Is it inevitable that an SPS dominated reef tank will crash?

revhtree · May 5, 2020

SPS and acropora corals are so finicky! Or are they?

Some swear they will never again keep sps and acros while others don't see the difficulty in keeping them alive and thriving! But what about long term? We've heard the stories, seen the photos of an SPS reef that went south and went south quick. But is it inevitable that most of these SPS tanks will at some point experience a major crash? Let's talk about this today!

1. Is it inevitable that an sps (mostly acropora) dominated reef tank will crash?

2. Have you experienced an sps dominated reef tank crash and what is your experience long term with sps tanks?

Reef tank by @Aquaforest

DeniseAndy · May 5, 2020

I kept a beautiful sps tank for years when one day, just one day, the alk spiked. It took 4 months for the tank to fully crash and I did not help things by jumping in and fragging in the tank and messing with it.

I do not think all tanks will crash, but I cannot see how a tank will last much past its owners lifetime. Sometimes, people take them down. Change inhabitants. And any of these stresses can cause multiple deaths in the animals. It is just part of life. Even reefs get destroyed by storms and earthquake events and other natural events (not talking about mankind). They are destroyed and rebuilt over thousands of years.

I think any system can crash. I think SPS are just more sensative to our errors. As humans we are not reliable or as stable as nature.

DeniseAndy · May 5, 2020

Some pictures of the sps I kept.

Arthacker87 · May 5, 2020

I wonder if it wouldn't hurt to have a nice backup tank ready to throw corals in if it starts to turn. Then you can restart reef with instant coral. Probably not that easy lol

DeniseAndy · May 5, 2020

I would have loved to do that, but I did not have a back up 210g reef and my corals were huge and stuck on rocks that were huge. I think today, I would know how to handle it better than back then. This was almost 12 years ago. You learn a lot.

Drew Halliday · May 5, 2020

Please share what you learned.

DeniseAndy said:
I would have loved to do that, but I did not have a back up 210g reef and my corals were huge and stuck on rocks that were huge. I think today, I would know how to handle it better than back then. This was almost 12 years ago. You learn a lot.

pdxmonkeyboy · May 5, 2020

He learned not to keep as many SPS. LOL

Epic Aquaculture · May 5, 2020

In short, my answer is no. With proper husbandry, and using the technology available today, there is no reason that any tank SPS or not "has" to crash.

Knock on wood, but to date my only crash was do to Hurricane Irma making landfall on the island that I lived on in the Florida Keys in 2017 and losing power for 28 days...

ReefGeezer · May 5, 2020

I'm of the opinion that tanks capable of maintaining healthy and growing SPS colonies, particularly Acro's, are less likely to crash. It just takes a more stable system to maintain them, and stable systems are less likely to get far enough out of whack to crash. That said, it seems like individual colonies of Acro's can go south if you just look at the cross-ways. I try to never make direct eye contact and talk really nice to my sticks when feeding the fish... and I have a frag of every colony just in case one of them takes offence to my hairstyle or the color of shirt I'm wearing and decides to RTN on me.

JAMSOURY · May 5, 2020

how much more difficult is it when the sps are huge colonies and take off in growth all of a sudden? Or are things just very gradual?

jmevox · May 5, 2020

SawCJack00 said:
In short, my answer is no. With proper husbandry, and using the technology available today, there is no reason that any tank SPS or not "has" to crash.

Knock on wood, but to date my only crash was do to Hurricane Irma making landfall on the island that I lived on in the Florida Keys in 2017 and losing power for 28 days...

Hurricane Sandy took my tank out. I was only out of power for 3-4 days but I was unprepared. I learned a valuable lesson. I will never own a tank without a generator again

Da Ghost · May 5, 2020

We shall NEVER speak of such things.

although I am in the process of setting up another tank in the studio just in case. It will be lightly stocked but always available to quickly save precious corals if the need be.

yes, a redundant system in short. lol

KleineVampir · May 5, 2020

Even if it doesn't, it's too much trouble for me! You gotta have a brighter (and significantly more expensive) light and a dosing pump for your calc & alk. You don't need either of those things with softies. And softies are tougher and less fussy.

Bruce Burnett · May 5, 2020

Automatic dosing appears to crash a lot of tanks. Always had good luck with calcium reactor. Personally next tank will be manual dosing as I am downsizing and don't plan on a calcium reactor. Hurricanes are nature whole different thing. Unless you have an automatic generator not going to help if you lose power a thousand miles from home or a 10 hour flight.

McPuff · May 5, 2020

If given enough time Entropy will reign supreme, even for the most well-prepared of us.

DangerDave · May 5, 2020

I say yes because...any failure or issue in my reef can almost always be traced back to me.

Wampatom · May 5, 2020

An additional problem is the growth of the colonies. Mine would get so large the bottom was shaded. Eventually the tissue died. In my tank is was not a graceful die back. It showed a white band of necrosis that I assumed was filled with bacteria. It ofter spread to other coral. I had to frag the coral and get the dying parts out or I risked loosing all hard coral.

So regular pruning must be part of the maintenance.