Need some help with browning out sps

[Rice Reef]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Flow, to me, isn't that important for color. Or growth for that matter, if you're not concerned with thick natural growth. SPS in alow flow will grow very skinny and spindly, but will grow.
Lighting is important, not too much, not too little. Some nutrient is fine, many SPS tanks have some nitrate and measurable phosphate. As Levi said, stability is important, and tougher in a small tank. Not impossible, but not ideally managed by someone with less experience growing SPS. I've seen nice nanos with colorful acros, but I imagine it's much tougher.
Really, there's lots of ways to be successful and lots of ways to not be. The trick it to find that sweet spot for your setup and habits. All the info, together or in part will give someone a place to begin figuring it all out.
Daniella has shown pics of her corals and they;re impressive. I would be less quick to dismiss her advice.

+1 on lighting and stabilityg. When one of my radions died me the sps and zoas under the dea radion started to lose its colours. I had recently increased the flow in the tank and find that all the corals are liking it more.

[daniella3d]

Perfect SPS conditions? there seem to be a range of "perfect" SPS conditions since mine are growing like weeds in these conditions.

I have 2 koralia in my 75 gallons, that's it. No sump so no return pump and flow from that. So some part of my tank only receive very little flow and some SPS there are not even waving their polyps so that's really not much flow. I keep thinking they will die, but they don't.

If your SPS have poor colors, then not sure what is your problem. I am sure you will figure it out

Again, I don't have much flow and I have great colors and growth. They don't juste stay alive, they thrive.

So what makes the colors then? I would say light and stability is more important than flow. The difference I can see is that my corals are darker in color than those kept in ULN, but they are colorfull still.

Also the colors improved a lot when I started to use Zeovit Coral amino and coral vite, that was 2 years ago.

I did not know that the OP had no powerhead and no flow. That must be a problem to even keep corals alive, never mind the colors.





[quote=reefwars;750763]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

and let me see if i got this right but this is what your saying is perfect sps conditions??

"I don't have much flow in my tank. I have 5ppm of nitrates and quite a bit of phosphates, yet my SPS have great colors and they grow fast, under 250 watt Pheonix MH"


5ppm nitrates, quite a bit of phos and bright light....ill have to make a note of that i guess ive been going about it the wrong way all these years...thanks for the awesome tip maybe now my sps will grow to be oh so colorfull and wondeful too:P

not sure if you read the thread , i was going off the origional post where it doesnt say he is using powerheads....and YES you do need good flow if you want good growth and color, not critical to keep it alive in which there is a big difference.

[04V10]

The op who is me has lots of flow. I posted this in another post. 1 240 koralia, 1 180 hydor, and the a.c. 70. Don't mean to call you out on this, but it was posted. Lol n

[quote=daniella3d;750958]Perfect SPS conditions? there seem to be a range of "perfect" SPS conditions since mine are growing like weeds in these conditions.

I have 2 koralia in my 75 gallons, that's it. No sump so no return pump and flow from that. So some part of my tank only receive very little flow and some SPS there are not even waving their polyps so that's really not much flow. I keep thinking they will die, but they don't.

If your SPS have poor colors, then not sure what is your problem. I am sure you will figure it out

Again, I don't have much flow and I have great colors and growth. They don't juste stay alive, they thrive.

So what makes the colors then? I would say light and stability is more important than flow. The difference I can see is that my corals are darker in color than those kept in ULN, but they are colorfull still.

Also the colors improved a lot when I started to use Zeovit Coral amino and coral vite, that was 2 years ago.

I did not know that the OP had no powerhead and no flow. That must be a problem to even keep corals alive, never mind the colors.

[asylumdown]

I'm going to guess you're problem is pretty heavily skewed towards the lighting. I don't think you're giving them enough. In my experience, corals brown out and lose colour when they don't get enough light (just turn a coral that's been in your tank for a while upside down and look at the normally shaded tissues under your tank lights!), but they will still extend their polyps. When they get too much light they will bleach out. I know it's only a 20 gallon, but 38% is really low for a radion over SPS if it's mounted the standard 8 inches above the water surface.

I know you dropped the lighting intensity because you saw the polyps react to the increase in light. Polyps are the most sensitive part of the coral, so when you increase lighting intensity it's going to take them a while to adapt and start coming back out again (maybe days to weeks). So long as the coral isn't bleaching or being damaged in any way that's fine. It may also be true that the intensity of the light that is required to get them to colour up properly may be high enough that they never really extend their polyps that much during the day. There are dozens of corals that only really send their polyps out for the 'full show' at night, so if I were you, I wouldn't worry about the moment to moment reaction of the polyps, but instead slowly increase the light by about 5% a week (or every 10 days even), so long as the corals show no sign of bleaching.

FWIW, I have 8 radions over SPS running at a peak intensity of 78% at 12K (all channels at 100%) for 6 hours every day. All of my corals go through a serious adjustment once they go in to my tank, but they all adjust. If I was being fair, I'd say the "full" adjustment for a piece of SPS under my radions is about 2 months, and in that time they usually change colour significantly from when I bought them - thankfully usually for the better. They also usually go through a week or more where they barely show their polyps at all, but they all get over it.

[04V10]

Asylumdown,

Thanks for the informative post! I have my radion around 13" above the water, plus i have a glass cover on it that I'm tempted to run without. I just had it there to reduce water loss. I'm going to lower my light at the end of this week as i increased the strength 8% on Saturday. I'll keep you guys posted. Thanks a million again guys.

[04V10]

Well here's an update of my current issue. I have raised my lights in output to 48% at their maximum during the day. I have also lowered them to 8" above the water as to where they were supposed to be hanging. Mine were quite high before.

Things were looking pretty good and I have to say my LPS are freakin huge now...lol. I think everybody is liking it. I did see some more polyp extension off of the sps that I was concerned about. However not too much increase in colour, although I know it will take a bit of time with that. Though one is really looking nice and pink like it did in the store and is losing it's brown colour.

Second to that. I did a test on how much elements were being used in the tank, as well, I thought I would increase the elements back to where they were when I started the tank with my Red Sea Coral Pro Salt. So far I have upped the Ca to 445ppm, the Mg is at 1340ppm, and the dKh is up to 8.4.

On that note, as soon as I hit the 8 mark with my dKh the colours all of a sudden popped on the sps that I have been concerned with. I am going to be bringing the dKh up to 11-12 as per the red sea suppliment program that I am using, as well the Ca will be 460, and the Mg will be 1390. I am currently in the process of upping these throughout this week. If things look good I will increase the light slightly after I get my params where I want them. I did notice that I have a high use of alk in my tank throughout the week as it dropped from 8 to 6.4 over the week (this was when I did the test over 7 days to figure out my dosing regime).

Anywho, just thought I'd let you guys know things are looking a bit better and I am hopefully on the road to recovery!!

[coolhandgoose]

That's great news, hope it all works out.

[daniella3d]

YOu are better with the Kh not more than 10 as this can bring a lot of RTN STN in your coral. Too high Kh is a risk for this condition.

Natural sea water is between 6.5 to 7.5, no 11 or 12.

It is also best to maintain a mid range value for the Kh because if your test is off a bit, it won't be so drastic. If you keep it at 12 and your test is off you might reach 14 or more....even 11 is incresing the risk of RTN.

Originally Posted by 04V10

I am going to be bringing the dKh up to 11-12 as per the red sea suppliment program that I am using, as well the Ca will be 460, and the Mg will be 1390. I am currently in the process of upping these throughout this week. If things look good I will increase the light slightly after I get my params where I want them. I did notice that I have a high use of alk in my tank throughout the week as it dropped from 8 to 6.4 over the week (this was when I did the test over 7 days to figure out my dosing regime).

Anywho, just thought I'd let you guys know things are looking a bit better and I am hopefully on the road to recovery!!

[04V10]

Good to know Danielle. The alk is that high in the salt I use. Double check and it matched.

Well if that's the case I'm almost where I wanna be with my alk. Just a little higher and I should be good.