They are starving 100%. Even if you test that menial amount of nutrients it doesnt mean that they couldn't be completely bottomed out at another time of the day. If you run ULNS, its a chess game of elevating nutrients to your uptake from your corals and keeping that stable, but its a lot of work to run UNLS and you need a very very good understanding of nutrient uptake on your selected stock of coral. Iodine is also a very important trace element that you need to get in check. You are really close to being successful but the small things are what it takes to have a great system. Raise your nutrients, if you need more fish than get more fish or dose phos and nitrate, level it off and try again with some cheap montis.
Ready to quit the hobby; SPS or bust
- Thread starter ariellemermaid
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ariellemermaid
Well-Known Member
That’s the thing though. We have been very hands off with this tank for 2-3 years, only adding things a few times a year. The question is how many more years and how much more money before we can start enjoying the tank? I feel like at this point we’ve put in the time, and it’s time re-evaluate what we’re doing.
What is low? For nitrates and phosphate we have Hanna ULR, salifert, and API. If you mean the ICP results I used ICP-analysis.com.
Ken101Ward
Community Member
ULNS is the devil Bobby Boucher!
flashsmith
Valuable Member
Everybody kills SPS. Its not just your tank or the way you're doing things. I've long been over it and switched to lps and softies. Never test anything. Never dose in a 170 gallon system. I definitely keep up on housekeeping and water change at least once a month. I only run a skimmer a heater and gyres for flow. Sold all my automated dosing crap and Hanna testers. Now I'm actually enjoying this hobby. Pulled out my refugium and went bare bones.Got a few nice fish I couldn't keep with SPS and the tank is cruising along. The only thing I ever check is salinity and maybe once a week a little AB+ in there. There's a whole lot of cool things that can go in a tank that size that aren't acros.
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Sunreefer
Community Member
You can have high end tenuis in a startup tank within 4-6 months - if you know what you are doing ^-^
I will not publicly comment on one of those tests companies.
Do you wish to start with low bullet proof acros or do you wish to run mid or high tenuis? This will help determine your hands off or hands on approach.
You will get a plethora responses on what to do. Just find a mentor/success acro keeper (who has the type of acros tank you want) and do what he/she says. This is the fastest, less head-heart-wallet ache approach.
CDubz
New Member
Agreed with what has been said. Up your nitrates and definitely your phosphates. No phosphates is a SPS killer unless you are extremely heavy in/heavy out. Buy cheaper frags and get good at growing those. Later when you have the cheapies growing like weeds you can focus on the designer corals. Tank looks good btw get some more fish to stare at though (again cheap like chromis, damsels, cardinals). If you’re not already doing so feed a variety of foods.
Dosing NeoPhos and NeoNitro is so easy and very cheap, especially for the phosphate part. People hate on the branded dosing of these but I’ve found the DIY can be a slippery slope to overdosing if you are mixing your own additions. I was dosing both for a while before my system became saturated and now I have to up my carbon dosing to keep them down. When nitrate and phosphate were low it was chaos and instability for most of my SPS.
What I would do:
- dose nitrate and phosphate
- dose carbon
- consider trace elements
Get this additional dosing stabilized (automated and regular testing) and start adding cheap $10 SPS and work your way up.
What I would do:
- dose nitrate and phosphate
- dose carbon
- consider trace elements
Get this additional dosing stabilized (automated and regular testing) and start adding cheap $10 SPS and work your way up.
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ariellemermaid
Well-Known Member
4x AI hydras running BRS tested recommendations for spacing, intensity, and color. I don’t have access to my par numbers at the moment but they range from 150-200 on the sand up to like 500’s high up on the rock work. My last acro order did well for several months on coral racks around the 200’s. Some were even expanding outwards on the rack. Then, overnight one bleached. Then another and another with no changes to any parameters. I moved a few doing well to where I wanted them with slightly higher par like 250-300’s and those died pretty quickly. I’ve definitely killed SPS with too much light off the bat in the past in other tanks, but this last batch was heartbreaking because they did so well for so long then just died.
I live in a relatively small town and our only reef store closed down aside from Petco. So R2R, BRS, etc. are our mentors and online stores provide the livestock. I guess perhaps starting with the heartiest of acro’s and SPS might be a better place to start than buying a bunch of different things. What would be on your list? We’ve killed birdsnest’s, monti’s, pocillopora’s, a bunch of different acro’s, etc. We do have an encrusting orange spotted monti that’s expanding but it’s lost color from where it started. Our goal is bright colors and branching, plating corals.
It’s hard to say whether our system is high in/high out or not. What I can tell you is that we’ve got 3 autofeeders with flakes and pellets along with a forest of green hair algae in the sump/refugium. We’re not overstocked; yellow tang, powder brown, Kole tang, 2 clowns, 9 demoiselle’s and a few small gobies and other small fish. In theory pellets and flakes should be high in nutrients and we’ve only gone up in feedings over time.
More tank info:
Little to no mechanical filtration. We have shallow 3D printed filter cups but put just enough floss in that enough water flows around it to eliminate the need for regular floss changes. I basically just change the floss when I feel like it, a few times a month.
I’ve used Fritz salt in the past but now that all salt costs an arm and a leg I’ve switched to Red Sea since it’s the same price. Zero TDS.
Auto water change 2 gallons per day. When I filled the system I came up with around 135 gallons of actual water volume. Might be accurate, might not, but 2 gallons per day would equate to roughly 10% per week.
Refugium is super “dirty” with green hair algae and some macro but none of that has made its way into the tank, at least not that the fish allow. I feel like I’ve got a good ecosystem going in this respect. Again, ULNS wasn’t a decision, it’s just how this tank rolls. We’re running a skimmer but it collects like an inch of stuff over the course of months; which is great because I love low maintenance.
Oddly, I never see copepods in my DT. We’ve spent hundreds of dollars on copepods and have a refugium for them to live in with rock, bioblocks, etc. I see tons of copepods in our coral/invert QT (no fish), but I don’t know if I’m just not seeing them given the tank’s size, or if they’re just not there. To be fair, at night the DT is dark and the refugium is lighted, plus the glass is really thick, so maybe we’re just not seeing them. How could we possibly not have them in a tank this mature?
twentyleagues
Valuable Member
Unless you have specific pod hunters like dragonettes or wrasses, you have pods. A dragonette can eat more then 10,000 pods a day so that will put a huge dent in almost any pod population. Especially since they are going to be going for the larger pods first the mature ones that repopulate.
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ariellemermaid
Well-Known Member
Yeah nothing like thay yet. We would like a dragonette eventually though.
fangelillo01
Active Member
If you look at some of the Zoa's they are stretching upwards for light. I also notice the frag racks being lower in the tank.
rennjidk
Well-Known Member
It's not, and that is your issue. Everyone keeps telling you to up your nutrients, and they are correct. You can point to other ULNS systems as proof the the concept can work, and I agree with that 100%.
The issue is that ULNS require heavy in/out to function, as the corals are directly up taking their nutrients from the fish waste, rather than what's available in the water column.
You mentioned you do not use mechanical filtration. If you were feeding heavy enough for this method of reef keeping, you would not be able to see through the tank after a few days due to all of the left over food. There's a reason that all those systems use roller mats and oversized skimmers.
Buy a bag of food grade sodium nitrate and potassium phosphate from Amazon. They're like $15 each and one bag will last you a long time, even in a 200g system.
Use the calculator below to bring your system to 10ppm No3 and 0.1ppm Po4. Retest after a week and see how much your system actually consumes each day. Add that amount to your ATO water to keep it there indefinitely.
Cl
But it is not free chlorine, but technically it could be, I think.
Chlorine/Chloride same thing... I know its confusing. We are talking elements here. The first time I got back a ICP
But it is not free chlorine, but technically it could be, I think.
I do have some birdsnest that I don't think you can kill, I also have some green Pocillopora that I know you can't kill... I have been trying to kill it intentionally for a while now.Here are some pictures of parts of the tank/coral racks. In addition to zoa’s doing fine we also have a feather duster infestation. The birdsnest is now just a dead skeleton.
It would be hard to recommend a silver bullet that would solve all your problems. Someone would actually have to come and look at your setup, do some testing and make some recommendations. (Probably not a LFS) but a mentor as someone said before.
I will mention that in my opinion QT for SPS can be hard. You are bringing in a new coral to new parameters and new lighting. They have to overcome that and just when they do, you take them out of QT and into the display. They have to start all over again. For some SPS, even a change in a flow pattern can mean RTN.
Another thing I would like to mention, is the best thing to create an ocean is the ocean itself. A shipment of live rock from the ocean will probably do wonders for your tank. Each rock from the ocean contains a whole mini ecosystem that can only add to what you already have. Yes there may and probably will be some pests, but there is so much more life...
Spare time
10K Club member
"DONT CHASE NUMBERS! just get them in the ball park and dont mess with it. Life will find a way."
Bad advice. Reef keeping is keeping water. Keep the numbers right and everything will thrive. I've seen more people lost their tanks because they don't bother testing than the other way around. Life doesn't "find a way" like that
Gregg @ ADP
Valuable Member
I don’t chase numbers. I don’t even test unless I get curious about something. Haven’t for years.
Not just on one tank, but dozens and dozens.
I’ve seen far more damage done by people constantly messing with their tanks to achieve a target that is generally arbitrary.
Spare time
10K Club member
Messing with a tank isn't the same as keeping values in a good range. Its a convenient think to say don't chase numbers but there no logic behind it unless you mean people who do something foolish. Not testing is gambling.
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