Suggestions on husbandry for SPS

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by howdy20012002

to be honest, I have never tested my alkalinity in any of my tanks..is it something that actually has to be controlled after the tank is settled?
thanks again for the great responses.
Neal

Hi Neal,

Alkalinity is (IMO) one of the most important parameters to track if you want corals to grow.

Ca and Alk have a bit of a see-saw effect. You need alkalinity in order for calcification to occur. If Ca is the raw materials corals need to use up to grow, Alkalinity is how they can pay for those raw materials. Ie, if you don't got the cash all you can do in the shop is look at what is for sale.

Beyond that, as stated already, things like NO3 and PO4 need to be as low as possible as they interfere with calcification; Mg is important for maintaining Alk, and of course Ca and Alk.

You'd be surprised how quickly Ca can be used up when Alk is good. In my ritteri tank which has no SPS, the only real consumers of Ca and Alk are two clams, and if I keep my Alk at 3.5 meq/l (note - to convert from meq/l to dKH, multiply by 2.8) then the calcium draw is 10ppm per day. Ie, without adding any Ca additives every day, the Ca reading decrements by 10.

Add a few SPS into the equation and they will suck up that Ca and Alk like crazy. This is where the convenience of a calcium reactor comes in. However by no means is a reactor mandatory of course, but not much compares to the convenience factor of a dialed-in reactor.

Bear in mind though that it's a bit of art as well as a science. (Hi Wendell! I'm stealing your quote.) You can have nearly perfect parameters and not maintain SPS. (Welcome to my world, BTW.) There's a lot more than meets the eye, pests, predators, pathogens, allelopathy .. and so on and et cetera.

Actually, allelopathy is a big one that is easily overlooked. Allelopathy is the ability of one organism to impede the growth of another competing organism. And there's a LOT of it going on in the reef. Have caulerpa? Guess what, it impedes the growth of SPS. Have softeys? Anemones? Etc. etc. Basically a "mixed garden" approach (ie. a little bit of everything - soteys, LPS, SPS, .. etc.) is sure to have a lot of it going on. Short of maintaining systems that are designed to favour one thing (ie. softeys tank, SPS tank, no overlapping) there's not a whole lot I think you can do. Water changes, carbons, maybe resins .. It's not a perfectly understood phenomenon among even the more advanced aquarists (again IMO - hope I'm not insulting anyone).

Anyhow all I really intended was to say "Alkalinity is important" and it seems I branched out a bit. So I'll stop yakking for now. Anyhow, good luck. I'll tell you it sure is a great feeling having a nice SPS tank. It's been a while since I was there but I remember the good old days:

(My 75g as it was in 2004 before I moved. One day I hope I'll be back there again..)

[Delphinus]

Ok, there were 2 pages of posts past the part that I was responding to. So that part where I said I'll stop talking? Yeah, um .. ok, I'll stop talking after THIS post.

A calcium reactor will add Ca and Alk in a balanced manner. Ie. for every 10 ppm Ca, you get 0.1 meq/l.

Kalk impacts Alk more directly than Ca.

Running both is, as Harvey said, really the best of both worlds. It's not just pH control, for one it helps maintain Alk, but also kalk also helps precipitate PO4. Also, I'm not sure about this 100%, but I think dripping kalk helps your skimmers skim better.

There! Now I've said my piece and I'll stop now. One thing to bear in mind that with my comments, I'm a blind man telling you what an elephant looks like. I haven't had a decent SPS tank in years. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. So don't listen to a word I have to say!

[michika]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

I'm a blind man telling you what an elephant looks like. I haven't had a decent SPS tank in years. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. So don't listen to a word I have to say!

I just giggled in class...oops...you are too funny Tony