GHOSTLY
2500 Club Member
I'll be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of lps. I got into this hobby for sps. Now in your opinion what are the best success tips and parameters for all sps from birdsnest to acros? Tips, notes, parameters anything works!
The tips to sps
- Thread starter GHOSTLY
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Dkmoo
Valuable Member
Get lighting to 400par+. All the recommendations say 250 to 350 but IME you only keep greens in that range and lose colors on the high end acros until you push above 400. Gotta be right spectrum too.
Other than that, its your typical guidelines apply - mature tank, stability, high nutrient in/out, pH 8.3, alk 8 to 10, cal 400 to 500, mg 1300 to 1400, detectable levels of no3 and po4.
Other than that, its your typical guidelines apply - mature tank, stability, high nutrient in/out, pH 8.3, alk 8 to 10, cal 400 to 500, mg 1300 to 1400, detectable levels of no3 and po4.
Gtinnel
10K Club member
This ^^^^. I find that my sps do the best when I keep my parameters, mainly alkalinity, stable. If I allow my alkalinity to fluctuate I end up with the occasional RTN, but when I keep it completely stable the acroporas do well. For the easier SPS like birdsnest and monti it doesn't seem to matter nearly as much.
OP
OP
GHOSTLY
2500 Club Member
This is easier said than done. What are some ways for stability? Dosing, testing fancy overpriced machines?
Gtinnel
10K Club member
Overpriced machines is what really helped me in regards to stability.
DeniableArc
Well-Known Member
Hi, I have found balling methods where you are dosing 3 equal parts every hour- 24 hrs a day to be incredibly stable. I haven’t many sps but alk is within .2 whenever I test and I don’t have to worry about any trace elements. Also a skimmer hooked up to fresh outside air or scrubbers keep ph very stable.
RC51
Well-Known Member
The way I go is to use a quality salt (red sea black bucket) and do regular water changes and dose the same amount once your find how much your corals use.
If you have all the budget in the world, maybe get something like a KH director or APEX system but for me, I find it just overcomplicated and super expensive.
RC51
Well-Known Member
I can imagine. You can probably spend the 800$ that you use for an apex controller for some more beautiful coral or another tank setup if you are like me and have multiple-tank-syndrome
Mr. Mojo Rising
5000 Club Member
I've always ready that alk was the most important factor to keep sps corals, but never really understood how or why. Thanks to some other forum person (Timfish)I found a site and this article which clearly explains alk (in a way that I understood), and clearly shows with graphs that increasing alk will increase the sps growth up to 30% more: https://reefs.com/magazine/how-to-g...ons-on-rates-of-zooxanthellae-photosynthesis/
This article explains that flow is more important than light to sps, flow alone can increase sps growth by 30%, which I found fascinating: https://reefs.com/magazine/water-fl...an-light-part-1-introduction-to-gas-exchange/
this is the strategy I have chosen, and I am slowly making changes to my set-up to better incorporate these 2 concepts, but basically, I find I need to "chase the numbers" with sps, which is not needed with other corals. Of course this is just my opinion and might be different than other people.
This article explains that flow is more important than light to sps, flow alone can increase sps growth by 30%, which I found fascinating: https://reefs.com/magazine/water-fl...an-light-part-1-introduction-to-gas-exchange/
this is the strategy I have chosen, and I am slowly making changes to my set-up to better incorporate these 2 concepts, but basically, I find I need to "chase the numbers" with sps, which is not needed with other corals. Of course this is just my opinion and might be different than other people.
OP
OP
GHOSTLY
2500 Club Member
I don't have the money for a overpriced machine and I don't have the time for testing and dosing since I got school. What are some tips that don't involve expensive machines or expensive anything? I don't really care for the minimalist design as long as I can at least grow digitatas and pavona easily. I don't need acros yet
burningmime
Well-Known Member
Pavona grows in anything; you could put it in a glass of tapwater & mortons on the windowsill.
DazAquariums
Active Member
Stability is key. Depending on the size of the tank if you get sps to grow into decent size colonies testing and dosing are gonna have to happen. If it’s not possible then sps might not be possible at this point and time.
sps will use a good amount of Alk a day as they grow and mature. You could end up with significant swings. So much so that a general weekly water change won’t solve it. Knowing how much alk, calcium and magnesium your system is consuming and replacing it on a regular basis to keep the levels consistent is key part of keeping pretty much all sps alive and thriving.
It doesn”t have be expensive. I was very successful with Red Sea test kits and hand dosing for ages. I kept 4-5 inch colonies extremely happy before I went with a more automated approach. But I test alk daily and Ca and Ma weekly. As well as kept up with normal daily dosing and weekly water changes.
burningmime
Well-Known Member
Kalk (Calcium Hydroxide) is 2-part, but in one part, basically. It's simpler to dose than 2-part because it will add calcium and carbonate in the right ratios. The easiest way to do it (and the way it was commonly done in the past) is just to take the powder, mix it into your ATO bucket and let the ATO dose it when water evaporates. Super simple and mostly effective. Combined with some water changes and maybe a trace element solution or two, this is pretty much all the dosing you need for an everything-but-acros SPS tank.
However, there are 2 problems to using ATO to dose kalk. The first is that it's caustic and hard on your ATO pump. If the pump itself is sitting in a bucket of kalkwasser, you're going to have to replace your ATO pump every 6 months, which is expensive. The solution to this is a "kalk stirrer" where you pump fresh RO/DI water into the stirrer, and the water pressure forces Kalk out. You also get a more even/predicatable amount of kalk since the saturation is constant.
The second problem with using ATO is that it's not very exact. In the summer, you're going to be evaporating more water than in the winter, and even day to day evaporation can change based on the weather, if your windows are open, etc. So you can easily overdose or underdose and Alk can swing a lot back and forth. So you can use a dosing pump. You use test kits or automated testers to tell you how much to dose, and mix the kalk to the correct concentration. Your ATO will work less often, but as long as you're dosing less kalk than evaporates every day, you're fine.
This will work up to a point, but only so much water evaporates from your tank every day. If you need to dose a gallon of Kalk a day to maintain your Calcium/Alkalinity and only 0.5 gallons evaporated that day (maybe the windows were closed), the extra water will lower salinity (and at some point, the tank will overflow all over your floor).
Once you get to that point, you need to use either 2-part or a calcium reactor (or calcium formate like All-for-Reef) to maintain calcium and alkalinity. You probably want to keep using kalkwasser and just use the other method to maintain the difference. Once you have a 2-year-old tank filled with SPS growth and coralline, you'll be there. But just kalkwasser + water changes for trace elements can take you far.
Oh, also Kalkwasser is fairly cheap (the cheapest way to maintain Ca/Alk) and it raises pH, which helps croals grow faster, which are reasons it's popular.
You don't need them.
But you do have to test salinity, alkalinity, calcium, and arguably magnesium. You will probably have to dose. That's just part of keeping stony corals.
But that can be cheap and fairly easy too. You can mix up solutions and hand dose if you want. Pickling lime and baking soda are very cheap.
PatW
2500 Club Member
SPS tend to like high light, high flow preferably variable, low nutrients and stability.
A good indication that you are getting SPS ready is decent coralline algae growth.
I find that montipora corals are on the easy side of SPS, Birds nests can be easy and they can die with a stability interruption. Pocillipora seem to be pretty bullet proof.
But Acropora are the most interesting and of course the hardest.
As far as stability,
1) ATO - cheap and reliable way to maintain constant salinity.
2) Alkalinity - SPS are very sensitive to changes in ALK. I measure daily. I also dose it because that helps keep it constant.
In my system, Calcium needs dosing but I only measure weekly and bring it back in line. Magnesium seems to be kept in line with water changes.
I keep chaeto in a refugium to keep nitrates and phosphates in check. I want these low but not at 0. Corals need some nutrients.
Once you can keep the easy SPS, try acropora. It is usually best to try hardy acropora or just get cheap ones (likely to be hardy and fast growing).
Good luck.
A good indication that you are getting SPS ready is decent coralline algae growth.
I find that montipora corals are on the easy side of SPS, Birds nests can be easy and they can die with a stability interruption. Pocillipora seem to be pretty bullet proof.
But Acropora are the most interesting and of course the hardest.
As far as stability,
1) ATO - cheap and reliable way to maintain constant salinity.
2) Alkalinity - SPS are very sensitive to changes in ALK. I measure daily. I also dose it because that helps keep it constant.
In my system, Calcium needs dosing but I only measure weekly and bring it back in line. Magnesium seems to be kept in line with water changes.
I keep chaeto in a refugium to keep nitrates and phosphates in check. I want these low but not at 0. Corals need some nutrients.
Once you can keep the easy SPS, try acropora. It is usually best to try hardy acropora or just get cheap ones (likely to be hardy and fast growing).
Good luck.
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