New 45g SPS thread

untamed · #1 11-13-2008, 06:55 PM

I'm beginning to question the "low nutrients = good colour" thing... When I lost my last fish in my previous tank, I just kept the system going with no fish. No fish...no feeding...super low nutrient load...and my coral lost all their colours. During this unintended experiment, I continued with normal water changes and Ca/Alk supplementation.

In my current tank, the coral colour is outstanding and I feed super-heavy. I can't imagine a higher nutrient system. It is puzzling...

Delphinus · #2 11-13-2008, 07:15 PM

My take - it's not so much about "low nutrient" as it is about "low leftover nutrients." If you put in nothing, then it's low nutrient, true, but also the corals have nothing to pull out of what gets put in. In your tank, untamed, you may feed heavy, but what's your NO3? I bet it's pretty low to negligible. So it may not be a "higher nutrient" system per se, it's just a system with a high throttle. High input -> high output.

I dunno, I could just be talking nonsense..

kwirky · #3 11-13-2008, 07:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Delphinus

My take - it's not so much about "low nutrient" as it is about "low leftover nutrients." If you put in nothing, then it's low nutrient, true, but also the corals have nothing to pull out of what gets put in. In your tank, untamed, you may feed heavy, but what's your NO3? I bet it's pretty low to negligible. So it may not be a "higher nutrient" system per se, it's just a system with a high throttle. High input -> high output.

I dunno, I could just be talking nonsense..

So this is a discussion of the definition of a low-nutrient tank, I'm assuming? Myself I have two terms: low-nutrient and zero-nutrient, which are not the same thing. Low-nutrient is a tank with low nitrates and phosphates, while a zero-nutrient tank is zero nitrates and phosphates. Corals tend to adapt easier to low-nutrient systems than zero-nutrient systems but zero-nutrient systems have the most promise for harder to keep colours in some of the new/more rare SPS.

yeah it's what's left over that counts. Feeding a lot isn't too bad if you have fish with high metabolisms and a marauding gang of inverts that eat anything the fish don't. It's about converting the food into something else (usually energy). Also if you have lots of algae that'll lower the nutrients.

As for coral colouration different corals have different requirements. Some people will do awesome with a certain kind of coral yet another doesn't do so well. It's the zero/low nutrient systems that seem to have the highest chance with the largest variety of corals, especially the hard to keep pastel shade variety (the ones that look like they're bleached but they aren't).

From my experience at the store, SPS don't do well in any of the tanks with large numbers of fish because the nitrates are VERY hard to keep under 20 in those tanks. Even some of the "reef" tanks have nitrates around 10 and the SPS brown out in those. The best success so far has been in a tank running zeovit with 2-4 fish at the most and zero liverock. Liverock die-off contributes to nutrients as well and I've found liverock dies off for even 6 months.