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Good for you - but you are solidifying what I was saying - you simply dismiss anything that you do not do or use.
Measured growth rates of several Acropora and Montipora species maintained in a tank using the Blu Coral method are around 40cm per year. This link has some information on it: Need quick SPS growth - Marine Aquariums South Africa, and you'll find MANY pictures of aquariums using this method here: Italy's Best! Matured SPS Aquariums. - Reef Central Online Community
I will place some of these pictures here, which compared to your frag tank, I'd say it is no contest.
And these two are the same tank, taken 10 months apart.
iodio 0,06
ca 500
mg 1500
sr 30
ph 8,5
kh 12
Not all of the tanks above use somatotropin, but the common denominator is intense lighting, intense flow, high parameters, great filtration (using the Berlin method), and feeding of ultra-high protein fresh foods (which a lot of breaks down into amino acids, triggering extreme feeding responses from corals to where they will take in far more food than if just fed using 'normal' dry foods).
If you do decide to run your parameters at higher levels, you MUST accompany this with more light and more food or your corals will suffer from it, which is very common among tanks that have excellent filtration and are not being fed accordingly.
I may not have a 'stunning' tank by any means, but I at least do my research and learn the hows and whys for all of this, and I suggest that you do the same.
I keep my ALK between 9-10 in my SPS system which is tough at times. Having about 500 sps colonies and hundred of frags at a time the ALK seems to get used randomly.
As far as sps goes for me alk above 9 I have big issues that takes weeks - months to recover from Im happy anywhere above 7.5 and below 9
Just recently alk spiked to 11 got rtn this was a spike so could have been from the quick spike but I've also had same issue when alk climbed slowly over weeks to 10
So I don't really know how it causes rtn for me but not for others ! Must be another variable
To be honest with you I couldn't disagree more. I have never seen a beautiful COLORFUL reef with high alk. Yes you may get your corals to surrive and even grow in those conditions but you will not have anything spectacular. The most amazing systems I have seen in my short 13 years in this hobby are always tanks that maintains alk at or around 8.5 and calc around 400. Personally I have seen amazing color and growth keeping my stats in that range in addition to simple maintenance and gfo/carbon filtering.
Turfster truly an amazing tank....if u don't mind what kind of light do u run and what's ur phos and nit levels and sump style?as in skimmer ozone, vodka, zeovit ect....
This is just a statement I am throwing out there:
Alk is not the only factor that will give u good color. Stability is always key.
I think acclimating is a key factor for this who get corals from someone else who might not run there alk as high as u.
I raise my alk from 8dkh to 10dkh over a month with two part and dosing pumps and all corals stayed fine...
There are amazing tanks out there that are not zeovit systems.
Low alk tanks truly have better color and growth for sps, idk why this is an argument... Alk is not the only factor in color either so yes you can have a higher alk tank and still close to par color. But the best colored tanks are ULNS with low alk and a carbon based system. Zeovit tanks truly master the sps world of reefing and their alk is usually 6.5-8 there is no high alk tank with better colors than krystof Tryc's sps tank or andrzej N. http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19071
http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16420
Point blank period.
Again, you can get colors and they might be amazing to you but show me one high alk tank better then the two above or almost any great colored low alk tank.
I lowered my alk and truly am happy with it I used to run it at 10.4 I now have dropped it to 8-8.4 (still balancing it out) my colors haven't changed much yet but they have gotten "deeper" my growth tho has took off.
jaugermeister and jedimasterben are you guys quarelling brothers?
I'm with you, If people put half as much effort into maintaining their tanks as they did beating their chests & declaring their infallibility on public forums, the world would be inundated with Tank-Of-The-Month quality tanks. I personally run my tank at 10.5 dkh. Not because I particularly want it to be there, but because that's where it stabilized. I think the fact that it is stable is 10 times more important than the fact that it happens to be 10.5. It's also worth noting that I dose .4 mL of a VSV mix on this tank daily (100g system). My fastest acros grow about 1 cm every 16-20 days. I think we all need to try not to let our personal preference for richer or more pastel colors taint this discussion. My personal preference is for richer colors so I keep some gunk in my water, and (most importantly) try to pick acros that happen to look good with saturated colors ! I have seen plenty of pastel tanks that made my heart skip a beat as well, Krystof's is one of them.I've been watching this thread and following along to learn but quite frankly have not been able to stop laughing with regards to the battle of the egoes!
Ime all the arguments taking place are irrelevant here. Jaugermaster: u have I think 1 sps in your entire tank and Scollies near the top of tank therefore you probably should not have even made any comments because your lack of experience is irrelevant to this specific discussion. And jegermeister: you're posting pics of other people's tanks and not your own therefore your comments are probably irrelevant. I am not going to post pics as I have a build thread up already and have only been into sps heavy for the last year. The only thing we can comment on is out personal experience not others tanks! I think you guys are just upset due to similar names perhaps brotherly quarrel maybe?
So my experience is this:
With any tank (and all are run different) the one guarantee is that with good lighting, filtration, and always stable parameters (regardless as long as they are within acceptable ranges) any reef keeper will be successful!
People regularly and successfully ran 10-12 dKG in SPS tanks for years. You won't see it much now because of the trends in the hobby and the known issues with low nutrients and a higher alkalinity. Take a look back at some of the totm tanks from years ago.
I'm with you, If people put half as much effort into maintaining their tanks as they did beating their chests & declaring their infallibility on public forums, the world would be inundated with Tank-Of-The-Month quality tanks. I personally run my tank at 10.5 dkh. Not because I particularly want it to be there, but because that's where it stabilized. I think the fact that it is stable is 10 times more important than the fact that it happens to be 10.5. It's also worth noting that I dose .4 mL of a VSV mix on this tank daily (100g system). My fastest acros grow about 1 cm every 16-20 days. I think we all need to try not to let our personal preference for richer or more pastel colors taint this discussion. My personal preference is for richer colors so I keep some gunk in my water, and (most importantly) try to pick acros that happen to look good with saturated colors ! I have seen plenty of pastel tanks that made my heart skip a beat as well, Krystof's is one of them.