I Suck at SPS. Help please. :(

[Enigma]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

This is where it gets tough online. I completely disagree with this. So now what is Shelley supposed to think? I don't feed, I've been throwing frags out the window stuff is growing so fast.
Sufficient light, feed the fish, regular water changes and then stand back and watch them grow!

I've really cut back on feeding my fish, too. I've gone from three frozen cubes a day (lots of variety) to two frozen cubes every two days (mysis and cyclopeeze). The fish and most coral are still doing very well. Some stuff looks better than ever (but not the SPS).

My line of thinking is certainly inline with Daniella's, but my experience is limited.

That in a handful of weeks I've gone from needing to clean the glass daily, and having an army of stomatella snails, to not needing to clean my glass (or powerheads, or overflow, . . . ) and not having a single stomatella snail visible, leads me to conclude that feeding the SPS could prove to be beneficial. Had the change been gradual I may not feel the same. While maybe not required under optimal circumstances, I'm certainly not dealing with optimum circumstances.

[Enigma]

Originally Posted by camaro7019

Its your ai sols, they are not on bright enough, i had this problem with mine, i switched from 2 150 watt metal halides to 2 ai sol's and i started them at 50% on blue royal and white 12" from water, i started getting rapid tissue necrosis on my main acropora colony, i thought maybe it was to much light, but then i noticed my green star polyps were going brown, i still thought too much light but i thought na cant be, so i kicked them up to 80% guess what, it was the light lol my green starts are growing so fast, my sps are growing like crazy!!! turn your lights up man, atleast to 50-60%

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Ya, I gotta agree with that. While that might have been a good starting value, I would of ramped those up a bit every few days until you got to at least 60% range.
Mine are 6 inches off the water and 100/100/85 and we've all been discussing how that maybe isn't enough light to keep the colors where they were.

That is so counter intuitive when I've got bleached corals! I've asked for advice, so I'll do it.

Can I do 1% per day?

[Aquattro]

I don't have experience going from T5 to the Sols, but I started my sols at 65/65/65 and went to 100/100/85 over 7 or 8 days. You could probably do 5% every couple of days.
As for feeding, sure, maybe it helps fine tune corals, I don't think so, but really, until you've got the basic fish food light combo worked out, i wouldn't be adding any extras to the soup.
Simply up the feeding of the fish a bit. So what if you get a bit of algae on your glass every couple days, takes 10 seconds to wipe with a mag float.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Enigma

That is so counter intuitive when I've got bleached corals! I've asked for advice, so I'll do it.

Can I do 1% per day?

We don't know they're bleached from too much light, and in fact, I'm pretty sure you could ramp those suckers up to 200% across the board and not bleach SPS. Sure, too much too quickly can bleach them, but I'm guessing they've just faded from lack of light. If you leave an acro in an unlit tank for 2 weeks, you're going to get a white coral.

[Aquattro]

All this talk of light has me playing with mine now Cranked white up to 90%.

[molotov]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

All this talk of light has me playing with mine now Cranked white up to 90%.

HAHA......that's to funny. I'm now doing the same thing.

[Enigma]

You guys!

I'm not going to have any sand bed left in a week with all of the siphoning I'm going to have to do to get rid of the cyano at higher lighting levels! I would say the health of the corals is more important than the sand, though.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Enigma

You guys!

I'm not going to have any sand bed left in a week with all of the siphoning I'm going to have to do to get rid of the cyano at higher lighting levels! I would say the health of the corals is more important than the sand, though.

Well, the cyano is not a result of the light. I have no cyano, my lights are cranked. The cyano is something else that is feeding on something in the tank. So you siphon it and manage nutrients until it out consumes itself, and then it dies off. Adding things like chemiclean is just a band-aid for people that don't have the patience to fix it properly. Sure, it looks like crap for a while, but you come out the other end of the battle with a better tank and more experience in the hobby. Nothing good happens fast is a rule right across the board...removing cyano overnight is not a good thing. Take more of a holistic approach and accept that some months the take will rock, some months, not so much. Just deal with it in it's proper time frame and enjoy the process.

[Enigma]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

We don't know they're bleached from too much light, and in fact, I'm pretty sure you could ramp those suckers up to 200% across the board and not bleach SPS. Sure, too much too quickly can bleach them, but I'm guessing they've just faded from lack of light. If you leave an acro in an unlit tank for 2 weeks, you're going to get a white coral.

I did not know that. It totally makes sense now, but I just hadn't thought about it that way.

How about my green birdsnest? The polyps are green, and most of the branches are its normal tan/brown colour, but a few branches are white.

I've cranked the whites up to 25 and the blues and royal blues up to 30.

[Aquattro]

The birdsnest is maybe just tougher, in a slightly better spot, etc, who knows. My GBN is solid bright green, about mid level in tank, so let's say 15 inches from the light.
Your current levels are somewhere around my mid sunrise, which is rather dim. Mine are also closer to the water. Get them up to 75/75/60 over the next 10 days or so and re-evaluate. Oh, and my full mid day is about 7 hours...