Water parameters for SPS

[Yazannreef]

You need to retest your nitrates or do you have a major algae issue? I would start dosing something to remove the phosphates. Start with something with pure pharmaceutical lanthanum chloride to help quickly drop them down. Using a pure lanthanum you wont need much in the way of nitrates to lower the phosphates. But more than likely the reason you have dinos is an imbalance in your nutrients. This happens a lot with people using sulfate reactors or bio pellet reactors. If you want some product recommendations let me know and I can help you out. If you need anymore clarification please let me know!

Phosphate E or GFo should lower the phosphates. The post above is correct. You have imbalance of nutrients. Phosphates bottoms out nitrate.
Couple water changes over the week and dosing to lower phosphate will help

 

[X-37B]

I have good results at
Kh 7-8
Ca 420-450
Mag 1250 1350
Po4 .04-.1
No3 2-5
Ph 7.9-8.2
Temp 79-82
SG 1.0264-1.027
Keeping them stable and in range is just as important as the levels you run.

 

[andrecr]

So, my opinion on this, along with my company is there is a fine line of right parameters with SPS and getting the best coloration and best growth. These are two different numbers.

The OP is correct, some will say that you cannot have great growth with low phosphates and high alk and this is true. You will run out of nutrients to feed the flesh and provide carbohydrates to get the coral growing at a need rate. They will not be able to process the calcite foundation elements as they have run out of energy after consuming all of the nutrients available to them. A lot of people will have mixed reviews on this. IF they have mixed reviews lets then talk about what they are spot feeding or broadcast feeding. If you use a coral food and direct feed then you will have the required carbs to process everything. Are you dosing carbs proteins, aminos are anything like that to aid in that production?

Now to counter what I just said about the OP post. A lot of the coral farmers like Top Shelf, living reef, and WWC do run a medium Alk level around 8-9 however, they run a higher nutrient level. This gives the corals a lot of nutrients that they need to have the energy to calcify their structures along with provide food for the tissue. Now running like this will provide extreme growth, however the bad note to this is your corals will loose most of their bright intense colors that you see. Great growth but not the best color.

Once you get the growth you want you will see some growers, frag up their corals and then after a week or two of recovery of the frag they will then move them to another tank to brighten up the colors. This tank has a lower Alk Level around 7-8 and a low nutrient level with really high par. The reason for the high par is to get the zooxanthellae to start reproducing at a high rate, which starts producing extreme colors. So, lets target feed, increase carbs and aminos, and get all of our colors back to being vibrant and amazing looking. Get the flesh big, puffy brightly colored and looking amazing.

So the best of both worlds is running a SPS tank on a mixed tank level, especially if you have other corals. 8-9dkh 400-430 calcium 1350-1410 mag ph 8.15-8.3 phos .05 - .12, Nitrates around 10-15. A lot of people will argue this as everyone has an opinion. My opinion and what we run in our Mixed salts with the addition of our Amino acid/carbohydrate/protein/vitamin/and fatty acid blend along with our high nitrogen food to entice the extra energy the corals need to be able to calcify. These levels are used by most of the aquarist in the industry who keep SPS in their display tanks.

One of the things I would recommend to the OP here is figure out what you are after with your SPS and the rest of the inhabitants in your tank and lets get you to what levels is going to work best for your entire collection of corals.

Hello Harris

First of all, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.

I never imagined that sellers would swap between levels to enhance growth/colors, always thought that everyone kept parameters as stable as they can.


My objective is to be able to reach a level were growth and colours get along, so I will have those Reference
Paramenters you left as a guide for my tank, as I do believe that being in the middle is the best of both worlds.

About the foods, I've been broadcast feeding reef roids 1x a week and Reef Energy AB+ 1x a week (currently trying out Reef Boosters Prodibio that I got on a deal). Should I change this routine? I noticed that if I feed more phosphates will spike cause I don't have a lot of consume yet

 

[ClownSchool]

Hold on. Your phosphate is 8ppm?? I hope that's a typo cuz that's way too high

…sorry. .080 ppm. Down from .208 in the last two weeks when I finally bought the Hanna checker. The chem test kit I used had shown zero on multiple tests despite over-feeding to fight the dinos and I knew that wasn’t right. I’m just starting to learn about accurate stability.
Good news is I’m starting to see some very healthy responses from my SPS.