!!!SPS SUCK! THE ACRO-FUGIUM WRITE UP!!! I guess I finally finished this thing, sort of

rovster · Oct 8, 2015

dang Adam, I said exactly that a few posts up and not so many words. I think you just like being verbose, are you loquacious in person?

Battlecorals · Oct 8, 2015

rovster said:
**** Adam, I said exactly that a few posts up and not so many words. I think you just like being verbose, are you loquacious in person?

ha! touché my good man very well put. I confess i missed the post entirely. Im only wordy in write ups and sometime on the phone after a lot of joe lol

but still i wasn't really equating maturity with the word established at all so there was the distinction.

rovster · Oct 8, 2015

Battlecorals said:
ha! touché my good man very well put. I confess i missed the post entirely. Im only wordy in write ups and sometime on the phone lol

I can attest to that. First time we spoke I couldn't get a word in, haha!

Battlecorals · Oct 8, 2015

And again to thee, I say Touché

Diesel · Oct 8, 2015

rovster said:
I can attest to that. First time we spoke I couldn't get a word in, haha!

It has to do with the Battle establishment,

maidia · Oct 8, 2015

Very nice post, Adam...Thanks

bneufelder · Oct 8, 2015

haha How many cups did you have before I arrived?

Great write-up and I am one of the many that have suffered from this problem. When I added SPS with 0 measurable Nitrates or Phosphates they would pale out to the point you thought they RTN'd. A few weeks later they would color back up and by a couple of months get back to normal. When I created an even more sterile frag tank I saw the same problem but it was so deprived of nutrients they didn't color back up until I started dosing nitrates. Now when I add SPS they don't pale. I'm still trying to find the right balance between running a refugium and keeping algae blooms in check, but have definitely learned my lesson on running too clean.

Battlecorals · Oct 8, 2015

bneufelder said:
haha How many cups did you have before I arrived?

Great write-up and I am one of the many that have suffered from this problem. When I added SPS with 0 measurable Nitrates or Phosphates they would pale out to the point you thought they RTN'd. A few weeks later they would color back up and by a couple of months get back to normal. When I created an even more sterile frag tank I saw the same problem but it was so deprived of nutrients they didn't color back up until I started dosing nitrates. Now when I add SPS they don't pale. I'm still trying to find the right balance between running a refugium and keeping algae blooms in check, but have definitely learned my lesson on running too clean.

HA! at least a pot by the time you got here LOL

rrobertson1317 · Oct 8, 2015

I'm so confused. My phos is at .18 and I can't keep a sps to save my life Nitrate are minimal so maybe not enuff light?

Aquaph8 · Oct 8, 2015

My PO4 runs about .17, other than a little algae here and there, colors are great. I have a lot of fish and feed a lot, it's work just keeping nutrients where I have them.

ahmed.boomer · Oct 8, 2015

I don't know if you guys were at MACNA or not, but when the coral collectors from Australia came up (I wish I could remember their name, this was the talk right before the raffle), they said some extremely interesting things about some of SPS they collect. What they began doing was collecting water samples next to the coral colonies they were collecting in the wild and sending them to Triton to be tested. They specified the genus echinata in particular (they may have said one or two others, but it they escape me). The water samples sent to be tested had a third of the normal phosphate and nitrate level they expected elsewhere in the reef. This could vary based on the species, but the results were interesting. They were planning doing this to find ideal parameters for each specimen collected.

Anyone recall the name of the speaker? It was a very interesting talk. Perhaps someone has it on tape.

Ro.an · Oct 8, 2015

Im struggling with sps as well (pale, slow growth,...) my nitrate at 2.5 and phosphate at 0-0.01 using Hanna low range. Everything else are in check. I will stop dosing Nopox and taking my biopellets offline and see how it goes.

kacrocorals581 · Oct 8, 2015

My pink lemonade from my skimmerless reef and my Volta from my part time skimmed reef. I realized how much my acro's loved nutrients couple years back when my skimmer died, went 3 months without one and everything looked better and grew better than every before , put one back on there and saw a negative effect so took it right back off

imustbenuts · Oct 9, 2015

Ro.an said:
Im struggling with sps as well (pale, slow growth,...) my nitrate at 2.5 and phosphate at 0-0.01 using Hanna low range. Everything else are in check. I will stop dosing Nopox and taking my biopellets offline and see how it goes.

I would highly suggest if taking bio pellets off you do it slow like over a month or more removing a little every week. I took mine off and had a crash.

Ro.an · Oct 9, 2015

imustbenuts said:
I would highly suggest if taking bio pellets off you do it slow like over a month or more removing a little every week. I took mine off and had a crash.

Will do, thanks for the advice

anarchy · Oct 9, 2015

It looks like our recent conversations have provoked you to finish this write up lol

You would think my nitrates and phos would be detectable since I've only put tap water in my tank for 3 years and rarely do waterchanges (4 months since the last one) but they are still undetectable. Looks like I'm going to have to take your advice on the dosing

mocika · Oct 9, 2015

I was running my tank with 0 No3 fore more than a year and colors were pale. (75g with a lot of fish - 15 but also 90 pounds live rock. 3 years old tank) Start dosing sodium nitrate and i had much better color but also algae bloom and i stop dosing.
After some time i remove some live rock from my main tank to my quarantine tank and No3 goes from 0 to 5 ppm. Result was much more color in all SPS corals. After 2 months i decide to quit with my quarantine tank and put live rock back in my sumpin the main tank and in next 2 weeks No3 slowly went back to 0. Color went from good to pale again.
Now i don't know should i remove some live rock from my tank again (in order to get some No3) or to try somehow to dose nitrate again (but im scared of algae bloom again).
Tnx for advice.

Fishphi784 · Oct 9, 2015

rovster said:
I agree with this. That said, I feel nutrient control (not elimination) is more important in a newer tank. As the tank matures and corals grow, the potential for nutrient uptake increases thus making utilizing out known methods for nutrient reduction less critical.

I do check nitrate and phosphate regularly. I like to keep nitrate elevated and phosphate lower but no way do I shoot for 0.

Right now my tank is running nitrates at around 10 and phosphate at 0.03ish. I've had nitrate as high as 25+ with no real noticeable issues, not even algae. As my tank matures I've gone from having to run 1.5c GFO every 3 weeks to half that much every 8 weeks. At this point I don't even think it's doing anything lol.

The other thing that you'll notice is that the really mature tanks are a lot less hands on than younger tanks. Most of the issues happen early on when we have to balance the tank as opposed to the tank balancing itself. That's my 2 Adam. May not be 100% in line with your post, but I'm definitely on the same planet

Totally agree. I have had algae take an early hold in a new tank and subsequently could not eliminate it. In contrast, I have had tanks with a ton of sps right after cycling and never observed any algae. It seems whatever organisms consume the nutrient out of the gate become dominate. The hypothesis would allow for both the reported success of a macro algae refugium and the idea presented above.

jasonandsarah · Oct 9, 2015

Great write up! I've seen this all first hand. My Acro's have been so much happier since I completely stopped using Gfo. I feel like using natural methods like algae is a much better solution to Po4 and gfo should only be used if things become unmanageable.
I'm waiting for my No3 in a bottle so I can start dosing to try and maintain No3 somewhere around 5. As of right now I can't seem to get my No3 above 1 no matter what I do!!
I'm definitely not carbon dosing as I've tried it a couple different ways and never had any good results!! Thanks Adam!

robert · Oct 10, 2015

Fishphi784 said:
Totally agree. I have had algae take an early hold in a new tank and subsequently could not eliminate it. In contrast, I have had tanks with a ton of sps right after cycling and never observed any algae. It seems whatever organisms consume the nutrient out of the gate become dominate. The hypothesis would allow for both the reported success of a macro algae refugium and the idea presented above.

First, I promise not to quote when I meant to paraphrase....sorry battlecorals

I think your right - it maybe a form of allopathy. Its been suggested that macroalgaes "bend" the bacterial enviroment to gain an advantage over adjacent corals through the production of carbon compounds. I've also read that the mucus corals produce have long chains of carbons, which last for months and which are not readily consumed by other organisms. Some of these have antibiotic properties an possibly give their particular species an advantage over other encroaching organisms.

Kind of like the way bacteria produce penicillin to secure their place on the petri dish...

So someone needs to bottle this stuff...