Two SPS Questions for the Experts

[reeferfoxx]

Reeferfoxx, Funny. I have about 4 types of styophoras, all frags in the tank from 2 to 6 months. None have encrusted their bases much. They are growing. All my other SPS (except one that I don't know what it is) have encrusted their bases in the same period. I saw another person in the thread say something similar with styophora. I wonder what the difference is?

Now i'm super intrigued! I can post pics later, but all my frags that I fragged from my old tank, have grown half dollar size bases before growing north. I have a green, purple and a ORA stellar stylo.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Reeferfoxx, Funny. I have about 4 types of styophoras, all frags in the tank from 2 to 6 months. None have encrusted their bases much. They are growing. All my other SPS (except one that I don't know what it is) have encrusted their bases in the same period. I saw another person in the thread say something similar with styophora. I wonder what the difference is?

Now i'm super intrigued! I can post pics later, but all my frags that I fragged from my old tank, have grown half dollar size bases before growing north. I have a green, purple and a ORA stellar stylo.

I have both in both tanks and get different results.

 

[reeferfoxx]

I have both in both tanks and get different results.

Any differences compared to each tank? Something like this might answer the encrusting question?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Any differences compared to each tank? Something like this might answer the encrusting question?

No the same contradiction in both tanks.:D

Sometimes the accidental frag will stick to the rock, sometimes it'll just push up branches.

 

[d2mini]

Dennis - I wish I could offer you some PAR information in regards to SPS but truth be told, I've never measured PAR. However, @dtum from the other forum swears by his LED lighting profile. I think you know him well from aquaticlog.com. He was TOTM in March of last year on the other forum. He runs a very, very, very blue light cycle for the majority of the day with his max par targeted between 230-250. Since I'm just now trying LED for the first time, I've been kicking around the idea of giving his method a try. I pulled the quotes below directly from his TOTM thread.

"Here is a few things I have learned about lighting the tank with Radions: PAR can be extremely low - for about 8 hours I would run only blue channel at a 100% giving me PAR of 220 and another hour of turning on whites to get a more natural look that would give me a chance to examine true coral colours. Having a PAR meter turned out to be indispensable - I was able to ensure proper light coverage and intensity. Once I’ve learned these tricks I was able to keep any high-end acro I wanted, bringing in corals that were grown and coloured under Metal Halides and not losing any color. At the end of the experiment I would consistently get a better color under LEDs than under T5 to everyone’s surprise. Having run this for a year I finally decided to upgrade my main tank lighting to Radions and as of this writing I’ve been running them for over a month with good results."

Yep, I've followed Dtum's par advice from the beginning and like I said a little earlier, I've had real good color and decent growth. I run the AB+ program which is all blues at 100% and white green red at 24%.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Yep, I've followed Dtum's par advice from the beginning and like I said a little earlier, I've had real good color and decent growth. I run the AB+ program which is all blues at 100% and white green red at 24%.

How high do you keep your lights off the surface?

 

[d2mini]

How high do you keep your lights off the surface?

17"
Overall brightness is set to 80%.

 

[uppermost]

I'll add my personal experience. I had a Bali green slimer, and 2 other no name acros under LED's. They were slowly fading and no growth. I added ATI coral plus and Blue plus T5's and everything clicked. All three frags fully encrusted the plugs in a week and a half after adding t5 supplement

 

[philfree]

I'll add my personal experience. I had a Bali green slimer, and 2 other no name acros under LED's. They were slowly fading and no growth. I added ATI coral plus and Blue plus T5's and everything clicked. All three frags fully encrusted the plugs in a week and a half after adding t5 supplement

I did the same thing, using Current Truelumen LED strips.
1-50/50 2-Blues.

 

[Duberz]

Would you give us a screen shot on your radions config? [emoji16]
When you say 45% what do you mean?
45% Intensity on day?
or
45% Brightness?

I have total intensity at 45%. I do a small ramp up to all blues,violet and uv only for about 8 hrs. I have 1 hour at midday at 20k. This is pretty much the schedule I got from WWC. Only real difference is they have peak at the beginning of the day.

 

[edosan]

Perfect thanks, pretty much the same here

 

[d2mini]

I'll add my personal experience. I had a Bali green slimer, and 2 other no name acros under LED's. They were slowly fading and no growth. I added ATI coral plus and Blue plus T5's and everything clicked. All three frags fully encrusted the plugs in a week and a half after adding t5 supplement

That's great! :)

But this is not a thread about poor growth/color, under led or any other lighting.
I started it purely because I was wondering what causes some to encrust really well before growing up/out and others to grow up/out with little to no encrusting.
I've had some really good color and decent growth so far with LED this time and I'm comparing to my MH/T5 tanks.
So lets please not turn this thread into a lighting debate. :)

 

[Battlecorals]

That's great! :)

But this is not a thread about poor growth/color, under led or any other lighting.
I started it purely because I was wondering what causes some to encrust really well before growing up/out and others to grow up/out with little to no encrusting.
I've had some really good color and decent growth so far with LED this time and I'm comparing to my MH/T5 tanks.
So lets please not turn this thread into a lighting debate. :)

The answer is simple man Sps do very different things always theres no solid formula for assessing good health in that regard. some base out like crazy and some almost not at all. Thats just sps. Nothing to do with lighting at all really, more genetics if anything

 

[mort]

The answer is simple man Sps do very different things always theres no solid formula for assessing good health in that regard. some base out like crazy and some almost not at all. Thats just sps. Nothing to do with lighting at all really, more genetics if anything

So if it's genetics how come frags from the same colony can behave in very different ways?

 

[Battlecorals]

So if it's genetics how come frags from the same colony can behave in very different ways?

There's a myriad of reasons for that as well I'm sure, but I think a big factor of frag resilience and adaptation, is where on the colony it was cut. For example, prime growth, including new tips will adapt, encrust, and begin to produce new much faster than older growth, like an area near the middle of a colony thats otherwise stagnant by comparison say . I've had lots of deep colony cuts not grow at all until they laid a good base down. Then new tips popped out of that new base, while the original frag remained dormant completely. Never growing again at all.

Still, the simple answer is "that's sps"

 

[Donovan Joannes]

This guy was cut at the tip of wild colonies. They pop out of the sand and grow upwards and branching. I am not sure how they hold their feet under the sand, but freshly cut frag doesn't encrusting as well.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Its difficult to tell if corals are getting sufficient light without par meter. You should get a ball park if you can borrow a PAR meter or looking at BRS videos testing various light fixtures PAR at different levels in the tank. Also, look into increasing your PH. higher PH will result in faster growth and encrusting - especially of SPS corals - look into CO2 feeding into skimmer or Kal in ATO - hope this helps, good luck.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I just browsed through you thread... IMO your proficient when it comes to lighting and par intensity... Not sure what your PH and nutrient levels are but this in conjunction with your light can play a factor. Based on my experience with SPS -they always seem to bright up with high ph and higher par. If the lighting is not sufficient mine brown just as they did with old schoolers reefers when they kept Brown sticks. =)

 

[uppermost]

That's great! :)

But this is not a thread about poor growth/color, under led or any other lighting.
I started it purely because I was wondering what causes some to encrust really well before growing up/out and others to grow up/out with little to no encrusting.
I've had some really good color and decent growth so far with LED this time and I'm comparing to my MH/T5 tanks.
So lets please not turn this thread into a lighting debate. :)

1. Still confused on the telltale signs that you have too much light or you have too little light. Signs of each?
This was the first part of your question but whatever floats your boat. The best information is from personal experience, I was just sharing mine.

 

[d2mini]

1. Still confused on the telltale signs that you have too much light or you have too little light. Signs of each?
This was the first part of your question but whatever floats your boat. The best information is from personal experience, I was just sharing mine.

Don't get me wrong. I've been where you are. Tried led, failed, went back to MH/T5. Been there, done that, participated in all those threads years ago.
But that's not what this is about. That first question isn't about the TYPE of lighting. Nor am I having a problem with growth and color this time.
I asked because I just want to be on the look out for minor details of why my sps might be telling me about my lighting or it's placement in the tank.