Post your mistakes made with SPS dominant systems

[Waters]

Instability

 

[Rick Strauss]

Good, very very good. Like it changed the hobby for me; never realized the color and growth I can get out of sps. I went from wondering if I can keep a frag alive after three months to running out of room on my rocks and buying rare more expensive sps and not being afraid it will die.

What is RSCC?

 

[RedneckReefer68]

Red Sea Coral colors

 

[Rick Strauss]

Thanks

 

[xCry0x]

Hm most recent? I pulled my temp controller thermometer out for some reason while cleaning my tank and forgot to put it back in.

Subsequently cooked my tank -- fortunately not everything died but the water got up close to 90* F

Was amazing since I figured I had redundancy for failure. EG: The temp controller would cut off power if a heater failed on and tried to cook the tank. The heaters themselves should have in theory also turned themselves off if the water got above 80* F.

My #1 learning moment was definitely to dip frags and pay attention to what was on them. I introduced bubble algae to my tank because I had it on one of the first frags I got and just said, "Whatever, ill just pop them then put the frag in my tank". I had bubble algae for 4 years until I just recently successfully eradicated it through HEAVY vibrant dosing that subsequently also killed a goniopora I have had for 4 years and almost killed my acans... now I just need to figure out how to get rid of this indestructible red turf algae..

 

[Yati]

My biggest mistake was asking my neighbor to ship me my corals when I moved from CO to CO a few months ago.. the guy reefs BUT he 1. shipped them regular mail! 2. Did not get insurance on the packages so of course everything arrived dead 3 days later and he had no excuses but the silver lining was I was able to stock back up and start over again and so the process has re-begun!

 

[North Borders]

Listening to people regurgitating information that seems to get overused in this hobby.

All I read and heard “don’t dose anything you can’t test for” “use gfo” “nitrates are bad” “every tank needs carbon” “T5 can’t grow sps” “low nutrients are key”

All that info above has burned me and cost me thousands of dollars in dead corals over the years. Such over-played useless trash advice.

Dosing trace elements (Red Sea colors) without testing all Parms due to poor test kits for some elements. Tank growth and color has gone up 500x better. At this point I feel I can grow any coral out there.

Threw my GFO in the garbage, started feeding heavier don’t even bother testing nitrates and again massive improvement in my LPS and SPS.

Do you mean Red Sea colors helped you or that you wish you hadn't dosed them?

EDIT: Nvmd! Found you responded to someone else asking this question later in the thread.

 

[Bug235]

Chasing perfect numbers instead of letting my tank talk to me !!!

 

[Ashish Patel]

Stripping/Chasing nitrates
Stripping /Chasing Phosphates
Over lighting

If anyones doing this instead find the balance ratio between the 3 instead of hearing what works for others. Only dose nitrates if they are undetectable until they are detectable or at 1ppm (may be a day or 2 then hide it), then let it stablize it won't deplete not sure why others have to do daily dosing.

 

[Tautog]

I was doing regular WC’s, but didn’t have a big need to dose, unfortunately I believe I starved corals. I had high nitrates, but no PO4’s. Lots of Coraline, plenty of reproduction, growth with some, but I kept killing Acros. I stopped using Chemi Pure Elite, switched to ROX, started dosing 50 ml 2- part daily, and added Matrix to my sump. A year later, I’m dosing 300 ml/2- part/ day, everything manually. I fed less more often, and cleaned more, and switched from LEDs to T-5’s. My killers were dosing NoPox and stripping nutrients from the system

 

[Ashish Patel]

I think we all made the same mistakes. So why is forums not helping us enough? Because there should be different guidelines for different setups. a tank started with 100% dry rock should never follow same nutrients export as a tank started with LR or say a matured reef. If you a run a reef tank with aggressive nutrient export (chemipure elite, GFO, pellets, marinepure, even cheato) in a new system with no nutrients; your going to starve your corals 100% and prevent microfauna and good things from developing.

First the tank should just be run of a skimmer and bag of carbon and if the nutrients are not manageable with proper feeding and stocking then you can always add something later. Investing in good test kits and testing every few days is the best habit a new reefer wanting to keep SPS should make. Test ALK every 1-2 days, Phosphates and nitrates every 1-3 days and make adjustments according until its stable for few months then add sps

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Lots of good info in here. Lessons to be learned!