Tl;dr - poor SPS growth and PE, low Nitrates & Phosphates, can't seem to raise them. Apologize in advance for the long post, I've done a ton of research and tried to figure this out on my own but so far had no luck.
For about the past month or so, I've had reduced or zero polyp extension on many of my sps, and I believe it to be caused by too low nutrients. I have a skimmer and giant ball of chaeto (lighted overnight from ~11pm-12pm) as my primary methods of nutrient export. I don't have a phosphate test kit, but my nitrates are always undetectable on my red sea kit. I've had nitrate and phosphate checked at various LFS, both come back 0.0. I have very little algae in the DT ...but plenty growing in the fuge (chaeto of course, as well as hair algae and potentially dinos? on the glass and heater...I should move the heater out of the fuge but I digress...)
In the past week or two, I've also noticed slowed growth, especially in my small setosa which seems to have completely stopped growing, and lower alk/calc/mag usage. Alk/calc/mag had been stable at 8.5/480/1500 respectively, and then slowly raised steadily over the past week or so to 9.3/510/1620 respectively, with no change in my dosing (kalkwasser in ATO, very steady evaporation). I have a birdsnest and stylo that are doing great, growing fast (though the stylo may have slowed), full PE. Most of my LPS are also doing fantastic (2 hammers, a duncan w/ 5 new buds in the past 2 weeks, chalice w/ sweepers at night & steady growth as far as I can tell), excluding one frogspawn that doesn't extend much...could be related to the SPS PE issues. I have a digi and an "apple berry" monti capitata with decent PE. My remaining montis (spongodes, setosa, tubbs stellata), slimeball anacropora, have little to no PE. I had an unknown $5 blue-tip acropora frag STN last week after having poor PE for at least a month.
This is a relatively new (~6mo) 40 breeder tank with a single sbreeflights basic 16" (recently removed lenses to improve coverage...started to get some shadowing around the birdsnest and stylo), 5 fish (2 clowns, 2 halichoeres wrasses, small assessor basslet). For the past 2-3 weeks, I've increased feeding to ~3x per day (2 turns of auto-feeder NLS pellets, ~10 pellets per turn, plus a supplemental feeding of 1 cube of mysis or some other pellet food I have), as well as feeding reef roids daily (some days broadcast, some days targeted, skimmer off, powerheads off in feed mode). I have added carbon. I have increased water changes. I have stopped running the skimmer during the day. I have cut down on the fuge lighting by a few hours. I have added carbon. I have replaced an old hand-me-down mag5 with some rusty screws and upgraded my hand-me-down powerheads to 2 tunze 6055 (set to wave mode in opposite corners at about 30-40% intensity).
Some posts have suggested a pest for issues like this (redbugs, AEFW, monti eating nudis)...AEFW is an option for the acro that STN'd and the one remaining anacropora, my understanding is that redbugs don't affect montis and those have the most issues (yet some exist without problems, ex. digi and appleberry), and I think I would be able to see nudis if they were in there. Regardless, I've closely inspected all of these corals that are having issues, especially the one that STN'd, and have not seen any pests at all.
I'm considering the following changes and would like some help determining what makes most sense. Ideally I'd prefer not to dose all this crap and just feed to maintain nitrates ~5ppm and phosphates 0.02-0.04...
1. Trim back my chaeto by about 50-75%. Right now the ball is pretty massive, probably soccer-ball size.
2. Dosing amino acids such as fuel 2-3x/wk
3. Dosing nitrates and potentially phosphates as well
4. Further increasing feeding to 2 cubes/day + 2 turns of auto-feeder (~10 pellets per turn)
5. Removing filter sock
6. Reducing photo period on fuge to ~6h
Any ideas?!
Edit - forgot a couple corals, LPS I have a trumpet that's doing fantastic (bought ~3m ago as a bargain bin $5 frag w/ 2.5 heads, now 4 heads w/ 2 splitting), SPS I have a psammocora with good growth and PE, and a couple softies (xenia, gsp, both isolated on their own rocks) both doing fine.
For about the past month or so, I've had reduced or zero polyp extension on many of my sps, and I believe it to be caused by too low nutrients. I have a skimmer and giant ball of chaeto (lighted overnight from ~11pm-12pm) as my primary methods of nutrient export. I don't have a phosphate test kit, but my nitrates are always undetectable on my red sea kit. I've had nitrate and phosphate checked at various LFS, both come back 0.0. I have very little algae in the DT ...but plenty growing in the fuge (chaeto of course, as well as hair algae and potentially dinos? on the glass and heater...I should move the heater out of the fuge but I digress...)
In the past week or two, I've also noticed slowed growth, especially in my small setosa which seems to have completely stopped growing, and lower alk/calc/mag usage. Alk/calc/mag had been stable at 8.5/480/1500 respectively, and then slowly raised steadily over the past week or so to 9.3/510/1620 respectively, with no change in my dosing (kalkwasser in ATO, very steady evaporation). I have a birdsnest and stylo that are doing great, growing fast (though the stylo may have slowed), full PE. Most of my LPS are also doing fantastic (2 hammers, a duncan w/ 5 new buds in the past 2 weeks, chalice w/ sweepers at night & steady growth as far as I can tell), excluding one frogspawn that doesn't extend much...could be related to the SPS PE issues. I have a digi and an "apple berry" monti capitata with decent PE. My remaining montis (spongodes, setosa, tubbs stellata), slimeball anacropora, have little to no PE. I had an unknown $5 blue-tip acropora frag STN last week after having poor PE for at least a month.
This is a relatively new (~6mo) 40 breeder tank with a single sbreeflights basic 16" (recently removed lenses to improve coverage...started to get some shadowing around the birdsnest and stylo), 5 fish (2 clowns, 2 halichoeres wrasses, small assessor basslet). For the past 2-3 weeks, I've increased feeding to ~3x per day (2 turns of auto-feeder NLS pellets, ~10 pellets per turn, plus a supplemental feeding of 1 cube of mysis or some other pellet food I have), as well as feeding reef roids daily (some days broadcast, some days targeted, skimmer off, powerheads off in feed mode). I have added carbon. I have increased water changes. I have stopped running the skimmer during the day. I have cut down on the fuge lighting by a few hours. I have added carbon. I have replaced an old hand-me-down mag5 with some rusty screws and upgraded my hand-me-down powerheads to 2 tunze 6055 (set to wave mode in opposite corners at about 30-40% intensity).
Some posts have suggested a pest for issues like this (redbugs, AEFW, monti eating nudis)...AEFW is an option for the acro that STN'd and the one remaining anacropora, my understanding is that redbugs don't affect montis and those have the most issues (yet some exist without problems, ex. digi and appleberry), and I think I would be able to see nudis if they were in there. Regardless, I've closely inspected all of these corals that are having issues, especially the one that STN'd, and have not seen any pests at all.
I'm considering the following changes and would like some help determining what makes most sense. Ideally I'd prefer not to dose all this crap and just feed to maintain nitrates ~5ppm and phosphates 0.02-0.04...
1. Trim back my chaeto by about 50-75%. Right now the ball is pretty massive, probably soccer-ball size.
2. Dosing amino acids such as fuel 2-3x/wk
3. Dosing nitrates and potentially phosphates as well
4. Further increasing feeding to 2 cubes/day + 2 turns of auto-feeder (~10 pellets per turn)
5. Removing filter sock
6. Reducing photo period on fuge to ~6h
Any ideas?!
Edit - forgot a couple corals, LPS I have a trumpet that's doing fantastic (bought ~3m ago as a bargain bin $5 frag w/ 2.5 heads, now 4 heads w/ 2 splitting), SPS I have a psammocora with good growth and PE, and a couple softies (xenia, gsp, both isolated on their own rocks) both doing fine.
Last edited:
) for about 2 months, then suddenly stopped extending and really slowed its growth. It was a fresh frag from the LFS display tank colony, so even though it had to heal it encrusted on its rock within about 2 weeks of being in my tank.
