Hello,
Back in mid February I got a nice frag from @BoomCorals and after a few weeks in QT under 250W MH it was looking good and had even grown a bit. The light was high above the surface and the frags were about 16" deep.
In the DT for about 6 weeks now and the past couple of weeks I've been worried about fading color.
My only suspicions are around lighting and Nitrates but I'm very open to ideas!
Prior to ordering the GARF and some other SPS I'd managed to get my nutrients into a nice sweet spot:
NO3: 1.5 (Red Sea)
PO4: 0.01 (Hanna ULR)
But that was after working at getting them up from zero.
In March I started seeing Nitrates up to 16 using the Red Sea high range testing. PO4 stayed reasonable at 0.03.
Dosing NOPOX for a week got Nitrates back down to about 8. No change to the fading problem.
Lighting is LED supplemented with T5, 12" above the water:
R420R 120W LED, schedule:
36" LET T5 Retro kit, 2 x ATI Coral Plus bulbs:
On 10:00 to 16:00
GARF is about 7" under the surface.
So should I work harder at reducing NO3? Increase/Decrease light intensity? Other?
Back in mid February I got a nice frag from @BoomCorals and after a few weeks in QT under 250W MH it was looking good and had even grown a bit. The light was high above the surface and the frags were about 16" deep.
In the DT for about 6 weeks now and the past couple of weeks I've been worried about fading color.
My only suspicions are around lighting and Nitrates but I'm very open to ideas!
Prior to ordering the GARF and some other SPS I'd managed to get my nutrients into a nice sweet spot:
NO3: 1.5 (Red Sea)
PO4: 0.01 (Hanna ULR)
But that was after working at getting them up from zero.
In March I started seeing Nitrates up to 16 using the Red Sea high range testing. PO4 stayed reasonable at 0.03.
Dosing NOPOX for a week got Nitrates back down to about 8. No change to the fading problem.
Lighting is LED supplemented with T5, 12" above the water:
R420R 120W LED, schedule:
36" LET T5 Retro kit, 2 x ATI Coral Plus bulbs:
On 10:00 to 16:00
GARF is about 7" under the surface.
So should I work harder at reducing NO3? Increase/Decrease light intensity? Other?