Trial SPS... what am I doing wrong?

[Ferrell]

Yep it’s another one of those posts. So not to bore you with grizzly details these frags are about a month old. They look good to start then just slowly loose polyps and then algae and coralline cover them. Never start basing. Sitting in about 200 par. I have a pocillipora right near that area that is going nuts. Am I just not getting them in enough light?

Running AL hybrid with 4 B+ and 2 Radion xr15s Radions at 50% sps ab+ for 9 hrs and blue+ for 6. Plus an hour ramp on each end of 9 hrs for total of 11 hrs
Parameters are:
75/20 gallons be 2 yrs in November
Purple coralline everywhere
2 mp10s on 80% reefcrest
Alk 8.8 daily and plus/minus 0.1
Ca 450 weekly
Mg 1500 always with 2diff tests
Ph 8-8.3 daily swing
Dose Alk and Ca in equal parts hourly plus kalk every half hr
Salinity 34.5 auto topped off
Temp 77.6-78.1 apex
I do run carbon about 30 minutes every 6 hrs

I’ve got one sps from the last WWC sale I’m gonna give it another shot.
Thinking maybe bump the RH radion up to 60% gradually and see.

Any suggestions. LPS and softies doing great. Maybe I should just fill in with higher light LPS lol

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Everything looks good water wise. Mag is a bit high but its not a huge deal. I would run the lighting a bit different. T5 on first and off last for 10-12 hours. XR -15s on for 6 hours with a 2 hour ramp up and ramp down, your at 50% on AB+, slowly work up to 70% and see what par is at. You want to see 250-350 in as much of the tank as possible for sps. What are you running carbon on and off like that? Its not good to have water in a reactor not circulating then adding that water into the tank. The stagnant water can cause issues. What is your no3 and po4 at? Too low will cause issies with sps while other corals do just fine like zoas and lps.

 

[Snookin]

Some of your current corals look kind of browned out. What are your nitrates and phosphates? Are they stable. Test them daily for a week at least to get a gauge.

 

[Ferrell]

@Snookin (being a former snooker I like the name) I knew I was leaving something out. No3 has been in the 5-10 range for months
PO4 runs as high as 0.1 to 0.03. I test Alk daily and PO4 about every 2-3 days. Lack of light will do the same correct?

@DesertReefT4r - so you are saying run blue t-5s 11-12 hrs and radions for 6 hrs total.
I have a mixed bag of lps and softies from mid tank to bottom. I’ll have to check my charts to see what 70% would be on them but that was my thinking was light was not turned up enough. (I know if I ran them at 100% I would have 300+ where this little frag sits.). I don’t have a par meter but charted several percentages when I borrowed one so I can interpolate a good value.
With regards to carbon, I didn’t want to run it 24/7 but I see your point. My leathers shed and one is actually splitting itself so I thought getting toxins out. Should I just run it for a period (day or 2) then off and clean? Or dial it back and run constant? I never thought about water being stagnant. Good point
Thanks

 

[Snookin]

Maybe do a Triton ICP test

 

[ZoWhat]

Your first mistake was buying Acros in the first place... LMBO

Acros are best left at the LFS. Let other ppl kill them

 

[Sierra_Bravo]

Your first mistake was buying Acros in the first place... LMBO

Acros are best left at the LFS. Let other ppl kill them

Several hundred thousand reefers successfully growing and propagating acros beg to differ. Just because you may have a hard time keeping acros doesn't mean the OP can't. . . we're here to help, not discourage.

 

[Hemmdog]

I found my acros to not tolerate reef crest setting well. I always had it on reef crest but eventually switch to pulse(blue), things stopped having stn and rtn, pe improved, growth & coloration followed. Some people mix reef crest into their daily cycle but 24/7 it did not work well for me. I also keep my powerheads running the same power at night, most sps people do I believe. Trying to think of the non obvious since your tank looks great and healthy.

 

[Hydrahawk]

Did you do a light acclimation on the SPS? Looks like it is sitting 12-18" under the LED.

 

[Hemmdog]

Few more questions. I didn’t see how huge those softies were, I’d run the carbon 24/7 to remove toxins. Softies and sps usually have trouble mixing and both thriving, they want different conditions.

Do you do water changes? How much and how often.
Fuge?
Do you dose trace elements?


Potassium test could be beneficial.

 

[Ferrell]

@Hemmdog - I used to change 13 gal every two weeks but upped my game to 6 gal every week (i know those are odd amounts, blame it on the containers I use. Yes food grade.). I know it’s about 8% per week. Figured it more stable if I did small changes more often. Started that 3 weeks ago
No refugium
I do not dose trace elements
I feed only frozen LRS and spiraling and feed reef Roids once a week
Roger on the carbon, I changed it tonight and reprogrammed it to run 24/7.
Also forgot to mention I use HW reefer salt

@Hydrahawk the lights are about 10” off the water and frag is about 6-7” under water so yes about 18”. The 10” gives me good spread and allows me a little working room for feeding and putting nori in.

In doing more reading tonight just wondering if I should bump the radions up about 5% a week and get the par up to around 250 over the next month and see how it reacts. Then maybe increase the t5 length of run to 8 hrs from 6 over the next couple months.

 

[ZoWhat]

Several hundred thousand reefers successfully growing and propagating acros beg to differ. Just because you may have a hard time keeping acros doesn't mean the OP can't. . . we're here to help, not discourage.

My comments were comedy... which was probably hard to tell bc it's only words on a page