Coral Question
 

Looking for some suggestions/answers. I've had my tank now for about 2 years and don't seem to have much luck with a couple of things.

1) Can't seem to get any coral besides zenia and "gsp types" to grow. For example, I bought a three head frogspawn 2 months ago and it is already down to two heads. The two that are left seem to be very "wilted".

2) Can't get chaeto to grow either. I've had the same ball in my sump for a year and it doesn't grow. I'm thinking it might be a fake plant ;).

Water parameters all seem to be good. Lighting is a corallife 150W MH/PC. Good flow....... umm any suggestions?

How deep is your tank? Have you thought about upgrading your lamp/ballasts? How old are your lamps? Can you list your water parameters?
Not that I want to bash coralife but i upgraded my lamps to Ushio and saw a huge diffrence. I then upgraded my ballasts to PFO and again there was a huge diffrence in light quality.

I have to agree with parkinsn...I upgraded my MH lamp to other non-coralife bulbs (even cheap chinese ones seemed better) and I modded my light to have 4 x T5HO from the PC's and suddenly growth started for me much better.

Even if his lights are sub-par he should still be able to keep Frogspawn. Please list all the parameters you test for, and what they are sitting at. Including temp and salinity. List what you have for filtration and what medias you use.

more info
 

The halide is an XM 10,000K that is a couple of months old. The PC are about 1 year old and are the standard Corallife 50/50s.

Salinity is 1.022
Temp approx. 81

I don't really keep the params for the standard tests. I just do the tests and make sure they are within the kits "normal". Which tests in particular should I be looking at? I will redo the tests and post them as soon as I can. I am a little lax on testing, ussually once a month.

Tank is approx 60G
24 X 27 X 18 high
Sump
16 X 34 X 16 high
Light in the sump is a T5HO

Its weird. Everything else seems to be happy and healthy including my clam and my anmone.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Keep em coming.

I've been using the XM bulbs for a few years now. When I tried the 10000k bulb my tank started a huge algae bloom. Nothing else had changed. The corals were ok but really didn't grow that much. Switching to the 15000k bulb produced much better results and I'm about to test the 20000k bulbs to see how that works.

What would everyone recommend for a bulb? The original was a 14K this is a 10K......... 150W

Water is of good quality? Temp swings?

Water Quality seems fine. Temps do not swing. Almost always 81-82

PS if anyone wants to come over and help with this I'm always open....... :lol: