Hi fellow reefers,
I started a reef tank 1.5 years ago, and now that I understand a little better how everything work, I would like some opinions from people knowing a lot more than me, about what I am doing wrong.
My main concern is the lack of growth of most corals I have and the death of some corals I bought. I test several parameters on a weekly basis (described later in the post) and they have been stable after few hiccups in the first 6 months. I have had a green favite corals that bleached couple times at different locations in the tank, recovered every time until it did not anymore. As well as a green birdsnest that bleached and did not recover. A BTA that thrived for 8-9 months, split in two, one of them kept shrinking until it died, the other is still alive but a lot smaller.
However, I have a Favia plug that has been doing great and doubled in size, two encrusting montipora that are growing OK and doubled in size as well, a blasomussa that has 1 head and is getting bigger slowly.
As some of you might seen on the picture, I struggle to keep the tank completely clean as I have purple patches on my rocks and a little on the sand that I believe is cyano, and hair algae started to spread more than before lately.
Some seem to do OK while other died. And even the ones that are fine don't seem to grow so much, which is why I am wondering if I am not missing something important and I am asking for help today.
As far as my setup, this is what I have:
It's a 45 gallon tall tank, with a 10 gallon sump (that includes a socket filter, a protein skimmer SCA-301, a chaeto that barely grows, a heater @78F and bioballs).
My return pump is a 1050 gph that I run at 75% speed (Orlushy DC-4000). I also have 1 wavemaker- a Hyger 1600 gph that I run sin wave and a cheap powerhead 480gph.
My lights are a pack of Orbit Marine IC-Pro 24-36" that runs 2hrs on Sunrise settings (76% blue, 0% white, 30% red and 9% green), 5:30 hrs on Daylight (90%B, 30%W, 15%R, 15%G), and back to Sunset (same settings as sunrise) for 2hrs.
I have 9 small fish (chromis, clowns, gobby, cardinal) and a little clean up crew ( 5 Astrea snails, 5 Cerith snails, 1 peppermint shrimp and 1 tiger pistol shrimp)
As you can seem only few corals that are still mostly on the plugs.
My parameters:
Specific gravity - 1.025
Amonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 6ppm
Calcium - 400
Magnesium - 1350
Phosphate - varies between 0.05 to 0.15 from one month to another, usually because I feed more or less or the protein skimmer gives me trouble
alkalinity - 9.3 dKH
I do water changes of 5 Gallons every 1/1.5 week and only dose Red Sea foundation B for alkalinity with a little jebao dosing pump.
I think I went through pretty much everything, I hope someone here will enjoy spending some time reading this and I would be glad to discuss what I might be missing!
I started a reef tank 1.5 years ago, and now that I understand a little better how everything work, I would like some opinions from people knowing a lot more than me, about what I am doing wrong.
My main concern is the lack of growth of most corals I have and the death of some corals I bought. I test several parameters on a weekly basis (described later in the post) and they have been stable after few hiccups in the first 6 months. I have had a green favite corals that bleached couple times at different locations in the tank, recovered every time until it did not anymore. As well as a green birdsnest that bleached and did not recover. A BTA that thrived for 8-9 months, split in two, one of them kept shrinking until it died, the other is still alive but a lot smaller.
However, I have a Favia plug that has been doing great and doubled in size, two encrusting montipora that are growing OK and doubled in size as well, a blasomussa that has 1 head and is getting bigger slowly.
As some of you might seen on the picture, I struggle to keep the tank completely clean as I have purple patches on my rocks and a little on the sand that I believe is cyano, and hair algae started to spread more than before lately.
Some seem to do OK while other died. And even the ones that are fine don't seem to grow so much, which is why I am wondering if I am not missing something important and I am asking for help today.
As far as my setup, this is what I have:
It's a 45 gallon tall tank, with a 10 gallon sump (that includes a socket filter, a protein skimmer SCA-301, a chaeto that barely grows, a heater @78F and bioballs).
My return pump is a 1050 gph that I run at 75% speed (Orlushy DC-4000). I also have 1 wavemaker- a Hyger 1600 gph that I run sin wave and a cheap powerhead 480gph.
My lights are a pack of Orbit Marine IC-Pro 24-36" that runs 2hrs on Sunrise settings (76% blue, 0% white, 30% red and 9% green), 5:30 hrs on Daylight (90%B, 30%W, 15%R, 15%G), and back to Sunset (same settings as sunrise) for 2hrs.
I have 9 small fish (chromis, clowns, gobby, cardinal) and a little clean up crew ( 5 Astrea snails, 5 Cerith snails, 1 peppermint shrimp and 1 tiger pistol shrimp)
As you can seem only few corals that are still mostly on the plugs.
My parameters:
Specific gravity - 1.025
Amonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 6ppm
Calcium - 400
Magnesium - 1350
Phosphate - varies between 0.05 to 0.15 from one month to another, usually because I feed more or less or the protein skimmer gives me trouble
alkalinity - 9.3 dKH
I do water changes of 5 Gallons every 1/1.5 week and only dose Red Sea foundation B for alkalinity with a little jebao dosing pump.
I think I went through pretty much everything, I hope someone here will enjoy spending some time reading this and I would be glad to discuss what I might be missing!