Acro Skin Thin, Not plump your thoughts?

Heabel7 · Jun 12, 2023

I have some corals especially established colonies that are growing well with what looks like healthy skin and great polyp extension. I have a couple other colonies with thin skin that have VERY slow STN (all colonies are 4"-10" across). In addition, many of my new frags start out looking plump and then thin out and stop growing, especially my millepora.
140 gallon system (90 gallon + 40 Gallon + sump) all plumbed together.
I feed 3 cubes of mysis/spirulina 2-3 times a day depending on my work schedule (6-9 cubes daily)
11 fish in total
-nitrates 12 (hanna)
-Phospate .27 (hanna)
-calcium 420
-mag-1300
-Alk -8.3-9.5 (dose kalk overnight 9pm -9am)
-PH 8.25-8.42 on average with windows closed. When open i can get 8.35 - 8.5. (recently calibrated probe)
-ICP done 4 weeks ago. It showed lacking in trace elements, I did three 30% water changes and started dosing Iso8MT. I was missing exactly what this bottle replaces.
-Photo period is rather long so i can feed before i go to work. Starts ramping at 6am very low, hits Peak at 12PM-5PM and then ramps down to off at 9pm. Peak is 250-400 par depending on coral placement.
-Flow is insane in both tanks. 90 Gallon has 2 MP40s, 1 RW8 and, GIANT gyre. I was running most of these at 70% or better, but i recently turned them down. Thinking too much flow may be hurting the growth. Counter to what everyone says. But rarely do i hear about that much flow in something as small as a 90.

About a week ago I started feeding more thinking that my corals are starving. Most of the time my Phosphates run around .02-.08. (was feeding 4-6 cubes). My theory is that with PH so high and and alk just a bit on the high side that they could be trying to grow faster than the skin can keep up.

Added a few colony shots that are doing good, unfortuently i only have crappy pics of frags that are struggling.

Your thoughts?

Pod_01 · Jun 13, 2023

Heabel7 said:
I have some corals especially established colonies that are growing well with what looks like healthy skin and great polyp extension. I have a couple other colonies with thin skin that have VERY slow STN (all colonies are 4"-10" across). In addition, many of my new frags start out looking plump and then thin out and stop growing, especially my millepora.
140 gallon system (90 gallon + 40 Gallon + sump) all plumbed together.
I feed 3 cubes of mysis/spirulina 2-3 times a day depending on my work schedule (6-9 cubes daily)
11 fish in total
-nitrates 12 (hanna)
-Phospate .27 (hanna)
-calcium 420
-mag-1300
-Alk -8.3-9.5 (dose kalk overnight 9pm -9am)
-PH 8.25-8.42 on average with windows closed. When open i can get 8.35 - 8.5. (recently calibrated probe)
-ICP done 4 weeks ago. It showed lacking in trace elements, I did three 30% water changes and started dosing Iso8MT. I was missing exactly what this bottle replaces.
-Photo period is rather long so i can feed before i go to work. Starts ramping at 6am very low, hits Peak at 12PM-5PM and then ramps down to off at 9pm. Peak is 250-400 par depending on coral placement.
-Flow is insane in both tanks. 90 Gallon has 2 MP40s, 1 RW8 and, GIANT gyre. I was running most of these at 70% or better, but i recently turned them down. Thinking too much flow may be hurting the growth. Counter to what everyone says. But rarely do i hear about that much flow in something as small as a 90.

About a week ago I started feeding more thinking that my corals are starving. Most of the time my Phosphates run around .02-.08. (was feeding 4-6 cubes). My theory is that with PH so high and and alk just a bit on the high side that they could be trying to grow faster than the skin can keep up.

Added a few colony shots that are doing good, unfortuently i only have crappy pics of frags that are struggling.

Your thoughts?

In general 99% of coral issues are water related. From your post your water is perfect, but corals are not doing well. Perhaps they need a month to get used to the new adjusted water parameters.

If we assume water is perfect my money would be on the lights, try 10-12 hour duration and add AB profile/spectrum. Your pictures are very blue looking, corals do need 10k / 14k spectrum. You can do 6 hours of blue and 6 hours of white/blue.

Good luck and hope things turn around.

Hurricane Aquatics · Jun 14, 2023

Heabel7 said:
I have some corals especially established colonies that are growing well with what looks like healthy skin and great polyp extension. I have a couple other colonies with thin skin that have VERY slow STN (all colonies are 4"-10" across). In addition, many of my new frags start out looking plump and then thin out and stop growing, especially my millepora.
140 gallon system (90 gallon + 40 Gallon + sump) all plumbed together.
I feed 3 cubes of mysis/spirulina 2-3 times a day depending on my work schedule (6-9 cubes daily)
11 fish in total
-nitrates 12 (hanna)
-Phospate .27 (hanna)
-calcium 420
-mag-1300
-Alk -8.3-9.5 (dose kalk overnight 9pm -9am)
-PH 8.25-8.42 on average with windows closed. When open i can get 8.35 - 8.5. (recently calibrated probe)
-ICP done 4 weeks ago. It showed lacking in trace elements, I did three 30% water changes and started dosing Iso8MT. I was missing exactly what this bottle replaces.
-Photo period is rather long so i can feed before i go to work. Starts ramping at 6am very low, hits Peak at 12PM-5PM and then ramps down to off at 9pm. Peak is 250-400 par depending on coral placement.
-Flow is insane in both tanks. 90 Gallon has 2 MP40s, 1 RW8 and, GIANT gyre. I was running most of these at 70% or better, but i recently turned them down. Thinking too much flow may be hurting the growth. Counter to what everyone says. But rarely do i hear about that much flow in something as small as a 90.

About a week ago I started feeding more thinking that my corals are starving. Most of the time my Phosphates run around .02-.08. (was feeding 4-6 cubes). My theory is that with PH so high and and alk just a bit on the high side that they could be trying to grow faster than the skin can keep up.

Added a few colony shots that are doing good, unfortuently i only have crappy pics of frags that are struggling.

Your thoughts?

Your nitrates to phosphates are out of proportion. If you're going to run almost 0.3 phosphates, you need to increase your Nitrate to about 25 or 30.

If it were me, I would lower phosphate to around 0.15 and let them stabilize from there. You'll still need to increase your Nitrate to around 20 to balance it out.

You don't have STN anywhere. It's easy for Acropora frags to vet a little white where they are encrusting on the frag plug. It's from growth and can also be from snails eating algae and cleaning along their edges.

Your Mag and Calcium are a bit low for my liking as well. Calcium isn't bad, I like 450 to 460 and you're pretty close to that, so dosing just a bit more will help. Magnesium at 1300 is low, not dangerously low, but low. I would get that up to 1500 preferably, 1400 at least. Higher Mag will help maintain your Alk and calcium better and I've never seen any coral or clam that didn't absolutely love higher Mag and really start opening up.

Minor changes really and it seems your system is doing well. I would watch your Alk swings as that's a bit of a swing. I don't understand the lower Calcium if you're dosing that much Kalk. You may very well be using a lot of calcium which is good too.

Pod_01 · Jun 14, 2023

Hurricane Aquatics said:
Your nitrates to phosphates are out of proportion. If you're going to run almost 0.3 phosphates, you need to increase your Nitrate to about 25 or 30.

If it were me, I would lower phosphate to around 0.15 and let them stabilize from there. You'll still need to increase your Nitrate to around 20 to balance it out.

You don't have STN anywhere. It's easy for Acropora frags to vet a little white where they are encrusting on the frag plug. It's from growth and can also be from snails eating algae and cleaning along their edges.

Your Mag and Calcium are a bit low for my liking as well. Calcium isn't bad, I like 450 to 460 and you're pretty close to that, so dosing just a bit more will help. Magnesium at 1300 is low, not dangerously low, but low. I would get that up to 1500 preferably, 1400 at least. Higher Mag will help maintain your Alk and calcium better and I've never seen any coral or clam that didn't absolutely love higher Mag and really start opening up.

Minor changes really and it seems your system is doing well. I would watch your Alk swings as that's a bit of a swing. I don't understand the lower Calcium if you're dosing that much Kalk. You may very well be using a lot of calcium which is good too.

Just curious about the 100:1 recommendation for NO3:PO4. Is that something you found to work well in your tank? Do you artificially peg it at that ratio? Or did the tank naturally migrated to that ratio?

My tank after 2 years settled on these values:

I had crash/ accident 2 years ago when I was on vacation and due to failure my tank turned into brackish water.

Corals look good: (quick picture taken in the morning)

I feed quite a bit but NO3 is stuck.

So I am just curious if you maintain your ratio artificially or it got there naturally?

Dburr1014 · Jun 14, 2023

Hmmm, me too.

Hurricane Aquatics · Jun 14, 2023

Pod_01 said:
Just curious about the 100:1 recommendation for NO3:pO4. Is that something you found to work well in your tank? Do you artificially peg it at that ratio? Or did the tank naturally migrated to that ratio?

My tank after 2 years settled on these values:

I had crash/ accident 2 years ago when I was on vacation and due to failure my tank turned into brackish water.

Corals look good: (quick picture taken in the morning)

I feed quite a bit but NO3 is stuck.

So I am just curious if you maintain your ratio artificially or it got there naturally?

I don't follow that ratio to the number.

If you have a high par, high flow system for Acropora, you definitely need some nitrogen in your system. I keep mine at 12 on the low end and about 17 to 20 on the higher end.

Phosphate, you can tell when it's low as your corals get a little less colorful. It's pretty noticeable. Again, I keep mine around 0.07 to 0.12 and have found that to be a good level that keeps algae way down and still gives the Acros what they need.

I feed a lot as well, but my system uses Nitrate and Phosphate at a high level. I dose Nitrate when needed using Brightwell NeoNitro. Phosphate, Brightwell has a good product there as well, but I mixed my own using Green Leaf Aquariums product.

Nitrate and Phosphate help with all around coral health. Think about it this way, that Acropora are basically made up of zooxanthellae (dinoflagelates). So what does algae need to survive? Phosphate mainly. If you go overboard on the phosphates, then the Acro may expell it's zooxanthellae.

I've seen stunning Acro tanks with levels around what was listed about. However, the Nitrate needs to be there too as it all works together.

Heabel7 · Jun 14, 2023

Hurricane Aquatics said:
Your nitrates to phosphates are out of proportion. If you're going to run almost 0.3 phosphates, you need to increase your Nitrate to about 25 or 30.

If it were me, I would lower phosphate to around 0.15 and let them stabilize from there. You'll still need to increase your Nitrate to around 20 to balance it out.

You don't have STN anywhere. It's easy for Acropora frags to vet a little white where they are encrusting on the frag plug. It's from growth and can also be from snails eating algae and cleaning along their edges.

Your Mag and Calcium are a bit low for my liking as well. Calcium isn't bad, I like 450 to 460 and you're pretty close to that, so dosing just a bit more will help. Magnesium at 1300 is low, not dangerously low, but low. I would get that up to 1500 preferably, 1400 at least. Higher Mag will help maintain your Alk and calcium better and I've never seen any coral or clam that didn't absolutely love higher Mag and really start opening up.

Minor changes really and it seems your system is doing well. I would watch your Alk swings as that's a bit of a swing. I don't understand the lower Calcium if you're dosing that much Kalk. You may very well be using a lot of calcium which is good too.

My phospate is unusually high for me. I was thinking the same thing and added some GFO to my system yesterday trying to bring them down. I have not seen any fish or snails deaths. Its odd that it has risen so much from just feedings alone. last time i checked was 3 weeks ago and it was .06. It has been so steady at .03-.08 i havent checked it as much.

Heabel7 · Jun 14, 2023

you guys make me want to buy a new phophate checker. Mine is the old style that i need to convert to PPb to PPM by multiplying.

(ppb# * 3.066) / 1000 = ppm PO4

Hurricane Aquatics · Jun 14, 2023

Heabel7 said:
you guys make me want to buy a new phophate checker. Mine is the old style that i need to convert to PPb to PPM by multiplying.

(ppb# * 3.066) / 1000 = ppm PO4

For accurate phosphate readings you can't do much better than the Hanna ULR tester.

Are you feeding frozen foods? If you're not rinsing that food and just dumping it on, that will raise phosphates very quickly. I feed Rod's foods, PE Mysis, and some other frozen and I know it adds phosphate fast.

I usually take a normal plastic drinking cup, fill halfway with tank water, and break pieces of froze from the frozen block and drop it in the cup. Then I stir it and pour it in. When I started noticing rapidly climbing phosphates, I started filling the cup with RODI water, letting the food thaw in the water, and then draining all the water. That is rinsing the food. I never had an issue after that.

If my phosphate needs to be raised, I'll start just putting the food in without rinsing.

Heabel7 · Jun 14, 2023

Hurricane Aquatics said:
For accurate phosphate readings you can't do much better than the Hanna ULR tester.

Are you feeding frozen foods? If you're not rinsing that food and just dumping it on, that will raise phosphates very quickly. I feed Rod's foods, PE Mysis, and some other frozen and I know it adds phosphate fast.

I usually take a normal plastic drinking cup, fill halfway with tank water, and break pieces of froze from the frozen block and drop it in the cup. Then I stir it and pour it in. When I started noticing rapidly climbing phosphates, I started filling the cup with RODI water, letting the food thaw in the water, and then draining all the water. That is rinsing the food. I never had an issue after that.

If my phosphate needs to be raised, I'll start just putting the food in without rinsing.

I do all frozen mysis. No rinsing, now that I have a phosphate issue, rinsing is on the menu.