ekandler
Active Member
I need some help with SPS, my issues have stumped every reef friend I have... I've had a successful LPS/Softie tank up and running for 2.5 years and been trying to get into SPS. I've lost montis (caps and digis), leptos, stylos, and of course acros. I recently had two jack o lantern leptos turn pale white and I have a birdsnest right now with polyps out but was turning pale white, started at the tips of each branch and ended up turning the whole colony completely white. Here's the full situation:
For lighting, I switched (about 3 months ago) to gen 5 radion XR30 blues at 50% intensity. This is one question I have, as I had been running all the blue spectrums at 100% with green, red, and white at 16%. I've known a lot of people who have run similar on Gen 4 Radions, but I wasn't sure if it applied also to the Gen 5 blues since it has less white LEDs and BRS recommended 100% of everything (which looks terrible in my opinion). I downloaded WWC Radion profiles which are <=20% whites on their tanks and customer service told me their running Gen 5 blues, not pros. I thought maybe the SPS weren't getting enough of the white, red, or green spectrum but I suppose that isn't the case... Another concern of mine was PAR, so I rented a PAR meter and it was around 120-140 PAR where the leptos were placed, around 140 at the birsdnest. Everyone suspected my issue was bleaching from too much light, but that doesn't seem to be the case either...
For flow I have 3 gyres running lower power to make sure I have (what I believe to be) good, even flow around the rockwork. Some people said my SPS issues could be from flow that was too direct, but I don't think this is my issue either... Here's a video of the flow during feeding:
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For parameters, I have a Trident keeping a steady 8.6 alk, 440 calc, 1400 mag. I daily dose 2ml of Brightwell aminos also. I've done several ICP tests in the past, most recent said I was low in Iodine, Manganese, and Vanadium, so I bought some bottles of that from ATI and dose those manually with 2-3 drops per week which I've recently slowed down on since I'm questioning it's value. Nutrients are pretty consistent at 5-10 nitrate, 0.05 phosphate, which I keep in check with a well performing refugium and skimmer. Only other filtration is filter floss and carbon in a reactor. Temp is always between 76-78 (surprised I can't keep it more precise but I guess that's the best my Inkbird controller can do). My pH is usually bouncing between 7.9-8.1 which I thought might be a serious issue, but I've seen differing opinions on R2R as to whether that's low enough to cause issues. Regardless, to help with this I just recently got a CO2 scrubber but it hasn't been installed long enough to do much as of yet. I feed only frozen, LRS reef frenzy, and do a 10 gallon bi-weekly water changes with Fritz using RODI water from BRS RODI unit with 0 TDS.
Does anyone see anything that jumps out at them as wrong? I don't know what my issue is... Am I not doing enough coral food? I do reefroids vary rarely, I thought there would be enough smaller foods in the LRS reef frenzy to not require much additional feeding.
For lighting, I switched (about 3 months ago) to gen 5 radion XR30 blues at 50% intensity. This is one question I have, as I had been running all the blue spectrums at 100% with green, red, and white at 16%. I've known a lot of people who have run similar on Gen 4 Radions, but I wasn't sure if it applied also to the Gen 5 blues since it has less white LEDs and BRS recommended 100% of everything (which looks terrible in my opinion). I downloaded WWC Radion profiles which are <=20% whites on their tanks and customer service told me their running Gen 5 blues, not pros. I thought maybe the SPS weren't getting enough of the white, red, or green spectrum but I suppose that isn't the case... Another concern of mine was PAR, so I rented a PAR meter and it was around 120-140 PAR where the leptos were placed, around 140 at the birsdnest. Everyone suspected my issue was bleaching from too much light, but that doesn't seem to be the case either...
For flow I have 3 gyres running lower power to make sure I have (what I believe to be) good, even flow around the rockwork. Some people said my SPS issues could be from flow that was too direct, but I don't think this is my issue either... Here's a video of the flow during feeding:
.
For parameters, I have a Trident keeping a steady 8.6 alk, 440 calc, 1400 mag. I daily dose 2ml of Brightwell aminos also. I've done several ICP tests in the past, most recent said I was low in Iodine, Manganese, and Vanadium, so I bought some bottles of that from ATI and dose those manually with 2-3 drops per week which I've recently slowed down on since I'm questioning it's value. Nutrients are pretty consistent at 5-10 nitrate, 0.05 phosphate, which I keep in check with a well performing refugium and skimmer. Only other filtration is filter floss and carbon in a reactor. Temp is always between 76-78 (surprised I can't keep it more precise but I guess that's the best my Inkbird controller can do). My pH is usually bouncing between 7.9-8.1 which I thought might be a serious issue, but I've seen differing opinions on R2R as to whether that's low enough to cause issues. Regardless, to help with this I just recently got a CO2 scrubber but it hasn't been installed long enough to do much as of yet. I feed only frozen, LRS reef frenzy, and do a 10 gallon bi-weekly water changes with Fritz using RODI water from BRS RODI unit with 0 TDS.
Does anyone see anything that jumps out at them as wrong? I don't know what my issue is... Am I not doing enough coral food? I do reefroids vary rarely, I thought there would be enough smaller foods in the LRS reef frenzy to not require much additional feeding.
