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

AcanthurusRex

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"I’m sure the guts of this thing isn’t quality like ATI Or giesmann"
They use the same ballast as ATI. No active cooling is the main difference.
 
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Ryan Mansa

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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.
I will keep all this in mind if we visit the chem route
 

drawman

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Sodium bisulfate is what I use.
20200528_063704.jpg
+1 here it's a little safer and easier to store than muriatic acid IMO. As others have said aerate for 24hrs to get pH back up.
 

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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

Ah that makes more sense. I assumed it was out of laziness, but that doesn't align with how much effort you put into everything else. I'm looking through your pictures again, but I don't see any mounted without the stems. Do you mind pointing it out? I just want to see how much they've encrusted. And like I mentioned earlier, I think the tendency to encrust vs branch is species dependent to some degree. I added a hawkins echinata, walt disney, and tierra del fuego around the same time/location. The echinata immediately began to branch, but the other two encrusted for a few months before branching. I think I said 2-3" diameter before, its probably closer to 2". Hard to eyeball it with the irregularities of the rock.

Btw I'm not saying that flow and light have nothing to do with it. I know excessive flow can increase the tendency to encrust, but that doesn't explain why they all encrust to the edge of the plug and then just stop. If they were mounted directly to the rock, I can't imagine they'd just stop encrusting all of a sudden like that. They would likely continue encrusting until reaching a certain size. Maybe lowering the flow enough could decrease that critical size before branching, but either way that's going to be a mechanical issue when trying to frag.
 
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Ryan Mansa

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+1 here it's a little safer and easier to store than muriatic acid IMO. As others have said aerate for 24hrs to get pH back up.
I will use this if and when it’s time thank you very much
 
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Ryan Mansa

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Ah that makes more sense. I assumed it was out of laziness, but that doesn't align with how much effort you put into everything else. I'm looking through your pictures again, but I don't see any mounted without the stems. Do you mind pointing it out? I just want to see how much they've encrusted. And like I mentioned earlier, I think the tendency to encrust vs branch is species dependent to some degree. I added a hawkins echinata, walt disney, and tierra del fuego around the same time/location. The echinata immediately began to branch, but the other two encrusted for a few months before branching. I think I said 2-3" diameter before, its probably closer to 2". Hard to eyeball it with the irregularities of the rock.

Btw I'm not saying that flow and light have nothing to do with it. I know excessive flow can increase the tendency to encrust, but that doesn't explain why they all encrust to the edge of the plug and then just stop. If they were mounted directly to the rock, I can't imagine they'd just stop encrusting all of a sudden like that. They would likely continue encrusting until reaching a certain size. Maybe lowering the flow enough could decrease that critical size before branching, but either way that's going to be a mechanical issue when trying to frag.
6 or 7 of them on the upper right side of the scape there are all de stemmed and have based out a lot but once again that WAS a high par high flow area until I made the changes
 

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"I’m sure the guts of this thing isn’t quality like ATI Or giesmann"
They use the same ballast as ATI. No active cooling is the main difference.
Yes the active cooling is important since ballast are in the fixture so not only is bulb life and spectrum improved but i would expect ballast life to be better.
 

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6 or 7 of them on the upper right side of the scape there are all de stemmed and have based out a lot but once again that WAS a high par high flow area until I made the changes

I can't really see how much they've based from the angle in the pic, but are they continuing to encrust? Or did they just stop like the others? And it sort of looks like those specific frags are branching the most.
 

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I personally believe OP's tank is very close to becoming spectacular, that he is only one small change away from real success. I believe this because I have been there, in his shoes with acros that excrusted forever, looked fine, but just weren't growing like I would like. I made one change (increased phosphate from .02-.03 up to .12 or so) and the change in the corals and growth rate is astounding. Corals that did nothing but encrust to 3-4" diameter over the course of 1-2 years are now shooting up branches like it's 1999. I think when OP finds what he is looking for he will have the same change.

I also find it somewhat hard to believe that if a coral can't really encrust anymore due to shading in that area, that it will just stop growing. I could absolutely be wrong but it seems to me that would be the point it would start growing upwards...?
 
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6 or 7 of them on the upper right side of the scape there are all de stemmed and have based out a lot but once again that WAS a high par high flow area until I made the changes
I also didn’t think it was going to be beyond mission critical that the Coral couldn’t go down the stem i mean it’s not like it’s going down
I can't really see how much they've based from the angle in the pic, but are they continuing to encrust? Or did they just stop like the others? And it sort of looks like those specific frags are branching the most.
based 2 plus inches all around then just hit a wall and stop doing anything
 

stephj03

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Maybe I missed this but what exactly is your alk consumption right now?

In ml of alk added daily?
In dKH used daily?
 
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Ryan Mansa

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I personally believe OP's tank is very close to becoming spectacular, that he is only one small change away from real success. I believe this because I have been there, in his shoes with acros that excrusted forever, looked fine, but just weren't growing like I would like. I made one change (increased phosphate from .02-.03 up to .12 or so) and the change in the corals and growth rate is astounding. Corals that did nothing but encrust to 3-4" diameter over the course of 1-2 years are now shooting up branches like it's 1999. I think when OP finds what he is looking for he will have the same change.

I also find it somewhat hard to believe that if a coral can't really encrust anymore due to shading in that area, that it will just stop growing. I could absolutely be wrong but it seems to me that would be the point it would start growing upwards...?
I agree I didn’t think it would care if anything it would go up faster I’m not a scientist and I would be gutted to find out this is a case because I worked 2 years on trying to be different and I failed especially the way I treated this setup I went all in care and equipment wise , and the fact I would have to basically start over with a new tank and spread these corals out on a new scape , that’s just not where my mind needs to be right now , it would cost thousands to fix this , I would need a Red Sea reefer 525 xl or bigger to space out the ammount of acros I have
 
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Maybe I missed this but what exactly is your alk consumption right now?

In ml of alk added daily?
In dKH used daily?
60ml daily bionic 2 part spread out alk can be checked 3 times a day and it’s never not 8.6 dkh give or take .1
 

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Gradually increase feedings. Since the tank is immaculate, it doesn't look like you have to worry about nutrients being too high.
 

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I personally believe OP's tank is very close to becoming spectacular, that he is only one small change away from real success. I believe this because I have been there, in his shoes with acros that excrusted forever, looked fine, but just weren't growing like I would like. I made one change (increased phosphate from .02-.03 up to .12 or so) and the change in the corals and growth rate is astounding. Corals that did nothing but encrust to 3-4" diameter over the course of 1-2 years are now shooting up branches like it's 1999. I think when OP finds what he is looking for he will have the same change.

I also find it somewhat hard to believe that if a coral can't really encrust anymore due to shading in that area, that it will just stop growing. I could absolutely be wrong but it seems to me that would be the point it would start growing upwards...?

Is it possible that they just reached the right size based on your flow, light, etc around the same time your phosphates increased? 3-4" is pretty big.
 

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I agree I didn’t think it would care if anything it would go up faster I’m not a scientist and I would be gutted to find out this is a case because I worked 2 years on trying to be different and I failed especially the way I treated this setup I went all in care and equipment wise , and the fact I would have to basically start over with a new tank and spread these corals out on a new scape , that’s just not where my mind needs to be right now , it would cost thousands to fix this , I would need a Red Sea reefer 525 xl or bigger to space out the ammount of acros I have

Not really, you could just snip the stem and mount them to a larger frag plug. They'd still be contained on their own plugs but have more room to base.
 
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Gradually increase feedings. Since the tank is immaculate, it doesn't look like you have to worry about nutrients being too high.
As in feed the fish or coral or both if so please go back a few pages and look at the food I have on hand and tell me what you think
 

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They’re not crazy high numbers at all, but this could be a situation where an alk of 7.8 causes an explosion of growth whereas 8.5 does not. There is no “set” alk or par number that will universally grow coral quickly. As we know, many things in this hobby functions within a range. That doesn’t mean any number within that range is the same. It’s a sliding scale with many other factors impacting it. For example, I can think of several instances where a doser failed on a reefer’s tank and they don’t notice it for a week because their corals were suddenly doing awesome and they never thought to check until things slowed back down again as alk got too low. In these instances, 7 or even 6.8 dkh in a VERY odd case that produced better growth versus a more typical 8 dkh.

I think a lot of this is because we tend to treat specific parameters as discrete, when they're really not. Some nutrients affect the uptake of others. Some biological processes work differently and need different inputs/produce different outputs in different chemical mixes. We've definitely seen relationships between alkalinity and nutrient levels. I'm sure there are tons of others.
 

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