Feel like quitting 2 years almost no growth please help sps dominate

[Crustaceon]

Goos advice! I experienced the exact same thing going from 8.5 to 7-7.3 where my tank sits now.

I’ve always tried to target 8.1dkh, but gave up on that while trying to get arm media to melt at a reasonable level. The tank is running dead-nails at 7dkh and several acro frags that haven’t done anything aside from slowly encrust have started to grow vertical shoots. I’ve seen many frags that needed to encrust to the size of a golfball before going vertical. All of mine started doing it within the last two weeks of running lower alk and some have only encrusted to the size of a quarter before taking off. These frags were all added at different times, some of them months apart. While I was getting good encrusting and coloration, I honestly believe I was stressing my corals to some degree. Gotta find the sweet spot. On a side note, I now have an absolute infestation of pineapple sponges in my sump. It’s a crazy thought but maybe that action somehow sped up the maturation of this system.

 

[X-37B]

I’ve always tried to target 8.1dkh, but gave up on that while trying to get arm media to melt at a reasonable level. The tank is running dead-nails at 7dkh and several acro frags that haven’t done anything aside from slowly encrust have started to grow vertical shoots. I’ve seen many frags that needed to encrust to the size of a golfball before going vertical. All of mine started doing it within the last two weeks of running lower alk and some have only encrusted to the size of a quarter before taking off. These frags were all added at different times, some of them months apart. While I was getting good encrusting and coloration, I honestly believe I was stressing my corals to some degree. Gotta find the sweet spot. On a side note, I now have an absolute infestation of pineapple sponges in my sump. It’s a crazy thought but maybe that action somehow sped up the maturation of this system.

Maybe their is a reason the ocean runs 7 dkh lol.

 

[Potatohead]

People are so afraid of lower dkh for some reason. There are a ton of acro tanks (especially in Europe) running in the 6's it is almost the norm. I recall a Reef builders video where Jake tested his alk one day and his tank was looking awesome and it was like 4.6 or something and he said it had been like that for ages.

 

[Crustaceon]

Maybe their is a reason the ocean runs 7 dkh lol.

Now that’s a good point. I think the “infinite nutrient” thing sets the ocean apart and is a prime reason why we tend to do better with 5ppm nitrates and detectable phosphates. I’m not sure where in the ocean we’d find 9dkh. We seem to make it work though by changing a lot of other things to go along with it and probably manage to strike a balance our corals agree with.

 

[Ryan Mansa]

Guys this is so cool and I just want to say I hope other people aren’t holding back from posting stuff here I don’t care about side tracking it’s more experiences and data and stuff so this is a message to everyone that I hope more join it’s totally cool with me , some things I thought about as I woke up this am , from what I read it seemed like a lot of people where running mid 8s dkh so I did when I started my reefing journey , also why does the coral lab run 7 hours full rip ? , isn’t that a proven test with real data backing up , okay yes was the 9 too long it was , but now I’m on 7 , once again there’s tanks out there on 16 hours btw most of that is probably blue but still it’s 16 hours I will stay with the 7 I don’t feel like that’s too long , also my percentages are only 24 percent on the whites and reds and greens , I’ve seen people run 30-40-50 but now I’m thinking they only did that for probably 4-5 hours , there’s many ways to skin a cat at the end of the day , I don’t think 10 hours on blue plus T5 is mind blowing either they are just 39 watt tubes and let’s be real it’s a aquatic life fixture no disrespect but I’m sure the guts of this thing isn’t quality like ATI Or giesmann and it’s not over driven or modded has no fans or anything ..... we could be looking at chems like the DKH , one other thing I feel embarrassed to say this but I am American and I went to Europeans and Australians first on Instagram and asked them simply because they have some of the best aquariums in the world and most of them had NSW levels but it never clicked because that wasn’t the “American way “ and everything that I saw in America was alk 8’s cal 450 mag 1400 no3 15-20 po4 .05-.10 these are why these are my targets .... maybe I should have listened to the guys across the pond ? And others in America as well

 

[X-37B]

Now that’s a good point. I think the “infinite nutrient” thing sets the ocean apart and is a prime reason why we tend to do better with 5ppm nitrates and detectable phosphates. I’m not sure where in the ocean we’d find 9dkh. We seem to make it work though by changing a lot of other things to go along with it and probably manage to strike a balance our corals agree with.

Here is a page from Albert Thiel's reef book I have from the late 80's.
Check out the dkh level.
He had some pretty cool tanks for the day.

 

[Ryan Mansa]

Here is a page from Albert Thiel's reef book I have from the late 80's.
Check out the dkh level.
He had some pretty cool tanks for the day.

Interesting, it possibly could be the alk all along , a lot of people in this thread are on the alk train ... gets me wondering was my flow and lighting not wrong now , well the unfortunate news is I’m on a path for 60 days now , and we will have to revisit the chems in 2 months time , I tried to please the masses , there where two different paths here literally a 50/50 split , I think 3 changes would have been too many , so as it stands the flow has been reduced and 1 hour has been removed from daylight spectrum , I will not be removing any blues or uvs I will fight everyone tooth and nail that some blues are literally not doing anything , like I said I have par”d this tank and almost cried on how weak the xr15s are , I will re rent the meter to prove the xr15s are weak and wish I had xr30s and yes I would have 2 of them up there if i could have it my way but I’m not spending 1700 after I already spent 1300

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Interesting, it possibly could be the alk all along , a lot of people in this thread are on the alk train ... gets me wondering was my flow and lighting not wrong now , well the unfortunate news is I’m on a path for 60 days now , and we will have to revisit the chems in 2 months time , I tried to please the masses , there where two different paths here literally a 50/50 split , I think 3 changes would have been too many , so as it stands the flow has been reduced and 1 hour has been removed from daylight spectrum , I will not be removing any blues or uvs I will fight everyone tooth and nail that some blues are literally not doing anything , like I said I have par”d this tank and almost cried on how weak the xr15s are , I will re rent the meter to prove the xr15s are weak and wish I had xr30s and yes I would have 2 of them up there if i could have it my way but I’m not spending 1700 after I already spent 1300

Bro......don’t let you alk swing more than 0.0001 dKh/72 hours

 

[Ryan Mansa]

So I thought of something , my IO always mixes high dkh what is the product called ( so I can buy this in advanced ) to drop my alk down for water changes , because one day if I run lower alk I need to get the base number of 10 dkh to let’s say the 7.5 I will run it at ? ( I won’t be changing from IO)

 

[Ryan Mansa]

Bro......don’t let you alk swing more than 0.0001 dKh/72 hours

I know haha I’m with you i agree that it’s not that critical as well , but if I check my tank at 5am lunch time and 6 pm it’s always 8.4-8.6

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

So I thought of something , my IO always mixes high dkh what is the product called ( so I can buy this in advanced ) to drop my alk down for water changes , because one day if I run lower alk I need to get the base number of 10 dkh to let’s say the 7.5 I will run it at ? ( I won’t be changing from IO)

I think ppl use muriatic acid. No idea on the dosage

 

[X-37B]

So I thought of something , my IO always mixes high dkh what is the product called ( so I can buy this in advanced ) to drop my alk down for water changes , because one day if I run lower alk I need to get the base number of 10 dkh to let’s say the 7.5 I will run it at ? ( I won’t be changing from IO)

Sodium bisulfate is what I use.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

So I thought of something , my IO always mixes high dkh what is the product called ( so I can buy this in advanced ) to drop my alk down for water changes , because one day if I run lower alk I need to get the base number of 10 dkh to let’s say the 7.5 I will run it at ? ( I won’t be changing from IO)

Tropic marin pro mixes to 7.5
Red Sea blue bucket mixes to about 8

 

[Tuffloud1]

So I thought of something , my IO always mixes high dkh what is the product called ( so I can buy this in advanced ) to drop my alk down for water changes , because one day if I run lower alk I need to get the base number of 10 dkh to let’s say the 7.5 I will run it at ? ( I won’t be changing from IO)

Every time I mix a new 55 gallon batch of IO, I add precisely 15 ml of muriatic acid which brings the DKH to 8-8.2. I mix salinity to 1.026.

 

[Ryan Mansa]

Sodium bisulfate is what I use.

Okay I will buy this for the future if I need it

 

[X-37B]

Here is a link. Make sure you run a powerhead and airstone to drive off co2 and keep ph up.

Okay I will buy this for the future if I need it

I would post a like but have to leave for work.
How to use and add can be found here with a search. Simple and easy to use.

 

[Ryan Mansa]

Here is a link. Make sure you run a powerhead and airstone to drive off co2 and keep ph up.

I would post a like but have to leave for work.
How to use and add can be found here with a search. Simple and easy to use.

No worries we will go over this in time if we are going the chem mod route thanks everyone as well I love all this you guys are digging deep for me appreciated beyond belief

 

[Stoney]

I just cant help myself, going to try one more time to make my case. Maybe you guys are right that lower alk, par, etc would result in better growth, but theres so many examples of excellent growth at higher levels, the largest of which being WWC. They cant all just be exceptions. OP has pretty moderate parameters compared to some of them. Worst case scenario, it slows his growth a little bit, but not by this much.

I think it's a mistake to ignore the fact that his frags are almost all completely encrusted, but not a single one has grown down past the stem. As far as I'm aware, it's undisputed that acros dont like to encrust in the dark. Not to mention the fact that if this growth issue is ever resolved, anything larger than a mini colony would be pretty precarious. Can you imagine trying to frag something without snapping that joint? All I'm proposing is remounting frags in the same spot with the stem removed. Or maybe just wrap some epoxy around that stem to give them a nice ramp to encrust down and form a solid base. This is easily the most conservative option and something that he'll probably have to do at some point anyways. Doesn't it make sense to start with the lowest risk before completely changing all of his parameters? It wouldnt even interfere with the other tests if he only remounted a frag or two.

 

[Ryan Mansa]

I just cant help myself, going to try one more time to make my case. Maybe you guys are right that lower alk, par, etc would result in better growth, but theres so many examples of excellent growth at higher levels, the largest of which being WWC. They cant all just be exceptions. OP has pretty moderate parameters compared to some of them. Worst case scenario, it slows his growth a little bit, but not by this much.

I think it's a mistake to ignore the fact that his frags are almost all completely encrusted, but not a single one has grown down past the stem. As far as I'm aware, it's undisputed that acros dont like to encrust in the dark. Not to mention the fact that if this growth issue is ever resolved, anything larger than a mini colony would be pretty precarious. Can you imagine trying to frag something without snapping that joint? All I'm proposing is remounting frags in the same spot with the stem removed. Or maybe just wrap some epoxy around that stem to give them a nice ramp to encrust down and form a solid base. This is easily the most conservative option and something that he'll probably have to do at some point anyways. Doesn't it make sense to start with the lowest risk before completely changing all of his parameters? It wouldnt even interfere with the other tests if he only remounted a frag or two.

Interesting point but I have many acros de stemmed and they haven’t grown either , I don’t know why I’m not getting branching I just get basing , I do get it they do base ,seems excessive I see many tanks they don’t base they just start going up instantly , the whole reason I kept the stems on was my vision of packing them in tightly and having them all grow together with different colors and patterns and types I would reach in there and snip one if there was a dire need to cuz one was too close , none of them have made contact yet , and I’ll go back to my statement of the frag tanks with 100s next to each other and they grow upwards and being so close doesn’t seem to bother anyone , I didn’t just decide to set my tank up to go against anyone , I did this because I didn’t think it was going to propose a issue , maybe I got proved wrong if the case , I’ll just set up a new tank and make it look cookie cutter like the rest of them , maybe trying a “wild tight packed scape “ isn’t do able , at least with 40 different types , maybe this would have worked with a 1 or 2 type acro but maybe I failed

 

[jda]

I use Muriatic acid to lower dKh in salt mix. Gallons * desired dKh drop * .123 is the number of MLs of Muriatic Acid to use. You have to aerate the mix another day or to to drive off all of the excess co2 and get the pH back up.

Here is my IO formula - 44g brute filled to the top with COLD RO water, 50g bag of IO, 2 tbsp of dowflake. Mix. Add in heater and 20mls of Muriatic. Mix for another few days. I do not even test this anymore, but it is something like 35ppt, 425 and 7.1.

I would have to doctor up any salt that I used, so why spend more when IO is as consistent as it gets.