How can I get more from my reef?

[Nano Gabe]

Hey guys so my tank is doing great. All I have to do is. Water change every week and levels (alkalinity,calcium, magnesium, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, ph) are perfect. ph might drop to 7.8 on occasion but I’ll just open up my sliding door and it’ll bring it back above 8. So I’m not dosing anything at the moment just feeding pellets, mysis and nori sheets daily. It’s a 45 rl jbj all in one with a radion xr15 with minimal rock. I have only 4 fish small yellow tang, 2 clowns and a six line wrasse. mostly soft coral (zoa’s) and LPS a couple sps(mostly montipora) but I’m shocked that I’m able to keep parameters optimal with just a water change (fritz rpm salt). So now the questions how is this possible why don’t I need to dose when I see every other reefer doing it? Next question I’ve been thinking about dosing a carbohydrate like reef energy or fuel. What is your guys opinion about this should I do it to enhance coral health, coloration and growth or just not mess with things? My only complaint is I wish my growth was fast but who doesn’t wish this haha! I added a quick picture of my tank so you can see the stock.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

The reason you keep up with the alk is because the usage is low and fears of not dosing are overblown.
You busted a myth.


Try some foods for fun, but if it ain’t broke ....

 

[Nano Gabe]

The reason you keep up with the alk is because the usage is low and fears of not dosing are overblown.
You busted a myth.


Try some foods for fun, but if it ain’t broke ....

So you would say my usage is low even with all the LPS I have?

 

[Biokabe]

LPS aren't huge users of calcium - it's SPS, more than anything else, that will consume calcium. LPS are slower growers and build more flesh than skeleton, so with slower growth and fewer high-demand corals, your regular water changes have been enough. Additionally, LPS get a good chunk of their nutritional needs from food.

The reasons you see many of us dosing are twofold:

1. We have many high-demand corals that can quickly strip the water of basic minerals, at least past the point where they can extract the minerals from the water.
2. We're trying to minimize water changes.

If you're using a good salt mix (which is most of them), freshly mixed saltwater is the best "dosing chemical" that you can add to your reef. It has almost everything that our critters need - salt, calcium, iodine, magnesium, trace elements. On the natural reef, our corals are basically bathed in a never-ending, continuous 100% daily water change, replenishing essential elements and carrying away wastes with perfect efficiency. That's what our corals are adapted to.

On the other hand, we keep boxes of static water whose nutrients are slowly but steadily depleted minute by minute. A water change is like a fresh tide rolling in with brand-new elements for our corals, but for most of us, changing the water frequently enough to maintain that ideal environment is either too expensive or time-consuming to want to do very often. Dosing fills in the gaps and allows us to maintain ideal environments for longer, especially when combined with some other form of nutrient export (like a productive refugium), but there's nothing inherently necessary about dosing if your regular water changes can maintain a good environment for your corals.

 

[ccombs]

I think your tank looks great. I would not look into adding more gear unless you have a specific problem you are trying to solve.

If you are having success with your method (looks like you are) keep it simple! If you do have an itch for gear or something, consider doing an auto water change system or something of that nature that reduces maintenance, but not what you are putting in your tank.

When your bioload increases, you add SPS, or you have some parameter issues, then start to look at other options.

Maybe you could target feed the corals for more coloration, etc. I don't think you need anything TOO fancy, though.

 

[ccombs]

I do appreciate your desire to take things to the next level, though. I just don't think gear is the answer here.

 

[Nano Gabe]

Nice thank you guys for your awesome responses! Very informative and I really appreciate your time! I agree %100 about the dosing I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something. As far as coloration I have been target feeding reef roids for a little while now but I know a couple people who use reef energy by Red Sea and others who use fuel. I was just wonder if they were worth my time?

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

I only had lps and softies in my tank for 5 months. Never dosed , params always good.
2 weeks after adding sps into my tank Alk and calcium dropped

 

[Nano Gabe]

I only had lps and softies in my tank for 5 months. Never dosed , params always good.
2 weeks after adding sps into my tank Alk and calcium dropped

I do have 2 Monti caps, digitada and lepto but they are small

 

[Dkeller_nc]

So if you're preparing your tank for keeping a lot more SPS, particularly acropora sp., there's a few things you might want to consider with respect to maintaining your water chemisty:

1) Acropora, as I'm sure you've read, can be quite challenging, and they are really sensitive to changes in water parameters, particularly alkalinity.
2) You'll definitely want to make absolutely sure that your measurement of specific gravity is accurate and repeatable, since the first step to keeping alkalinity and other chemistry parameters stable is the specific gravity. It's particularly important if you're using a manual "look through it" type of refractometer to be aware of the strong affect of temperature on the refractive index; you'll want to be sure to keep the drop of seawater to be measured in the refractometer for 30 seconds before reading. It's also important to calibrate a refractometer like that with an actual standard that's close to seawater - just zeroing it with RODI isn't enough.
3) Once you have your specific gravity measurements nailed, you'll want to mix up a batch of the salt you're using to 1.026 and test the alkalinity. You'll also want to test the alkalinity of your tank daily for a while so you can get a handle on how fast the alkalinity falls after a water change. For right now, it doesn't sound like much of a drop, but it wasn't clear how often you're testing. The purpose for testing your salt mix and your tank is to be sure that there's not a really large, instantaneous change in the tank's alkalinity because of a water change. That, actually, is another reason why a lot of us with SPS-heavy tanks dose; it ensures that the tank chemistry stays stable, and allows using new seawater for a water change that very closely matches the alkalinity in the tank.
4) Flow is important to acroporids, and not just the amount. Generally, you want at least 2 wavemakers in the tank that are either switched if they're the on/off AC variety, or alternately pulsed if they're the DC controllable kind. The purpose for the switching of the flow is to avoid "flow shadowing", where one side of the coral gets consistent flow, and the other side gets virtually nothing. Doing this need not be too expensive; while controllable DC pumps are nice because of their very wide adjustability and near dead silence, regular AC wavemakers like the Hydors can be switched to accomplish the same thing; they're just noisier because of the full-off to full-on nature of their operation.
5) Lighting is critically important. When VHO/Halides and then T5HO dominated the choices for SPS tanks, it was relatively rare for someone to "nuke" their acropora; most instances was someone that hadn't kept up with bulb changes for a year or more, then changed out all of their bulbs at once, which light-shocked their acropora and caused rapid tissue necrosis (RTN). In the new LED-dominated lighting era, someone nuking their corals is a lot more common. Unless someone purchased a really low-end LED fixture, the problem isn't enough light, it's way too much. Most of the commonly purchased brands like Ecotech's Radion, Aqua Illumination's Hydra, Orphek's Atlantik, and the chinese "black box" lighting fixtures like Reefbreeders have more then enough power to vaporize acropora, especially directly under the fixture. And while it's impossible to tell what the PAR is under an adjustable LED fixture without an actual PAR meter, something to keep in mind is that acropora is far more tolerant of low light levels than light that is too bright. It might take weeks to see that the coral's not growing well if the lighting is too dim, whereas light that is too bright can cause the death of the coral in one day (or less).

While you didn't specifically ask for the above, I'm interpreting that you'd like to keep SPS in general and acropora specifically in the future, and hoping those tips will be useful to you. None of the above points are "not applicable" to other stony corals, but LPS and montiporas are far, far less sensitive, so you have a lot more leeway. With respect to feeding with Reef Roids, Two Little Fishes Zooplan, and the like, there's two schools of thought. One is that the corals actively feed on the plankton substitutes and that provides them with a substantial boost of energy. The other is that feeding such foods largely simple boosts dissolved inorganic nutrients in the form of nitrate and phosphate, which the corals then absorb. If you're in this second school of thought, then it makes sense to dose inorganic nutrients in the form of sodium nitrate and/or sodium phosphate. A similar debate could be had about direct amino acid supplementation, with products such as Red Sea Energy A/B and TLF's Acropower.

You asked about faster growth; with LPS especially, folks like to keep a "dirtier" tank to promote growth, but even us SPS keepers try to stay away from a ULNS (ultra low nutrient system) by keeping nitrate at 5ppm - 10ppm, and phosphate above 50 ppb (some of us, including myself, target 200 ppb). A ULNS can be successful, but those tanks typically employ really heavy feeding to make up for little or no dissolved inorganic nutrients in the water.

 

[Nano Gabe]

So if you're preparing your tank for keeping a lot more SPS, particularly acropora sp., there's a few things you might want to consider with respect to maintaining your water chemisty:

1) Acropora, as I'm sure you've read, can be quite challenging, and they are really sensitive to changes in water parameters, particularly alkalinity.
2) You'll definitely want to make absolutely sure that your measurement of specific gravity is accurate and repeatable, since the first step to keeping alkalinity and other chemistry parameters stable is the specific gravity. It's particularly important if you're using a manual "look through it" type of refractometer to be aware of the strong affect of temperature on the refractive index; you'll want to be sure to keep the drop of seawater to be measured in the refractometer for 30 seconds before reading. It's also important to calibrate a refractometer like that with an actual standard that's close to seawater - just zeroing it with RODI isn't enough.
3) Once you have your specific gravity measurements nailed, you'll want to mix up a batch of the salt you're using to 1.026 and test the alkalinity. You'll also want to test the alkalinity of your tank daily for a while so you can get a handle on how fast the alkalinity falls after a water change. For right now, it doesn't sound like much of a drop, but it wasn't clear how often you're testing. The purpose for testing your salt mix and your tank is to be sure that there's not a really large, instantaneous change in the tank's alkalinity because of a water change. That, actually, is another reason why a lot of us with SPS-heavy tanks dose; it ensures that the tank chemistry stays stable, and allows using new seawater for a water change that very closely matches the alkalinity in the tank.
4) Flow is important to acroporids, and not just the amount. Generally, you want at least 2 wavemakers in the tank that are either switched if they're the on/off AC variety, or alternately pulsed if they're the DC controllable kind. The purpose for the switching of the flow is to avoid "flow shadowing", where one side of the coral gets consistent flow, and the other side gets virtually nothing. Doing this need not be too expensive; while controllable DC pumps are nice because of their very wide adjustability and near dead silence, regular AC wavemakers like the Hydors can be switched to accomplish the same thing; they're just noisier because of the full-off to full-on nature of their operation.
5) Lighting is critically important. When VHO/Halides and then T5HO dominated the choices for SPS tanks, it was relatively rare for someone to "nuke" their acropora; most instances was someone that hadn't kept up with bulb changes for a year or more, then changed out all of their bulbs at once, which light-shocked their acropora and caused rapid tissue necrosis (RTN). In the new LED-dominated lighting era, someone nuking their corals is a lot more common. Unless someone purchased a really low-end LED fixture, the problem isn't enough light, it's way too much. Most of the commonly purchased brands like Ecotech's Radion, Aqua Illumination's Hydra, Orphek's Atlantik, and the chinese "black box" lighting fixtures like Reefbreeders have more then enough power to vaporize acropora, especially directly under the fixture. And while it's impossible to tell what the PAR is under an adjustable LED fixture without an actual PAR meter, something to keep in mind is that acropora is far more tolerant of low light levels than light that is too bright. It might take weeks to see that the coral's not growing well if the lighting is too dim, whereas light that is too bright can cause the death of the coral in one day (or less).

While you didn't specifically ask for the above, I'm interpreting that you'd like to keep SPS in general and acropora specifically in the future, and hoping those tips will be useful to you. None of the above points are "not applicable" to other stony corals, but LPS and montiporas are far, far less sensitive, so you have a lot more leeway. With respect to feeding with Reef Roids, Two Little Fishes Zooplan, and the like, there's two schools of thought. One is that the corals actively feed on the plankton substitutes and that provides them with a substantial boost of energy. The other is that feeding such foods largely simple boosts dissolved inorganic nutrients in the form of nitrate and phosphate, which the corals then absorb. If you're in this second school of thought, then it makes sense to dose inorganic nutrients in the form of sodium nitrate and/or sodium phosphate. A similar debate could be had about direct amino acid supplementation, with products such as Red Sea Energy A/B and TLF's Acropower.

You asked about faster growth; with LPS especially, folks like to keep a "dirtier" tank to promote growth, but even us SPS keepers try to stay away from a ULNS (ultra low nutrient system) by keeping nitrate at 5ppm - 10ppm, and phosphate above 50 ppb (some of us, including myself, target 200 ppb). A ULNS can be successful, but those tanks typically employ really heavy feeding to make up for little or no dissolved inorganic nutrients in the water.

Nice lots of good information! One day I will switch over to sps but as for right now I’m enjoying to color and movement of the LPS. But I really appreciate all that information and a lot of this I can apply to my system! I get the whole dosing thing now. From what I understand my tank isn’t consuming that much alkalinity and calcium daily which is why I wasn’t seeing a reading with all the testing I’ve been doing. Usually my water after a water change is at 8.3 and 440. Then right before my water change it only drops to around 8 or 7.7 alkalinity and 440 calcium and this is over the course of 6 or 7 days. So from what I understand this drop is well tolerated by my LPS corals and weekly water changes should be more then sufficient for replacing those elements.Thanks guys! Btw I think I am going to try out reef energy I’ve been hearing very good things about it.