We all know..do we??

[Diesel]

Yup. After nearly starving my coral to death and overdosing GFO, I'm ready to toss my hanna hi736 in the trash.
Pulled GFO off the tank completely months ago, been feeding more, p04 is over .1 and sps is looking better than ever.


I wouldn't try to get it anywhere... I would just ignore it and let it be what it be.
Looking at your earlier post, i see our nitrates are now the same, too.
Good to see you coming around to the dirty side. ha!

Diesels can be clean and dirty at the same time, LOL.
Uuuuhm............... what was I saying?
oh yeah corals, my corals were always looking good, just had some problems with my high $$$ chalices.
Now that I got the empty spots filled with SPS I still want to put my chalices back in there.
Or I just can send them all to Turbo!
Coming back to the SPS all I see as of now is better growth.
I had before like 1/8 of a inch in 60 days now it looks like just a week.
Color is deeper but again color always was good in my tank.
Just trying out a different challenge.

Btw d2 Hamilton it is........... what about the pro's?

 

[d2mini]

oh yeah corals, my corals were always looking good, just had some problems with my high $$$ chalices.

Very good, indeed!
But you were running Zeovit. Big difference between a uln zeovit tank and a regular old tank like mine with uln.... kinda of like following a regimented Weight Watchers plan vs plain old starvation.

 

[Diesel]

Very good, indeed!
But you were running Zeovit. Big difference between a uln zeovit tank and a regular old tank like mine with uln.... kinda of like following a regimented Weight Watchers plan vs plain old starvation.

Correct.
Now we are back again to old school reefing, LOL.
No GFO, over average high PO4, fish poop does the trick here, Oh and a little bit of AP but that's a different thread (https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/general-sps-discussion/142538-power-up-your-acropora-corals.html)
Btw what did you do with your Pro's?

 

[Thales]

I think people only really started to care about phosphate numbers when products came on the market to bind phosphate. Before ROWA was introduced, there was really no way to do anything about phosphate, nor were there ways to test for it. Before we were all trying to remove phosphate, people were nitrate nutty.

 

[Sahin]

I think people only really started to care about phosphate numbers when products came on the market to bind phosphate. Before ROWA was introduced, there was really no way to do anything about phosphate, nor were there ways to test for it. Before we were all trying to remove phosphate, people were nitrate nutty.

Yup, I remember in the UK it was Rowaphos that that suddenly took off...it was a time when I was still only a few years into the hobby and jumped into the whole zero PO4 train.

 

[d2mini]

Btw what did you do with your Pro's?

I still have them.
My frag tank went p-p-p-p-Pro.

 

[Diesel]

i still have them.
My frag tank went p-p-p-p-pro.

n-n-n-n-no!

 

[Andy]

Diesel,

I didn't know you jumped off the Zeo bandwagon. How are the SPS doing compared to when you were using zeo?

 

[Diesel]

Diesel,

I didn't know you jumped off the Zeo bandwagon. How are the SPS doing compared to when you were using zeo?

I was ready for a new challenge and when I was reading about AP, Acro Power aka Coral Crack I did some research myself and a month later I started dosing the AP.
That is a whole different thread here, just read on, https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/general-sps-discussion/142538-power-up-your-acropora-corals.html

 

[jackson6745]

This is a nice discussion. Well done sharing this info without all the egos Refreshing to see. I have a different take on things and I'll share some speculation, observation, and opinion with you. I may not be correct, but I want to throw these thoughts out there.

In the last couple of years, since LED became mainstream, I see so many guys with faded colors or bleaching etc. Systems that incorporate GFO or other means of stripping po4 seem to have the most issues, at least the systems without adequate feeding to boot.
Why am I bringing up lighting in a po4 thread? Because po4 will control the population of zoox inside your SPS, and this will determine the color and health under intense light/especially focused lighting like LED, or so I've read. Just about all of the SPS guys that I see in person and on the web, that are having issues getting the right SPS colors under LED, maintain a low nutrient level with low po4. I can confidentially say that the better LED SPS tanks that I have seen have higher po4. With the majority of reefers switching to LED, is it a coincidence that we see an emerging trend of maintaining higher po4?

My current reef has very low po4. I have the large hanna low range meter and I get reading from 0.0-0.2 most of the time. I also have a 400w halide + t5's over my tank. You would think that I have faded colors or some ULN issue going on, however, this is not the case. Colors are rich, growth is fast, PE is excellent. You can see pics here Flickr: rich.colombo's Photostream My nitrate levels are around 10-15ppm right now. I feed the tank a ton! Is it the feedings that are keeping the SPS in great condition, or the elevated nitrate level? I'm not really sure on this because the feedings and no3 go hand and hand. Po4 I easily lower with ROWA.

There is one tank in my area that is some kind of LED SPS tank anomaly. This tank gets better colors than most of the halide tanks, actually than most of any other tanks that I've seen. This is a buddy of mine and I get to see his tank all the time. His system kind of baffles me and keeps me from thinking that I have it all figured out He has 8 AI fixtures over a 200DD, po4 levels similar to mine, no3 is below 10 good feeding etc. His tank makes me think that feeding and a little no3 is what's needed to have the right colors. Or since so many of you are raising your po4 is it that? Or is it the correlated no3 that comes with raising your po4? My freakin head hurts :neutral:

 

[Chris07]

I like where this is going. Like I said earlier in the process of my move I let things go a bit as far as maintenance and I was getting better growth and color. Since I've been moved in I went back to my normal habits and threw out my gfo that was probably two months overdue and put a fresh batch in my reactor and just like that two weeks later my PO4 is back down but my glass went from cleaning once every 4-5 days to every 3 days and my sand is a little dirtier. Also my SPS seam to have lost a bit of color and my acans aren't as fluffy. I like to feed my tank a lot so I'm a bit timid to do it but I think I'm going to take my reactor off and see what happens. I wish I had a picture of when I moved a month ago and my corals were looking great but I was a little upset since a rock fell in transport and broke a couple of my sps in half (lucky for my friend though he got some free frags lol). The no GfO route seems like the way to go. Even though I was running it it was about 2 months overdue and so blocked up my mj1200 was barely pumping water through it.