Blah coral colours... any tips?

[doch]

Fair enough... it's worth a shot. On my (low end) hagen test kit I'm showing VERY low nitrates (essentially crystal clear) and a little bit of phosphates but nothing significant... I'll pick up a better kit for both and give it a shot. Thanks for the tip.

[lorenz0]

try cutting back your hours on your lights first. i only run my growing bulbs for 6 hours and than the 22,000k's for an hour before and 2 hours after. also how is your skimming? your system could be high in nutrients

[doch]

Cut back the light? Really? I also run LED's for a few hours after the 22k's go out... that wouldn't have a bad effect would it?

As for skimming, I run a remora C on the back, and I have a secondary skimmer on my Tom PS4 filter. I think I should be ok, but not fantastic. I don't have much more in the way of room for a sump, so I'm stuck with this set up until we move and I get to upgrade!!! I'm usually fairly on top of the water changes, so that helps with the nutrients... I do about 10%/week... when we're not doing reno's (almost done!!!)

[BlueTang<3]

Lowering alk is going to yield better colour, for ur calcium level it should be around 8 for ur tank to be balanced. I run at 400 and 7 great colours.

[High tide]

Do you get good coralline growth? Is that the 48" or 36" fixture? How much food do you feed and how often? What media do you have in your Tom filter?

I agree you need to test your PO4 and NO3 with higher sensitivity test kits. If all your test kits are Hagen I would buy a whole new round of kits. Your parameters could look quite a bit different afterwards.

Provided your bulbs are still young and it's the 48" fixture, I'd say your lighting is adequate. I would swap a fiji purple for a daylight though to raise the PAR.

Feeding your corals could be counterproductive if skimming and waterchanges are not keeping up with the input of nutrients.

[doch]

Originally Posted by High tide

Do you get good coralline growth? Is that the 48" or 36" fixture? How much food do you feed and how often? What media do you have in your Tom filter?


Provided your bulbs are still young and it's the 48" fixture, I'd say your lighting is adequate. I would swap a fiji purple for a daylight though to raise the PAR.

Coraline is not great, it's coming along though. It's the 36" fixture (36"55gal). Bulbs are only about 2 months old... maybe 3. As for food, I give the drops almost every day, marine snow and phyto probably 2-3 times per week (about 2oz of each). The media for the filter, I just use the pre filter stuff, and carbon... I don't recall there being anything in the bottom... maybe bio balls? I'll have to check that out on the weekend.

Thanks Wes, I'll try dropping the Alk some. I had read that the higher the Alk, the better the growth, so I'd been trying to keep it on the high side.

\Thanks for all the ideas guys.

[Dyspnea]

Before you drop money on new test kits, you can ask someone else with "better" test kit too check your water. the hagen test kits could be right, you never know.

[High tide]

Coralline algae is a good indicator of water quality. Assuming all Ca, Alk, and Mg levels are as they read I strongly suspect PO4 and probably NO3.

Sounds like your lighting is a bit too dim to maintain good growth and colour for SPS. You may want to try supplementing with an extra strip or switching some of the dimmer bulbs (fiji purple or blues) with ones with higher par values.

Also, if you're feeding everyday and only doing 10% weekly w/c your skimmers cannot keep up with the nutrient export.

Bio balls are unsuitable in a reef tank because they create NO3 that cannot be converted fast enough, with a better test kit I'm sure it would yield NO3 readings.

First thing to do before you do anything is test the water with new reliable test kits.