Where do you keep your nutrients for high end SPS coloration?

[eraserhead187]

Do me a favor and ask him if he'd mind relocating to southern Indiana! ;Joyful ;Joyful

I should have snapped a pic. It's all tall tower and shelf Carib Sea purple rock, tank is three feet deep, IIRC, and the long view ended up looking like a skull with two eye sockets. We said, "two big bright bubble corals for eyes and a giant red goni for the brain, torches, hammers and frogspawn all over for hair with two LED spot lights shinning into the bubbles and goni to light up the skull within. I can't wait to see what this turns into.

He has an even larger tank than the sps tank at the shop that is dedicated to soft corals, anemones and big fish people end up trading in due to growing to large. It gives a novice or non diver an idea just how big tangs, angelfish and some wrasses get.

 

[biecacka]

0.10-0.15. It dropped to 0.05 yesterday but I fixed that.

How did you “fix” that?

corey

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

How did you “fix” that?

corey

Well actually I had just done a 30% WC several hours before I tested, so I guess I didn’t do anything special to raise it besides feeding.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Polyp Booster from polyp lab is a simple way to raise no3/po4 for those of you wanting to raise your nutrient levels.

 

[Rick5]

Polyp Booster from polyp lab is a simple way to raise no3/po4 for those of you wanting to raise your nutrient levels.

Better than mysis, blood worms or deer excrement, though?

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Better than mysis, blood worms or deer excrement, though?

Better than mysis.
Not sure about the deer blood or worm excrement

 

[Ernie C]

Hi all, so i struggle to get nutrients up, usually the hover at about 2ppm of no3 and .02 ppm of po4. I don't have a sand bed and only run a skimmer to bring in outside air for ph, yet I have to dose nitrates and phosphates (seachem) to keep them from getting too low, but have always worried of dosing too much. My sps seem ok and have decent color but i feel they don't get enough nutrients. I have a reefer 350 Mixed reef, mostly sps, few lps and a few zoas. have about 10 fish, few emerald crabs, sally lightfoot, 20 turbo snails, several bumble bee snails, banded shrimp. I feed 3 frozen cubes daily of mysis, brine and blood worms. Any suggestions and if i were to raise them, does it have to be done slowly. Going to upgrade in a few weeks to a 180 waterbox and don't want the nutrients to zero out since half the new water will be newly mixed.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

3 cubes of each or 1 cube of each. If 3 cubes total I would say feed 4. I think you should get more fish. I have 15 fish in my 50 gallon cube and feed 3 cubes, a full sheet of nori, phyto plankton, and some other coral/amino liquid foods every day.

 

[Pennywise the Clown]

I'm currently running my nutrients at 15 and 0.15.
Is there any particular alk range to suit these numbers? My alk is at 8 at present and I'm still fighting burnt tips on the odd acro frag.

 

[pygoplites77]

Corals with comic book names that have rainbow colors under all blue LEDs and go for rediculous amounts of money per frag

Holy words

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Heavy in and heavy out is most important for sps followed by an appropriate alk for the residual no3/po4. I believe most of sps struggles come from the lack of ammonia/ammonium, not no3/po4. They whip out their test kits and get 10 no3 and 0.12 and what do they do? They usually freak out. They grab a bottle of nopox or a gfo reactor or start feeding less because they’ve been brain washed that sps can’t survive in those conditions. The reaction/starvation kills the sps not the actual elevated measurement.

I remember back years ago, for some reason it was burned in my brain that po4 was bad. I ran gfo all the time and for three straight years tried to keep acros alive. threw the gfo away and let po4 rise and have had no issues since. My tank has always run low until a recent nitrate spike; I had to dose po4 to bring them down. I’ve never been able to find success with nutrients low like some others in this thread, leaving it along and sticking around 10 no3 and 0.02 po4 had been my sweet spot. If my po4 drops lower than 6pbb on my Hanna I usually see my sps suffer.

 

[gurthystag]

Sps coral have a terrible mechanism for absorbing phosphate. The reason these ulns have so much success is the delivery method to the corals themselves. Carbon dosing and other bacterial methods produce bacteria that consume p04. In return the bacterium are consumed by the coral, which is the most efficient way sps can receive p04. You can have low p04 as long as you have a heavy bacterial population in the water column containing some po4. Without this, it would be more beneficial to keep po4 around 0.06 to even 0.15. Nitrate for me has been tricky, my tank consumes nitrate much faster. My numbers are 0.10 p04 to 2 ppm nitrate. I struggle to keep it at 2 ppm. Earlier in this thread some discussed ammonia benefits to sps. It is note worthy that most calcium nitrate solutions contain small trace amounts of ammonia. By dosing calcium nitrate you are giving the coral both. I do dose 0.3 ml of vodka daily, which doesn't drastically affect nutrients but it does give the bacteria a daily boost and support coral health.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Sps coral have a terrible mechanism for absorbing phosphate. The reason these ulns have so much success is the delivery method to the corals themselves. Carbon dosing and other bacterial methods produce bacteria that consume p04. In return the bacterium are consumed by the coral, which is the most efficient way sps can receive p04. You can have low p04 as long as you have a heavy bacterial population in the water column containing some po4. Without this, it would be more beneficial to keep po4 around 0.06 to even 0.15. Nitrate for me has been tricky, my tank consumes nitrate much faster. My numbers are 0.10 p04 to 2 ppm nitrate. I struggle to keep it at 2 ppm. Earlier in this thread some discussed ammonia benefits to sps. It is note worthy that most calcium nitrate solutions contain small trace amounts of ammonia. By dosing calcium nitrate you are giving the coral both. I do dose 0.3 ml of vodka daily, which doesn't drastically affect nutrients but it does give the bacteria a daily boost and support coral health.

Thats some sound knowledge!

 

[jmichaelh7]

I keep my po4 around .08 and no3 at 15. And find everything much happier than when I kept things lower. My question for you is how do you keep Cyano at bay

How do you keep your nitrate that high without disrupting the red field or ‘term’ used for ratio of phosphate to nitrate .

I thought if nitrate goes above phosphate immediately you have cyano and red cyano

 

[gurthystag]

I'm not undertaker but I can tell you cyano has been in my tank at low nutrients. I don't believe cyano should be thought of in terms of nutrients but instead bio bactiv diversity. These organisms compete for the upper hand and the most numerous prevail. I have not seen cyano since adding real ocean rock from the gulf and dosing vodka to encourage the population of beneficial bacteria. My best guess observation is that I have great bacterial bio diversity and balance outcompeting cyano and dino.