forward voltage and any other transients are taken into account... meaning your losing voltage per led that is needed just to turn the diode "on", it produces no light, so if the manufacturer says 40watts Id say actual light wattage is... lower.
Just food for thought I don't know what your problem is.. but everyone here seems like they want to help you.

With these lights, you can't control individual channels, just intensity and "color". The highest par is around 50% color, I run mine at 45%.

 

[Daniel Waters]

@PDR I think your par numbers seem reasonable. I used to grow an acro at 150 par before I knew about par meters. While I have some corals that certainly do better under more intense lighting, I tend to agree that I don't think your issue is necessarily light intensity (you could always increase your duration if you do feel you need more intensity...a longer photo period can help overcome lower intensities to a degree). I do think LED lights are harder on some corals versus more diffuse sources such as T5 or LEDs that use diffusers. I'm not totally sure why this is, but I had chalices under 150 par with LEDs that would look ticked off at 200 par under LEDs. Those same chalices can sit under my T5s at 250 par and look perfectly content.

I think you have a few different corals that may be struggling each for different reasons. For instance, the coral with the burnt tips I think is just the result of possibly a slightly elevated alk and / or different type of light from where the original frag came from might be one explanation. As far as the bleached monti cap, I can't offer much insight there. I do know that there are certain corals that just don't do well in my tank, and I have others that do incredibly well. I used to be able to grow zoas that other people couldn't keep alive in their tanks, but I can't keep a red monti cap alive to save my life, which should be easy when compared to some acros I'm growing. You may just have a piece that doesn't do well or just have an individual piece that isn't working out this one particular time. I had a green slimer once that died, and I tried another frag of it, and it's been growing great for months. Why did the first one die? Who knows. We tend to think of corals being the same, i.e. a pink lemonade is the same as a pink lemonade for instance, but in reality each individual frag can be different. Sometimes one frag may not make it while another will. And, also remember, we are working with usually one inch frags. My colonies that grow out are many factors more resilient than smaller frags that I may have. I still lose corals from time to time when I'm starting them from a small frag. And I have some frags that literally might take months before I see much growth or encrusting.

 

[Daniel Waters]

I do feed quite a lot of food, most of which has some coral food mixed in (reef frenzy). The problem is I almost never see any PE even at night in any of the sps, don't they need some PE in order to feed?

The tank is over 3 years old.

The mystery of PE! I have no idea on PE. Some say it's feeding. Some say it's a means of gas exchange. I have some corals with crazy PE and I have some that show none at all. I know my PE did increase overall with more overall flow. And I have some corals that didnt show much PE till they became larger. I don't worry about PE as long as coral is growing and color is good. Most millis show tons of PE. Get you a milli and if you can't get PE on it after it grows out some, then you may want to investigate further.

As far as feeding, I think these foods are just important core foods in the overall food chain. I'm not sure if my corals are capturing individual pieces or not, but I know micro organisms such as copepods and mini bristle stars seem to really benefit. I suspect there's a whole ecosystem that may be utilizing these things in ways I probably can't fully comprehend.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

All my sps and lps have crazy polyp extension when the lights are out. If yours are showing zero than its a sign of stress. If it’s not the lighting than there’s something in the water. Stray voltage, pest, or contaniment. You should order an icp test. I don’t believe your alk to nutrient ratio would be affecting monti’s. I never had any problems with monti’s, even when my lights were not up to par, nutrients, etc. It was just the acros that didn’t survive. I hope you get it figured out. Good luck.

 

[Ashish Patel]

BRS measurements are excellent ball park if you don't have a PAR meter. Don't recall reading but what is your photoperiod? Also, how confident are you with your nutrient numbers and how often are you testing? I've seen those burned tips when I had a lack of nutrients combined with more light than the tank could handle. If your going to make any changes do them and give yourself time to see results, those SPS won't recover overnight but can recover quickly if given a stable tank. Not sure the answer to your dosing question but I'd never dose alk anywhere its going to hit the corals, Best place to dose is in the sump.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Are the kessils 3 years old? What kind of lighting was on the tank that the sps came from? What is your photoperiod?

 

[Ashley Kekua]

Hows your tank doing..?
How are the sps? improved i hope!

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Before we get started I want to set the record straight. I did not purchase the joe the coral acro, it was a gift. I would not have purchased this particular acro since it does require higher lighting. I did purchase the red planet as I was told it did well in lower lighting. I also purchased the other sps that I am having issues with as well, but everyone seems hung up on the acros. The ORA monti is just about totally bleached out at this point and I don't believe anyone has even addressed it.

I have had the acros and ORA monti for less than two weeks. I know some people take much longer than two weeks acclimating in a lower light area of the tank, so I do not personally believe reduced lighting would result is starving the coral in such a short period of time (especially considering how much I feed and the available nutrients in the tank), but I may be wrong.

The other sps (red digitata, red monti cap, green stylo) appear healthy besides the lack of PE and growth over a couple of months.



Let's get started!

Well, I didn't really feel like taking the time to justify my reasoning, but as it seems like some are getting hung up on the lighting...here goes.

First off, in my first post, I originally estimated the sps were receiving 150-220. That was just a ballpark from what I remembered when I first did my research. I then revised it to 180-200 at the most. My sps are at 9 inches directly underneath the light and as high as 7 inches deep not directly under the light.

Here is how I came up with those numbers.

LUX:
While I don't really think the lux-par conversion is great, it's the only light measurement tool I have access to, so it is what it is. Lux at the surface of the water reads 40,000. Using Dana Riddle's new article, at 9" deep, the par value should be approximately 26.7% of that. Using a conversion factor of 60 (I decided on 60 after researching, at length, lux to par conversion with LED's), that bring us to....178 par. This also coincides with the readings I have taken at that depth with the meter.

BRS info:
I'm not sure if everyone realized this (it's ok, I know my first post was long) but I have 3 of the Kessil A160's mounted 12 inches apart, center to center. The sps are underneath the center fixture, but they are also receiving light from those other two fixtures. These are charts of par readings done by BRS from 3 A360's mounted at 8" from the surface, 12" apart.





If you average the 6 center par readings, you get 387 at 6" and 283 at 12". Since 9" is directly between those readings, that comes to 335 par. The A160's have 40 watts to the A360's 90 watts, so A160's are 44% the power. 335*.44= 147.4. The problem is that this is assuming a mounting height of 8", where my lights are at 6.5". I have also read that the A160 may have a narrower lens, which would increase par slightly, but I have not been able to confirm this.

This is where things get a little more speculative.

I forgot to copy the graphs from the video, but BRS measured a single A360 at 6.5" vs 8". If you average the center 4 par readings here is what you get.

Mounted at 6.5" - 300 par at 6" depth, 161.5 at 12" depth.
Mounted at 8.0" - 241 par at 6" depth, 136.5 at 12" depth.

To be honest, I may not have the math perfect on this, but if you average it out, do the conversions, etc. it comes out to about 15 more par at a 9" depth which comes to 162 par at a 9" depth.


Having reviewed the data, I will correct my assumption to 160-180 par.

Is that still less than ideal for acros? Yes, it is, but take a look at this thread. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/whats-your-lowest-successful-par-level.327468/. You can see numerous accounts of people who were/are growing various types of sps (even some acros) under far less than 160 par.

I would love to use a par meter to double check these assumptions, but as I have previously stated, I cannot afford to buy one atm, and I do not have access to one (BRS rentals are out of stock, no local club, LFS doesn't rent them).

That's all I have for now! I hope I have made a compelling case for my reasoning and if not, well I hope you at least enjoyed the post!

Your Monti is bleached??? Or it has tissue necrosis? Bleaching means the tissue is still in tact but the color has started fading, but if the tissue is receding that is stn and or rtn.

Your calculations seem reasonable but idealistic. The BRS measurements are performed with brand new fixtures, which yours are not, they use crystal clear freshly made water, and there are no rocks in there demonstrations.

 

[PDR]

My photoperiod is from 9:00 am to 11:00 pm. Comes on at 9:00 am at 5% intensity and 0% color, ramps up to 100% intensity and 45% color at 12:00 pm. Full intensity until 8:00 pm then ramps down to 30% intensity and 0% color at 10:00 pm, then ramps down until off at 11:00 pm.

I have lowered my alk to 8.0 and have been dosing the .3 dkh my tank uses every day manually into the sump.

I have not had a chance to test nutrients again, but given the amount of microfauna, soft coral growth, film algae growth, etc. I really don't think the sps are lacking any nutrients.

The two outside kessil's are just under a year old, the center one is less than 6 months old. Not saying my water has perfect clarity, but between regular water changes and regular carbon, it stays pretty consistently clear. I did the white bucket test a couple of months ago just for fun and I honestly couldn't tell a difference between the new and old water (color wise).

Yes, I believe the monti is bleached/bleaching. It also appears to have some tissue loss. I have a hard time telling with this color monti but I took a few pictures of all the corals as an update. I have since moved it to the sandbed to see if it makes a difference.



It looks much whiter than this in person.



The Joe the Coral is 90% gone. I fragged is down to a 1/2" nub just to see what happens, but I fully expect it to be dead by the weekend. The red plant on the other hand, while still has some white tips, does not seem to be getting worse, and I actually saw some more PE last night. I'm still not super confident in its long term prognosis.



The red monti cap, digitata and stylo look the same except for maybe a little less PE at night on the digi.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

They still look starved to me. Not bleached but it could be a number of things. You could try a poly filter pad, but I’d send off an icp test ASAP. Good luck. Hopefully you can find a par meter soon. I just can’t image they’re getting too much light. Maybe they’re getting more than I estimate but it can’t be so much that it’s bleaching them. What lighting were they under in their previous home?

380 par

475 par

275 par

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

@KrisReef is on a “likes this” bender

 

[KrisReef]

@KrisReef is on a “likes this” bender

Next time I pass over this conversation I will remember I have already read it. I may be old, but I have ways of remembering that make memory unimportant.

(Sorry for the hijack)

I wish I had a PAR meter to lend to the OP so we could remove the speculation and improve our focus on finding the solution.