Lighting Questions for the SPS Pros

[Dowtish]

Although I do think the hanna phos checker is one of the better test kits for us hobbyist, I did have an interesting email response with one of Hanna's techs. Here is his response when I got a strange reading on my checker. It read '1nu', and I asked what that means. He said that it had to do with checking very low levels.

What I am saying is at low levels the meters accuracy does come into play.

Your reading of .10 could be as low as .05 and as high as .15.

If you had even a lower reading for example .06 this may be why you got that INV error because it is such a low value and the meter could not see a difference between the zero and the sample.

 

[Dowtish]

Hey dowtish, did you mean iodine will bring out purple and blues? That's what I have read from a few articles on wetwebmedia. I have never considered adding potassium as a supplement. I will start doing more reading on that and see where I get. As for the bio pellets, what would be the difference between ecobak and other products? There was another thread where someone asked him but it went flat before he had a chance to respond. Hopefully
Mr. Warner sees this thread and chimes in.

Definitely look into the advantages of dosing Potassium.

Here is a quote from Jon Warner:
the bio-polymer contained in ecoBAK ULNS Pellets is produced with a low temperature water extraction method. Competing products are produced using a Solvent based extraction method. For this reason, the bio-polymer in ecoBAK is pending FDA approval while the competing brands main ingredient can't be certified by the FDA.

I find that this is the difference in quality from EcoBak compared to other brands.

 

[islander84]

Excellent information here guys! Very misleading title as stated before :). I have also been having similar issues...

Hanah reading 0.00. Check 3 times to ensure. First it was 0.03 then a few weeks later it was zeroed out...

I pulled GFO offline completely, havent noticed any changes and its been about 3 to 4 weeks.

Next i will remove mangroves from refugium, then chaeto.

I increased feeding, but may need to increase more. No algae issues but do have a small amount of cyano in small areas of my sand bed and refugium slighty hovering over areas of chaeto.... Will be tagging along! :)

 

[creefer]

Update...

Nitrates were checked using API. Not much detectable, if anything at all. PO4 still 0.00. When I did my WC today, I pulled the mixture of NPX / EcoBak pellets in favor of running all ecoBak. We shall see what time will tell....

 

[Dowtish]

If you pulled all the existing pellets, you are starting the clock over so to speak. You will have a 3 week period or so before the bacteria colonizes on the new ecobak. Given the fact your levels are already low, did you start with the full amount? I would think it would be pretty safe to do so.

Typed from my phone, because I have nothing better to do.

 

[creefer]

Yeah, I know. I didn't want to do it but it was mentioned in this thread that the mix of pellets may not be a good idea, so I pulled and started fresh. No, I did not start with the full amount. It still scares me a bit so I went with about 50% of the recommendation on the ecobak. It was kind of an eyeball thing though.....didn't have a digital scale to confirm.

 

[Dog Boy Dave]

Good thread but lots of info that may be conflicting. However, some great points being made. The best i think is dont change lights to chase color. All corals if given the correct conditions for the amount and intensity of light they are exposed to will develop good or great colors. Some lights however, T5 in particular seem to work better under lower nutrient tanks. I believe this is due to the lower intensity light. In my experience, corals can do well in a tank with much higher nutrients than commonly maintained. However in order to keep some corals from showing brown in the higher nutrient systems they need higher intensity lights to force them to develop the deep rich colors you can obtain in a high nutrient high light high flow tank. My corals seem to be able to handle more light under the higher nutrient load. If the light is intense enough none of my corals get brown no matter how high the nutrient level is maintained. Over the years, I have kept sps under flouresent, t5 and vho, metal halide and now leds. I got great color with all of them. However, the halides were the easiest to manage and they gave my the brightest most consistent colors. I just removed 2400 watts of halides and replaced them with 4 homemade LED panels about 120 days ago. Some of my pieces are developing the deepest colors that I have ever seen on them. Some have lost a little of their pop but none of them have stabilized enough to call it. Most look great and my electric bill droped almost 200 bucks a month so i can live with it either way. Great thread though, good to see people looking at water quality instead of lights to fix their color. After you learn to manage that you can get good colors no matter what kind of lights you use.

 

[LILBUDDHA]

Do you have a link to the article? I would like to read it, for sure.

Here ya go

LINK

 

[creefer]

Good thread but lots of info that may be conflicting. However, some great points being made. The best i think is dont change lights to chase color. All corals if given the correct conditions for the amount and intensity of light they are exposed to will develop good or great colors. Some lights however, T5 in particular seem to work better under lower nutrient tanks. I believe this is due to the lower intensity light. In my experience, corals can do well in a tank with much higher nutrients than commonly maintained. However in order to keep some corals from showing brown in the higher nutrient systems they need higher intensity lights to force them to develop the deep rich colors you can obtain in a high nutrient high light high flow tank. My corals seem to be able to handle more light under the higher nutrient load. If the light is intense enough none of my corals get brown no matter how high the nutrient level is maintained. Over the years, I have kept sps under flouresent, t5 and vho, metal halide and now leds. I got great color with all of them. However, the halides were the easiest to manage and they gave my the brightest most consistent colors. I just removed 2400 watts of halides and replaced them with 4 homemade LED panels about 120 days ago. Some of my pieces are developing the deepest colors that I have ever seen on them. Some have lost a little of their pop but none of them have stabilized enough to call it. Most look great and my electric bill droped almost 200 bucks a month so i can live with it either way. Great thread though, good to see people looking at water quality instead of lights to fix their color. After you learn to manage that you can get good colors no matter what kind of lights you use.

Great insight, Dave. Thanks for sharing. It's posts and threads like these that are part of why I really love R2R. I appreciate the insight.

Do you have a link to the article? I would like to read it, for sure.

Here ya go

LINK

Thanks, Lilbuddha.

 

[nhago]

Following along.. great thread!!

 

[tommyng79]

lighting..

I have a very similar set up to yours. 40 breeder, nac3.5, aquaticlife 6 bulb w ati, biopellet reactor, I run small amt of carbon, daily feedings, bare bottom. I've notoced that my 5sps all need to be up near the light to achieve deep coloration. I think the biggest factor for me is the weekly water changes and keeping all sps closest to bulbs bc I feel the aquaticlife is not as good as ati, as far as ouput goes. My parameters run in line as well. I keep my alk at 9 tho. Check me out on YouTube under cheffintom.

 

[creefer]

I'll check you out on youtube.

I'm surprised at what you say about your lighting. I've had to raise my fixture because I cooked a few things early on. I'm interested to see what happens when I get the ATI next week.

 

[Giancarlo]

Well, I've had my phosban reactor offline for about a week now. I've seen an increase of algae on the glass, but aside from that nothing more as far as algae goes. I've noticed my digitata's polyp extension a bit better... Could be just my eyes though. As for colour nothing different, it is still a little early. I plan on going about a month without it then adding a small amount of gfo, about an inch thick in the reactor. I will then start to dose potassium, I've read nothing but good things. I want to make single changes to see where it goes, rather then doing it all at once, and not knowing what works what doesn't.

 

[creefer]

I'm interested to hear of your progress, Giancarlo. I too have taken GFO off line. It's been about 3 weeks since I took it off line and I have noticed similar affects as you. I have also been feeding more heavily but I started that before taking GFO off line. I did note that there was a little HA that showed up in one location however that was quickly taken care of by the CUC. At this point, I have no intention of putting the GFO back on line. I want to wait and see how the tank responds to the ecoback pellets once colonized, which I assume I'll start to see in a week or 2. Testing is still showing 0.00 on hanna for PO4, which is strange to me. I may have to order new reagent to be sure that there's some consistency with the checker, but right now it's not picking up anything. I have to believe that there's some PO4 in the system given the additional algae on the glass as you have noted.

I have also stopped dosing virtually everything. The only thing that's being added is zeovit coral snow 1-2 times weekly. Like you, I want to give it some time and monitor water params for a while. I'm also looking into potassium dosing but again, I have no plans to do so in the immediate future.

Please keep posting your results.

 

[Giancarlo]

Hey creefer, ill keep posting my updates, our results will be a huge help for the both of us. Phosphates - hanna checker after one week is still 0.00 as well. I have about 120 gallons of water, and only 5 fish. I will be adding another 2 fish from my other tank, and another fish at around the end of November (after q/t). Get my bio-load up there, so the corals have something to eat.

 

[creefer]

Thanks, Giancarlo. I completely agree.

I have only 55 gallons of water in my system with 6 fish. I'll post more when I get back in town. Headed out this morning.

 

[kevin32]

I'm using GFO at the moment, what can too much GFO do to the SPS? Bleach, brown, ...??

 

[islander84]

Strip your water too clean.... causing bleaching...burnt acros

 

[kevin32]

Ohh... I see. Thanks for the help

 

[creefer]

Well.....just to bump this thread up a bit, things in my tank are not well. I'm not sure what the heck is going on but I have lost one acro and have another that's starting to stn. It was one that was doing exceptionally well also, so I'm a bit confused. I did have a couple of alk and pH swings as a result of a kalk reactor not operating properly. That problem has since been solved but I think part of the issues I've had are a result of the inconsistency caused by the kalk reactor problem. Tomorrow night I'm going to be doing a bit of a tank overhaul and sump cleaning that's a bit overdue. I hope it helps with the issues I've been having....well...that and the fix to the kalk reactor.

Wish me luck.