Are these good parameter's?

[spawn]

What happens to the coloration when para's are held at 10-11, 450,1300. Does it become washed out due to the faster calcification of the coral or is it from the concentration in the w/column with precip? & with the extreme growth they'll be very brittle? So yep pretty happy still over here.

Originally Posted by Navarchus

Well usually for growth I keep ALK around 10-11 dKH and CA around 450 MG 1300.
I have friends that wanted an extreme growth, so they went on 500-550 PPm of CA and ALK of around 14dKH.

The thing is that with these parameters you will get the skeleton growing faster than the coral tissue, and you will get thin finger like corals.

[Navarchus]

The thing is that you probably keep some of the colors as the color has a direct link to the nutrients in the water and as long you keep the nutrients very low your corals won’t become brown. But….in order to get the bright colors you need to force the coral to invest its energy in production of color proteins instead of growth, the only way to do it is to keep parameters in a range that the coral can survive but with very kittle growth.

I must say that you can enjoy both of the worlds at the same time but in the price of not getting the full potential. Keep low nutriments with alk of 8 and ca- 420-430 will get you there. And do remember that low nutrients means that the zooxanthellae is in very low concentration in the coral, therefore can’t provide him with energy so feeding is important.