Sps not growing as quick as they should

[Graffiti Spot]

How do the rest of them look? The more recent shot looks really pale. The rock looks good though, looks like it has lots of life. The acro also has a filament on it which shows it might be stressed.

 

[NanoDJS]

Your nutrient level is waaaay outa whack , thats why your building mag, you need to be more like .10 p with that nitrate. and your cal and dkh not gonna be called on . You do water changes eh ? Look up nutrient uptake. Thats what your lacking, try and get your ratio better p / n by raising your P . stop dosin mag until you can pull your cal and dkh daily by some points , I would also stop the water changes and possibly skim less , any binding agents I would remove

 

[Milldozer]

Your nutrient level is waaaay outa whack , thats why your building mag, you need to be more like .10 p with that nitrate. and your cal and dkh not gonna be called on . You do water changes eh ? Look up nutrient uptake. Thats what your lacking, try and get your ratio better p / n by raising your P . stop dosin mag until you can pull your cal and dkh daily by some points , I would also stop the water changes and possibly skim less , any binding agents I would remove

Thanks for the help. I will boost my P up to .1 over the little bit. What do you mean by pull your call and dkh daily by some points? As of right now I am barely skimming. Run the skimmer just to keep my ph up. I can also lessen if not stop the water changes easily. I have been trying to find something that explains N And P ratios but results are all over the map.

 

[Milldozer]

How do the rest of them look? The more recent shot looks really pale. The rock looks good though, looks like it has lots of life. The acro also has a filament on it which shows it might be stressed.

All of the corals below have been in the tank about 10 months and all started around a 1 inch frag. The pink Mille is easily doing the best at possibly 1.5 inch of growth

 

[NanoDJS]

I meant untill your using dkh and calcium up on a daily basis

 

[Milldozer]

I have bumped po4 up to .1. I will see how that changes things over the next month.

 

[ktn87]

Doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with your tank. Your Mag is a little high. Personally I would bump it down to 1250 or so.

I'm thinking it's the calcium reactor and or salt mix. Have you try switching salt mix or to a 2 part doser?

 

[melanotaenia]

Have you ever considered dosing Aminos?

Also, I agree on the red bug examination; about six months ago I found them after experiencing some slower growth on a few of my smoother skin Acros.

 

[Milldozer]

Doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with your tank. Your Mag is a little high. Personally I would bump it down to 1250 or so.

I'm thinking it's the calcium reactor and or salt mix. Have you try switching salt mix or to a 2 part doser?

I might switch back to reef crystals. Cabt afford a dosing set up right now.

 

[Triggreef]

Thanks for the help. I will boost my P up to .1 over the little bit. What do you mean by pull your call and dkh daily by some points? As of right now I am barely skimming. Run the skimmer just to keep my ph up. I can also lessen if not stop the water changes easily. I have been trying to find something that explains N And P ratios but results are all over the map.

probably just stop the skimmer altogether for a while. I wouldn't try to purposely raise the po4 as its pretty much perfect but I do see how the 2 are out of sink. Maybe lower the no3 a little bit to make them jive. Try dosing some acropower on a regular basis. Not as much as the bottle says but divide into daily doses so they get a regular dose.

By pulling points he means finding the daily uptake of how much your using up.

 

[Milldozer]

Have you ever considered dosing Aminos?

Also, I agree on the red bug examination; about six months ago I found them after experiencing some slower growth on a few of my smoother skin Acros.

I have dosed a bit but not on a weekly basis. I haven't been able to find alot of aminos in Canada.
I'll have to take a closer look at the acros. Any suggestions on how to find them if they are there?

 

[Milldozer]

probably just stop the skimmer altogether for a while. I wouldn't try to purposely raise the po4 as its pretty much perfect but I do see how the 2 are out of sink. Maybe lower the no3 a little bit to make them jive. Try dosing some acropower on a regular basis. Not as much as the bottle says but divide into daily doses so they get a regular dose.

By pulling points he means finding the daily uptake of how much your using up.

What would you recommend for a nitrate level? I can easily bring them down, I have a hard time keeping them above 0 with out dosing.

 

[Triggreef]

If you have a loose one you can dip they should come off if you have them.

I never had to deal with red bugs but I was able to actually see them crawling on acro in a local fish store once.

 

[melanotaenia]

I got one of those UV flashlights from the hardware store (like 10 bucks) and checked about an hour after the lights went out. They are pretty easy to spot as you can see them moving around on the coral skin

 

[Evan1901]

Just a side note from learning experience red bug don’t die to coral dip so I inspect all smooth skin SPS before going into the tank. For me, chasing P and N didn’t really help much for grow, what helped me was coral food like reef roid or reef chili. I also use reef energy but seeing much better results after adding coral food.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Based on your pictures

My vote is trace elements. I had acros in a similar state...good stable params, great lighting, good flow but no growth. I tried using red sea colors and growth exploded.

My thread on this few years ago: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/n...-with-my-colors-and-acro-health.342313/page-3

I may have missed your water change routine and salt brand?

Also, I personally don't think your nutrients are too low and i'd keep alk at 8. This is the first time I have seen where nitrates of 5-10 and po4 of 0.02 being way out of wack.

I highly doubt pH of 8.3 vs 8.2 will be noticeable...don't break your back with the scrubber (personal opinion of course). Let's talk about your salt brand and water change routine.

I made a video about my results and 1 year progress after I figured things out. I went from 2-3 year of no growth to 1 year of massive growth and then 6 months after that not having any space on my rocks for new corals.

 

[Milldozer]

Based on your pictures

My vote is trace elements. I had acros in a similar state...good stable params, great lighting, good flow but no growth. I tried using red sea colors and growth exploded.

My thread on this few years ago: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/n...-with-my-colors-and-acro-health.342313/page-3

I may have missed your water change routine and salt brand?

Also, I personally don't think your nutrients are too low and i'd keep alk at 8. I highly doubt pH of 8.3 vs 8.2 will be noticeable...don't break your back with the scrubber (personal opinion of course). Let's talk about your salt brand and water change routine.

Salt brand is red Sea Blue bucket right now. Water changes have been pretty minimal lately. About 10% once a month. I bumped my phos up to see what would happen but I've been reading more on it and I'm going to drop it back down to .03 and then try to keep nitrates 5-10. I also just bought some reef roids to see if that helps.
I do have the red sea colour program from a while back. I'll give that ago after a few weeks of reef roids.
Im going to do a 20% water change tomorrow to see if that will help.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Salt brand is red Sea Blue bucket right now. Water changes have been pretty minimal lately. About 10% once a month. I bumped my phos up to see what would happen but I've been reading more on it and I'm going to drop it back down to .03 and then try to keep nitrates 5-10. I also just bought some reef roids to see if that helps.
I do have the red sea colour program from a while back. I'll give that ago after a few weeks of reef roids.
Im going to do a 20% water change tomorrow to see if that will help.

When doing the red sea colors I would go way less than the instructions say to go. As long as you're putting something in the tank you will start to notice a difference IF your issue is the tank being starved of said elements. No need to do the complex dosing based off usage. Literally 1 ml of each every other day would do the trick and give you a data point IF that's your problem and then you can fine tune from there once you figure out a method for testing that works for you.

I personally don't feel reef roids does much for SPS, I look at that as acan food.

Your fish are providing the food! The fact that you have recorded levels of nutrients via your test kits no matter how small means you have food in the tank. I'd also recommend a test from a lab.

Fauna Marin has a new $19 ICP test:

Shop

Shop

icp1999.com

 

[Milldozer]

When doing the red sea colors I would go way less than the instructions say to go. As long as you're putting something in the tank you will start to notice a difference IF your issue is the tank being starved. No need to do the complex dosing based off usage. Literally 1 ml of each every other day would do the trick and give you a data point IF that's your problem.

I personally don't feel reef roids does much for SPS, I look at that as acan food.

Your fish are providing the food! The fact that you have recorded levels of nutrients via your test kits no matter how small means you have food in the tank. I'd also recommend a test from a lab.

Fauna Marin has a new $19 ICP test:

Shop

Shop

icp1999.com

Would you dose all 4 bottles at 1 ml then?
Also the problem with living in Canada is that we miss out on great deals that the states have on reefing supplies

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Would you dose all 4 bottles at 1 ml then?
Also the problem with living in Canada is that we miss out on great deals that the states have on reefing supplies

Yes, it's a low enough amount to not overdose and high enough to show a response IF that's your issue. Dose every other day and not daily and don't continue if you notice nothing after 2 weeks. I would recommend you take daily photos as a data log to prevent hope and placebo effect playing tricks on your mind.

In my case I started to notice a big difference after a week so I upped my dose to 1 ml of each per day and then to 2-3-4 but that's because my tank volume was 350g. Like I said, I would worry about fine tuning to your consumption and volume later and first figure out if this is part of your issues. In my case my 1 year growth was absolutely insane; I never knew SPS grew so fast they were literally outpacing plants in my landscaping outside. LOL