The tips to sps

mattdumitrescu

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Biggest tip I can give for stability is weekly water changes. I have 25 frags of sps(colony’s and frags)in a 65 gallon and it’s main components are the skimmer, chemipure blue and dosing of micro Bacter 7 and acropower. I get my IPC tests done once and awhile to make sure everything is rolling smoothly. But water changes has been the key for me
 

Heisenberg 78

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With sps it’s a myriad of many unknowns, it like playing battleships..
you can be so close but yet so far.. !
you might hit a brief moment of success and then the whole strategy can be cross wired and you drift off course until its your turn for it to come back around again..

The most basic things that everyone latches onto are the nsw parameters..ive seen tanks look great in both high po4 and no3 as well as low range..
This doesn’t warrant success for anyone by following it.(.only those demonstrating it..) never chase other tanks..!

Lighting, you can own the most expensive lights and still have livestock perish, but like I’m finding at present the spectrum can be wrong/right or the intensity could be skewed. Theirs too many variables so it’s pick a setting and work on …. Slowly…!

Flow, I’ve always tried to accommodate a mixed reef; I’ve kept sps in low flow from 4 mp40’s and never had big issues.. the polyps we’re always out, and I’ve even kept them long term like that..but, I could never say, that’s the happiest they have, or .. could have looked, for instance.
By this stage I have covered 3 variables: which, if we look at the combinations of what could have been right/ wrong, any could spell success/ failure for some of the easier ones.

…add a few more combinations to the mix which is length of photo periods, nutrients, stability, types of flow and turn over, water-changes..additives and potions..etc

You’ll hopefully agree…now things become more like trying to win a lottery.. a lot of changes can take place shifting one to the better but another one worse; each time we change something we have no idea if it’s for the good or bad.
As we all know nothing great happens fastin a reef tank, so its where I will try and round up the conclusion of my thoughts:-

1) We need to get the tank to a stage of maturity and eliminate the issues we get from new water..

2) The tank needs to be stable and settled, so we can tweak the dosages to understand our longterm chemistry (consumption)

3) I think once your at a stage whereby sps are living for a while and not dying each week, then your at a stage where the gradual adjustments, 1 at a time can take place.

4) I find, by spending time watching my coral and scrutinising detailed things like polyps extension/movement, transition in colour (whether good or bad), all goes great lengths to tell us what’s happening.

5) Experiments need to take place to increase our knowledge, pick something ( like your lottery numbers) and hope for the best..
I’d certainly have an objective in mind of what outcomes your expecting to see for the changes you make.
6) don’t make any other changes for a good few weeks..until it goes better or worse…but if your seeing negative things early, go back to the previous setting and resort to sitting tight for a while. ..

7) stability is my last one, I’ve seen situations where all my efforts go to the wall, if I’ve done something erratic to make a quick change..my dkh tells me if my corals are happy and growing..

-if the DKH starts to increase I know I’m doing something which it’s halting their growth..

-if it’s stable we’re all good…

-but if consumption goes up, and DKH levels go down… I then recall my last move ((eg) light spectrum change) and I see this as a positive sign that my corals are up taking more carbonate to accelerate their growth spurt..

Ps..sorry for the long post, but sps behaviour can’t be summarised in a few lines:)o_O

I bet there is loads I’ve not even touched on..happy reefing..!
 
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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.
I can do that once a day max
 
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All of these tips are super helpful! I am getting quite a bit of coralline so I might wait just a few months more before I get into easy sps! Thanks and wish me luck
 

Gtinnel

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Yep, same here. It costs what it costs and the overpriced machines were worth it from where I sit.
I'm very cheap and most of my equipment is cheaper brands, but after a year or more of contemplating it I finally bought into the apex system. I've spent about $2,000 on apex stuff and I don't regret it one bit. I really wish I would've done it sooner.
 

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Biggest tip I can give for stability is weekly water changes. I have 25 frags of sps(colony’s and frags)in a 65 gallon and it’s main components are the skimmer, chemipure blue and dosing of micro Bacter 7 and acropower. I get my IPC tests done once and awhile to make sure everything is rolling smoothly. But water changes has been the key for me
To add to this, I'd strongly recommend making water changes easy on yourself, which basically means a mixing station. It doesn't need to be fancy or expensive, but putting in the day or so to build one is going to save you time later. More importantly for me, if I can do a water change in a few minutes, I'll do it. If it takes an hour of watching stuff, cleaning up spills, carrying 5-gallon buckets, etc, I'm going to put it off.

Here's mine, in all its salt-dripping-down-the-side-and-I-ran-out-of-yellow-pipe-so-switched-to-green glory:
1632798172747.png

1632798136932.png
 

Breadman03

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You only need to test alk daily, and you can get away with less as your tank stabilizes. It takes maybe 2 minutes from the time I touch the bus until I put the box back. The rest of the stuff can be weekly or less once it’s stable. I’d suggest, in order, running an ATO, getting a dosing pump for kalk, and using a kalk reactor if you have room in the budget. That’ll save you tons of time.
For test kits: alk (Salifert), nitrate (Hanna HR), and phosphate (Hanna ULR phosphate), then calcium (Salifert) and magnesium (Salifert). I chose those for ease of use as the color charts on some are near useles, cost, and accuracy.
I run a monthly ICP test, but that’s because I’m time is super tight and only testing alk throughout the month saves a ton of time. That’s $50, but the time is worth it for me.
 

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All great advice. Let’s not forget phosphates. I was always told test weekly. The problem is I would test over weekend and adjust it. Then next week it was up again and found some corals hated it while a few sps were fine. So I started testing phosphates 2x a week and have kept way more stable. Was able to tune in my fuge light versus adding phosphate remover
 

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I agree also with stability. My alk has dropped to 6.7 DKH and had no problems. It was a slow decline but it was stable.
My par is about 275 (last checked) and I have some nice colors. Maybe if I up the par they would be better. Don't know.
 

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thomascameron81

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My opinion is stability patients and don’t chase numbers
 

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nereefpat

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I can do that once a day max
You likely can get by dosing alk once a day, at least in the beginning.

Testing doesn't need done anywhere near once a day, even though the fancy machines do it more often. I would test alk daily in the beginning to get a feel for the consumption rate. After that, testing alk and Ca weekly works fine.
 

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Nobody here is talking about quarantining your acro. If you get red bugs, you can sit and watch acropora not grow for literally years (eventually they will start to die). If you get AEFW, everything will brown out and die within months. A typical acro tank has 50+ specimens from multiple sources. You have to QT or you will pay for it later.
 
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You likely can get by dosing alk once a day, at least in the beginning.

Testing doesn't need done anywhere near once a day, even though the fancy machines do it more often. I would test alk daily in the beginning to get a feel for the consumption rate. After that, testing alk and Ca weekly works fine.
my alk is 11, your telling me to dose MORE alk?
 

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Kalk is a great way to keep your alk very stable.
I wish this would have worked for me! Granted I didn't do it with the CO2 reactor and a monitor, but...

I have a heavily stocked 30-gallon nano-reef and I was going through more Soda Ash in 24 hours than is safe to adjust with a single dose. I bought a cheap dosing pump off of Amazon and I have been a bit disappointed with it because in order to get consistent results I had to dilute the calcium or soda ash with RO water and dose more liquid more often. Even then it was somewhat inconsistent.

I tried setting up a KW drip to see if that would help stabilize the system. It kept the Calcium stabilized fairly well but I still had to manually add Soda Ash. After 2 weeks I finally stopped the KW drip.

In spite of "Decent" growth on the acros, i.e. a couple of inches per 6 months, I know the daily swing of KH had to be hard on them. At this point, short of buying a Neptune system, I was willing to try just about anything that didn't break the bank. Then I saw this on Amazon:


What the heck, for 10 bucks I will give it a try.

I put RO water in it at first just to let it add makeup water to see how much water the tank needed per day so I could calculate the dose of KH. The tank used approximately 16 ounces out of 20 ounces per day. I was currently adding 15ml of Soda Ash per day and going backward. I added 20 ml to the bottle, filled the rest with RO water, and put it on the tank. As the water would evaporate, it would make up the water along with an appropriate dose of KH... Theoretically.

To my surprise and pleasure, the KH was right where it was supposed to be the next day, and after the bottle was empty I refilled it again and let it go again. After a week of daily testing and tweaking the Soda Ash dose per bottle, I finally didn't have to test daily. I am back to testing weekly and the growth in 3 months has been twice what it was for the previous 6 months.

Obviously, this isn't right for everyone, but hey it worked for me in a nano tank.
 

Hermie

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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!
my tip is that not all sps are the same, some will survive certain tank conditions/parameters where others will die

so try to research the exact species you are trying to take care of
 

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