Need some help with browning out sps

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by 04V10

Hey guys,

I was wondering if I could get some guidance on 2 pieces of sps that I have in my 20 gallon. I have another piece in there that is nice and green and has awesome polyp extension, however the other two not so much. When I bought them from the store they were nice and blue and pink in color, however in my tank they have browned out. I have had them for about 4 months and there is a bunch of growth on them and the polyps were looking good.

I have had them under radions since the beginning of August at 38% and figured that the extra light could help them out. So I upped the lighting to 45%. After doing that, the polyps would not come out on one of them, and the polyps were just visible on the other. I left them like this for about a week with no improvement in color or polyp extension. So I put the lights back to 38% and right away the polyps came out again.

I have another thread on here asking about dosing so I'm wondering if that is my issue but here are my params as of tonight.
pH 8.0
alk 6.8 - 7 dKH
Ca 400
Mg 1280
PO4 slight coloration in my test. (red sea test kit)
0 Nitrates

Would my params be causing any issues with the browning coloration in the tank?

I do run an HOB skimmer, an AC70 modded with a fuge with chaeto running lights 24hrs live rock and chemi pure elite. I have sufficient flow in the tank and the flow on the sps corals is strong (not too strong) and turbulent.

I do have some bubble algae in the tank and scrape the glass every 2-3 days of algae.

Do you think that it's the PO4 in the tank that is causing the brownish color? If so, what could I run to help drop this issue?

Any suggestions would be great. Thanks.

is it just a ac110 for your only flow, no powerheads??

[reefwars]

i think your problem is not enough flow , which is not pushing enough into your filtration.

a hob skimmer only pulls out what it can suck around it , powerheads help keep stuff suspended so the skimmer pulls it out.


i wouldnt rely on just my skimmer output and ac for flow.

[04V10]

Originally Posted by reefwars

i think your problem is not enough flow , which is not pushing enough into your filtration.

a hob skimmer only pulls out what it can suck around it , powerheads help keep stuff suspended so the skimmer pulls it out.


i wouldnt rely on just my skimmer output and ac for flow.

Hey guys,

It's not the only flow that I have in the tank. Maybe I should have added all of the equipment in my first post. I also have a koralia 240, and a hydor 180 kickin flow around.

[daniella3d]

I doubt it. I don't have much flow in my tank. I have 5ppm of nitrates and quite a bit of phosphates, yet my SPS have great colors and they grow fast, under 250 watt Pheonix MH.

Some of them grow a lot and there is so little flow that you bearely see the polyps moving.

Polyps are out so much that I cannot see the skeleton of the coral (milleporas).

I would think it's the light here that is the problem. Probably the coral need acclimatation to the new light. When I moved a few frags of SPS to my 20 gallons tank with T5HO they became brown and are still brown to this day, but in that aquarium I have nearly 0 nitrates and phosphates and a lot of flow, plus a Deltec 300 skimmer. It's wierd sometime how they react. Maybe once a SPS get used to a type of light it will take a long time to adjust to another light? dunno. I wanted T5HO so that I could have low nutrient system with pastel color corals. I never hapened.

Originally Posted by reefwars

i think your problem is not enough flow , which is not pushing enough into your filtration.

a hob skimmer only pulls out what it can suck around it , powerheads help keep stuff suspended so the skimmer pulls it out.


i wouldnt rely on just my skimmer output and ac for flow.

[reefwars]

[quote=daniella3d;750737]I doubt it. I don't have much flow in my tank. I have 5ppm of nitrates and quite a bit of phosphates, yet my SPS have great colors and they grow fast, under 250 watt Pheonix MH.

Some of them grow a lot and there is so little flow that you bearely see the polyps moving.

Polyps are out so much that I cannot see the skeleton of the coral (milleporas).

quote]

ok .....fine ill play.... so your using just a ac110 for flow in your tank and a hob skimmer? cause if not then your comparrison is void to what i was talking about.



and let me see if i got this right but this is what your saying is perfect sps conditions??

"I don't have much flow in my tank. I have 5ppm of nitrates and quite a bit of phosphates, yet my SPS have great colors and they grow fast, under 250 watt Pheonix MH"


5ppm nitrates, quite a bit of phos and bright light....ill have to make a note of that i guess ive been going about it the wrong way all these years...thanks for the awesome tip maybe now my sps will grow to be oh so colorfull and wondeful too:P

not sure if you read the thread , i was going off the origional post where it doesnt say he is using powerheads....and YES you do need good flow if you want good growth and color, not critical to keep it alive in which there is a big difference.

[Aquattro]

Flow, to me, isn't that important for color. Or growth for that matter, if you're not concerned with thick natural growth. SPS in alow flow will grow very skinny and spindly, but will grow.
Lighting is important, not too much, not too little. Some nutrient is fine, many SPS tanks have some nitrate and measurable phosphate. As Levi said, stability is important, and tougher in a small tank. Not impossible, but not ideally managed by someone with less experience growing SPS. I've seen nice nanos with colorful acros, but I imagine it's much tougher.
Really, there's lots of ways to be successful and lots of ways to not be. The trick it to find that sweet spot for your setup and habits. All the info, together or in part will give someone a place to begin figuring it all out.
Daniella has shown pics of her corals and they;re impressive. I would be less quick to dismiss her advice.

[Rice Reef]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Flow, to me, isn't that important for color. Or growth for that matter, if you're not concerned with thick natural growth. SPS in alow flow will grow very skinny and spindly, but will grow.
Lighting is important, not too much, not too little. Some nutrient is fine, many SPS tanks have some nitrate and measurable phosphate. As Levi said, stability is important, and tougher in a small tank. Not impossible, but not ideally managed by someone with less experience growing SPS. I've seen nice nanos with colorful acros, but I imagine it's much tougher.
Really, there's lots of ways to be successful and lots of ways to not be. The trick it to find that sweet spot for your setup and habits. All the info, together or in part will give someone a place to begin figuring it all out.
Daniella has shown pics of her corals and they;re impressive. I would be less quick to dismiss her advice.

+1 on lighting and stabilityg. When one of my radions died me the sps and zoas under the dea radion started to lose its colours. I had recently increased the flow in the tank and find that all the corals are liking it more.

[daniella3d]

Perfect SPS conditions? there seem to be a range of "perfect" SPS conditions since mine are growing like weeds in these conditions.

I have 2 koralia in my 75 gallons, that's it. No sump so no return pump and flow from that. So some part of my tank only receive very little flow and some SPS there are not even waving their polyps so that's really not much flow. I keep thinking they will die, but they don't.

If your SPS have poor colors, then not sure what is your problem. I am sure you will figure it out

Again, I don't have much flow and I have great colors and growth. They don't juste stay alive, they thrive.

So what makes the colors then? I would say light and stability is more important than flow. The difference I can see is that my corals are darker in color than those kept in ULN, but they are colorfull still.

Also the colors improved a lot when I started to use Zeovit Coral amino and coral vite, that was 2 years ago.

I did not know that the OP had no powerhead and no flow. That must be a problem to even keep corals alive, never mind the colors.





[quote=reefwars;750763]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

and let me see if i got this right but this is what your saying is perfect sps conditions??

"I don't have much flow in my tank. I have 5ppm of nitrates and quite a bit of phosphates, yet my SPS have great colors and they grow fast, under 250 watt Pheonix MH"


5ppm nitrates, quite a bit of phos and bright light....ill have to make a note of that i guess ive been going about it the wrong way all these years...thanks for the awesome tip maybe now my sps will grow to be oh so colorfull and wondeful too:P

not sure if you read the thread , i was going off the origional post where it doesnt say he is using powerheads....and YES you do need good flow if you want good growth and color, not critical to keep it alive in which there is a big difference.

[04V10]

The op who is me has lots of flow. I posted this in another post. 1 240 koralia, 1 180 hydor, and the a.c. 70. Don't mean to call you out on this, but it was posted. Lol n

[quote=daniella3d;750958]Perfect SPS conditions? there seem to be a range of "perfect" SPS conditions since mine are growing like weeds in these conditions.

I have 2 koralia in my 75 gallons, that's it. No sump so no return pump and flow from that. So some part of my tank only receive very little flow and some SPS there are not even waving their polyps so that's really not much flow. I keep thinking they will die, but they don't.

If your SPS have poor colors, then not sure what is your problem. I am sure you will figure it out

Again, I don't have much flow and I have great colors and growth. They don't juste stay alive, they thrive.

So what makes the colors then? I would say light and stability is more important than flow. The difference I can see is that my corals are darker in color than those kept in ULN, but they are colorfull still.

Also the colors improved a lot when I started to use Zeovit Coral amino and coral vite, that was 2 years ago.

I did not know that the OP had no powerhead and no flow. That must be a problem to even keep corals alive, never mind the colors.

[asylumdown]

I'm going to guess you're problem is pretty heavily skewed towards the lighting. I don't think you're giving them enough. In my experience, corals brown out and lose colour when they don't get enough light (just turn a coral that's been in your tank for a while upside down and look at the normally shaded tissues under your tank lights!), but they will still extend their polyps. When they get too much light they will bleach out. I know it's only a 20 gallon, but 38% is really low for a radion over SPS if it's mounted the standard 8 inches above the water surface.

I know you dropped the lighting intensity because you saw the polyps react to the increase in light. Polyps are the most sensitive part of the coral, so when you increase lighting intensity it's going to take them a while to adapt and start coming back out again (maybe days to weeks). So long as the coral isn't bleaching or being damaged in any way that's fine. It may also be true that the intensity of the light that is required to get them to colour up properly may be high enough that they never really extend their polyps that much during the day. There are dozens of corals that only really send their polyps out for the 'full show' at night, so if I were you, I wouldn't worry about the moment to moment reaction of the polyps, but instead slowly increase the light by about 5% a week (or every 10 days even), so long as the corals show no sign of bleaching.

FWIW, I have 8 radions over SPS running at a peak intensity of 78% at 12K (all channels at 100%) for 6 hours every day. All of my corals go through a serious adjustment once they go in to my tank, but they all adjust. If I was being fair, I'd say the "full" adjustment for a piece of SPS under my radions is about 2 months, and in that time they usually change colour significantly from when I bought them - thankfully usually for the better. They also usually go through a week or more where they barely show their polyps at all, but they all get over it.