Color/Growth Heres how I do it, How can I do it better?

[Aquaph8]

Tell me why your colors/growth are better than mine. Dont worry about hurting my feelings, please speak your mind and be honest.

Heres my way:

225 gallon tank w/ 70 gallon sump 60/36/24

12x54 T5 Sfilligoi Stealth fixture ran 7 hrs a day

All top off water goes through a kalk reactor ( about 2 gallons a day )

Additionally I run 2 BRS dosers for cal/alk once per hr for just a couple minutes. They are ran 30 minutes a part.

I change 30 gallons every other week with reef crystals salt mix.

I also use a maintainance dose of microb lift special blend biweekly

I run 1 cup of GFO in a BRS reactor and 1 cup carbon in a mesh bad in the sump.

I run a large skimmer for a 125, its an Alpha 300 with two red dragon pumps.

Other than that, I feed my fish a lot. I feed 4 times a day pellets through my auto feeder and once or twice frozen and 1/3 sheet of nori. Occasionally I also feed newly hatched baby brine shrimp.


Please let me know what you would do different or what you would continue. Dont be shy:crossedlips:, share your thoughts. Thanks

 

[Aquaph8]

Here's some numbers for ya.

Nitrate--undetectable (ATI)

Phosphate--03 (hanna checker)

Alk--8.5 (hanna checker)

Calcium--420 (ATI)

PH--8.4 (red sea)

Mag--1350 (Salifert)

Temp--(79-81)

 

[swannyson7]

What are you looking to improve the color on? SPS?

 

[Aquaph8]

Growth and Color. Yes SPS.

 

[swannyson7]

Well for growth, it sounds like you're doing just about everything you can. You're dosing 2 part on dosing pumps for consistensy/stability and topping off with kalk. The only suggestion I have is to try to bump your calcium up a tiny bit (I shoot for about 450) and just sit back and wait. Although it may seem like everything is growing slowly, let the frags get settled in your system. Take a couple pics of various frags now and leave them be for a few months. Then look bakc at the pictures and you'll feel better. Looking at your tank everyday, you're going to feel like things are taking forever to grow, but when you look back at pics from a few months prior, you may be pleasantly surprised. Another thing to look into is possible probiotic dosing (pellets, vodka/mb7, zeovit, etc.) to reduce phosphates. Phosphates will stunt growth and also prevent coloration from reaching it's true potential.

For color, you may want to consider dosing Amino Acids and potassium. Many people argue that SPS will have better coloration with nitrates of around 5-10 ppm so that they have something to feed on. Dosing amino acids will provide an alternative food source for the SPS and may help improve color. Potassium can also be dosed to improve coloration of blues & purples. You can either dose a straight potassium supplement like Brightwells Potassion or a few drops of lugol's solution (contains potassium as well as iodine).

 

[Aquaph8]

Well for growth, it sounds like you're doing just about everything you can. You're dosing 2 part on dosing pumps for consistensy/stability and topping off with kalk. The only suggestion I have is to try to bump your calcium up a tiny bit (I shoot for about 450) and just sit back and wait. Although it may seem like everything is growing slowly, let the frags get settled in your system. Take a couple pics of various frags now and leave them be for a few months. Then look bakc at the pictures and you'll feel better. Looking at your tank everyday, you're going to feel like things are taking forever to grow, but when you look back at pics from a few months prior, you may be pleasantly surprised. Another thing to look into is possible probiotic dosing (pellets, vodka/mb7, zeovit, etc.) to reduce phosphates. Phosphates will stunt growth and also prevent coloration from reaching it's true potential.

For color, you may want to consider dosing Amino Acids and potassium. Many people argue that SPS will have better coloration with nitrates of around 5-10 ppm so that they have something to feed on. Dosing amino acids will provide an alternative food source for the SPS and may help improve color. Potassium can also be dosed to improve coloration of blues & purples. You can either dose a straight potassium supplement like Brightwells Potassion or a few drops of lugol's solution (contains potassium as well as iodine).

Some great ideas here. Thanks Swanny. I was a vodka doser but I stopped when I upgraded tanks cause of some
issues I attributed to things being too clean. As loads increase on the tank I may go back eventually depending on how the tank does over time.

Please everyone share your thoughts.

 

[GeoHawk]

I recently started using Brightwells potassion, and coralamino, and have seen significant improvements in color, growth, and polyp extension. I just dosed my tank with interceptor to treat red bugs as well, which I also think could be the reason I am seen an improvement. I also just started oyster feast today, so Ill let you know how it works for me in a month or so.

 

[Aquaph8]

Please do keep us updated on how it goes Geo. I too saw a huge turnaround after an interceptor treatment.


Lets get some before and after pics too. If you did something that showed improvement please show us.

 

[swannyson7]

I feed my SPS oyster feast as well and I've been happy with it. I get great feeding response from everything in my tank when it's added to the water column. Some other coral foods that I've used and the SPS seem to respond to are coral frenzy and live baby brine shrimp.

 

[lps1212]

I believe Swannyson hit it right on the button I'd definetly hit for higher cal and possible even mag sps use that stuff up and the coral aminos also a bit hit I use it and seems to work great

 

[shred5]

With color and growth its really hard because each coral is different.. Something may have one effect on one coral can have the opposite effect on another.

Lighting and food contribute the most to growth and color.

Food really helps growth. Also keeping phosphate low.. On the opposite side To clean of a tank can cause corals growth to slow.

Lighting is one factor that contributes to color both spectrum and intensity. I found with sps and t-5 lighting make sure you have some red spectrum. T-5 compared to halide is very narrow spectrum. If you use allot of blue and white you may be lacking red. This is the same for leds. Sps mostly come from shallower water and are subjected to a wider spectrum of light than deep water corals which mainly see blue. Green is also another color lacking and can help with certain pigmentation but does not seem as important as red. Dana Riddle did some articles on coloration in corals, its worth reading. Food is important too for color, if a coral gets more nutrition from food it requires less zooxanthellae for nutrition and zooxanthellae are brown.

Intensity of light can affect each coral differently. I really do not think people now a days have to worry to much about intensity. Most t-5, halide and leds provide plenty of light if you buy a good fixture. I actually think we are getting to the point of Photoinhibition.

Dave Polzin

 

[caudill187]

Could you use a little more GFO and lower the phosphates even more? I use about 4 cups per month on my 200gallon system, and know that phosphates do affect color. Yours do look pretty low already......but worth thinking about.

 

[Aquaph8]

Thanks for all the tips and info, keep them coming. I forgot to mention flow. I'm running two tunze 6105's and my return runs on 2 wavy sea's. Please feel free to share everything and anything you do to be successful. Doesnt have to even be SPS related.

 

[redemer123]

One thing I noticed is that you run your tank quite warm 79-81. It might be worth experimenting over a long period of time with temp to see if it will affect growth in anyway. I run my tank at 73-75 (just my preference). I also feed coral frenzy every other day and since then I've noticed quite nice growth in my corals; in particularly polyps but I've seen feeding responses from the sps as well. Everything goes nuts when I put it in the tank so that might be worth trying as well. I cant complain about colors in my tank because I use LED's and its hard for a coral to look ugly under those :)

 

[Reef Pets]

Of course there are many things that can be done to help improve color. The one thing that you listed that jumps out at me is that your light cycle is 7 hours. I would suggest jumping thT up to at least 10 hours per day.

 

[Aquaph8]

Yeah, heat is always an issue when you live in AZ. I've used chillers in the past but didn't like how much heat they created, seemed counter productive. I would love to keep my tank down in the mid 70s but it would be so expensive in Tucson. Most of the time my tank stays around 79.

 

[Aquaph8]

Of course there are many things that can be done to help improve color. The one thing that you listed that jumps out at me is that your light cycle is 7 hours. I would suggest jumping thT up to at least 10 hours per day.

Interesting. I never thought of my tank as under lit. Would love to hear some other thoughts on this. You say atleast 10 hours, how long are you running your lights and what lights?

 

[swannyson7]

I run my lighting over the course of 12 hours. Here's my current lighting schedule:
7:00 AM: Actinic T5s ON (two UVL Superactinic & two Blue+)
9:00 AM: LEDs ON
11:30 AM: Daytime T5s ON (four Blue+, two Purple+, and two 10k)
1:30 PM: Daytime T5s OFF
4:30 PM: LEDs OFF
7:00 PM: Actinic T5s OFF

I agree that your lighting period is a bit short unless the 7 hours is the duration of your max lighting, not including the ramp-up times with your dawn/dusk effect.

Heat may contribut a bit to your growth, but I've always run my tanks around 80 degrees without any shortage of growth.

 

[Aquaph8]

My photo period is 12-7. I don't have any dawn/dusk features at this time, just on/ off. Think I should be running them longer, how much longer?

 

[swannyson7]

I would slowly increase your photoperiod so that it doesn't shock your corals. I'd try increasing it by about 2 or three hours over the next few weeks... maybe try increasing it 15 minutes every couple days until you hit the target duration.