General sps advice please

Dburr1014 · Nov 9, 2023

I'm with vetteguy on this one.
Try doing 1 or 2% daily water changes for a couple weeks. If you can't, then do 10% every week for a month.
While you do the wc, stop dosing all the snake oil stuff.
You probably don't need any of it. Bacto balance is carbon dosing. Carbon dosing lowers your po4/no3.
Just feed the tank and do water changes and see if there is a difference.

Also, ICP tests are not all equal. Lots of them may give you bad results. Just a heads up to do your homework. Personally, I have never done one after reading up on them.

Glad you have your lights dialed in. Do you know the color temperature? It looks very blue. Lots of sps are in shallow water. Just sayin'.

Unstoppable algae! · Nov 10, 2023

Sunreefer said:
Yeah, I would dose neophos and neonitro to keep your n&p if needed. And I would get rid all that other stuff... everything except n&p, fish poop and water changes to flush out whatever bad bacteria you may have in there. You could add biodigest (the bomb) to reboot the good bacteria in your tank.

You can always go back to all that stuff you were adding to the tank once things stablize. To identify what works for you. No carbon dosing either get a triton n-doc icp to see that side before adding.

Flow, lighting, water change and religious testing of water (till things stablize) making sure numbers are stable.

Abe - coral euphoria. Watched his videos like 10-15 times literally and whenever I start to veer off and want to play mad scientist.

Moonshiners method also works. They have a fb group you can join. Just be aware there are some pompous arrogant advanced reefers there, but a few of them are super nice and helpful.

Just some humble suggestions ~~~

Abe is 1 if my favorite channels to watch! His tanks are phenomenal! Thanks for your advice, I have only been feeding & watching all & p04 closely (will test other parameters over weekend)

Unstoppable algae! · Nov 10, 2023

Dburr1014 said:
I'm with vetteguy on this one.
Try doing 1 or 2% daily water changes for a couple weeks. If you can't, then do 10% every week for a month.
While you do the wc, stop dosing all the snake oil stuff.
You probably don't need any of it. Bacto balance is carbon dosing. Carbon dosing lowers your po4/no3.
Just feed the tank and do water changes and see if there is a difference.

Also, ICP tests are not all equal. Lots of them may give you bad results. Just a heads up to do your homework. Personally, I have never done one after reading up on them.

Glad you have your lights dialed in. Do you know the color temperature? It looks very blue. Lots of sps are in shallow water. Just sayin'.

Yes, thank you for your advice! I have stopped with the foods & additives.
I am very religious about weekly water changes. Do you guys think daily water changes are adding trace elements the corals like or it’s less of a swing in all parameters?

I have kind of a WWC light schedule. In the morning for 1st 5 hours I have heavy whites & low blues. Blues max around 30% (whites are less heavy now, I think they ramp to 25% and fall back down over 5 hours) then I run heavier blue spectrum. I have to check as I lowered but I think uv blue royal violet may hit 50%. I dos run2 orphek bars blue all day 11 hr.

A few high up corals seem pleased about the reduced lights.

Dburr1014 · Nov 10, 2023

Unstoppable algae! said:
Yes, thank you for your advice! I have stopped with the foods & additives.
I am very religious about weekly water changes. Do you guys think daily water changes are adding trace elements the corals like or it’s less of a swing in all parameters?

I have kind of a WWC light schedule. In the morning for 1st 5 hours I have heavy whites & low blues. Blues max around 30% (whites are less heavy now, I think they ramp to 25% and fall back down over 5 hours) then I run heavier blue spectrum. I have to check as I lowered but I think uv blue royal violet may hit 50%. I dos run2 orphek bars blue all day 11 hr.

A few high up corals seem pleased about the reduced lights.

Salts sold today have pretty much everything your tank needs.
Doing the water changes keeps everything from going to zero. It may not keep every trace in balance because things are used in different ratios but it will keep them going to zero as long as they are preformed.

Greego · Nov 10, 2023

It is tempting to constantly fiddle with things. We’ve all been there. There is also the temptation to add a lot of stuff to the soup/tank when you first are trying to gain SPS growth success.

I would resist the temptation to do these things.

I would send out an ICP test probably twice that is about 3 months spaced apart just to get a general idea of what your tank does at baseline without adding a lot of snake oil type of products.

After you get those values, just do your regular water changes and other maintenance from there on. Do not add stuff if your ICP values are already in the acceptable range and do not mess with your light schedule again. Just allow the tank to run. One day you will see how everything eventually stabilizes and coral will grow and fish will thrive.