frustrated with colour...

[Ruth]

The 2 biggest things that have caused me endless headaches with SPS is nitrates and heat.
Because I have struggled with Nitrates I decided to try and go fishless on my SPS tank. After just over 2 months I added fish as my corals were doing nothing - no growth - no color improvement (if anything losing some color) - no nothing.
Sooooo - I added 2 small fish......well actually I added 7 new fish but 3 of the firefish jumped and the 2 remaining killed the other one. I now have 2 firefish and a mandarin. I feed sparingly as these are the only fish in a 110g tank - with a sump/fuge that probably holds another 40g. of water. I also have 3 cleaner shrimp - 3 peppermint shrimp - 3 camel shrimp and numerous snails. I also have 5 clams in there.
My coral growth has never been better and color is outstanding. Because I ship all of my corals they often arrive browned out or brown out a bit just from the shock of shipping. Everything has colored up so nicely. One acro that arrived totally brown has since turned a bright green and now the tips are showing signs of turning a lighter shade of blue/green. Even my pale yellow acro with purple tips is maintaining it's color.
Every day I dose this tank with Pohl's coral vitalizer and amino acids. I feed phyto about once a week for the clams and also add some of those bottled "pods" (can't remember what they are called right now but from OA). I also feed a variety of flake and homemade frozen mush with frozen cyclopeeze added.
I guess the point of all this rambling is that while corals do need a certain amount of nitrate in order to thrive be very careful as it is just so easy to push this over the top and end up with brown/dead corals.