Where are good sps tank?

[chrissu]

Iggy, How's your SPS growing this month?

[iggy]

Hi Guys,

Just letting the tank continue to grow. Overall I am pleased with results. These comments may mislead you to think otherwise though.

I am running a display tank dominated with SPS hence my post titles looking for some direction. There are not much out there for developed SPS running this type of systems I am afraid, at least being posted anywhere. I only had a few LPS and here are there results.

Based on troubles I had with LPS only I now run a modified ATS system and moved LPS else where. Scolyoma died rapidly. It was rapid white tissue decay. I do attribute it to the filter change over. Autrea's have closed up and do not open a they were doing well before and feeding readily. Old large pectinia with had very interesting night feeding was in a declining condition as well before moving it and it is now recovering. Large ones like that are hard to find.

However, coralline algae accelerated, nitrates are <0.25 N-NO3 by Lamotte and actually lower visiually. Phosphates are 0.03 or o.02 depending on blank by Hana LR Meter.

Yellow Eye Kole Tang developed a slight bristletooth look on mouth. Rabbitfish had it and it recovered. It appears to eat healthy and I suspect it is recovering and I started skimming to pull bacteria from water. I did not move it based on a judgement call.

BUT

All sps are in excellent health and seem to like the higher DOC and lower nutrient levels. I do very gently skim as I am running a display tank. I have increased two part by 25% and still monitoring closely. The conditions in the tank now highly favor SPS growth. I essentially replaced large refugium with ATS and stopped carbon and GFO.

I will keep this system through out year and monitor closely and photograph growth. I do have many nice corals to develop. I am not a fragger unless I need new bulbs.

I do not run any special additives other than feeding a lot. I scrape filter back every sat or fri night heavily with an automotive scraper and run brush over slot to limit spray from back pressure. Ideally I would have two screens and clean twice a week, but heavier scraping results in heavier growth it appears.

I may add Iron with a Eheim liquidoser daily in future.

[apt220]

Good thread. Any updates?

[iggy]

Thanks! Will follow up with pictures sometime.

Dosing pumps have doubled. I use BRS Drew's doser for 50 min each on a 140 display tank. Observations this month on tank are slight amount of cyano is growing ONLY on back wall. This surprises me as I have two Tunze 6105's and Eheim 1262 Sump pump. I scraped it off in 5 minutes. As always it is not a controlled experiment in anyway and rear T5 bulb was changed to Korel Pink bulb for coloration.Did not install Electronic Control sump pump for alternating flow because I am saving for Apex controller that would have greater control over pump.

This weeks scrapping I went a bit further and removed more than 95% of algae to keep growth strong. I did notice a stronger growth on the glass. but then dry skimmer mysteriously overflowed wet this week too.

Growth is definately good on SPS.

I do a few things differently to maintain tank. I run a detritus storm with power heads and along with Tetra Diatomagic filter. This keeps algae I scrap off mechanically filtered as well. I run for 2-3 hours and clean and put away for 4-6 weeks. Heavy brown film is collected. from particles of mulm. Have not run GFO or carbon and keep algae cropped back regularly. I am getting exceptional growth on ORA Spongodis. Blue Iris and Borealis and purple rim capricornis.

Overflows in Oceanic Tank are filled with life. Very little algae but encrusted with Corraline, new sponges, and fuzzy feathery mats on pipe I can not identify. Also has white dots everywhere. Might be barnicles, along with 100's of baby snails.

White tuft of mouth of Yellow Eye Kole Tang healed. I suspect it was from spikes on rabbit fish it swims around with.

Only thing that bothered me was comments by Anthony Calfo I reread in his recent propogation book. He refered to ATS along with refugiums need very careful watching and care needs to be taken not to let ATS grow to point of competing with corals. He clearly did not recommend for monocultures for propogation. While he has much more experience than me I do know my 140 has always ran better when a 20 gallon tall refugium using 70 watt halide growing cropped chatemorpha was used, as well as ATS this fall.

[apt220]

Thank you for sharing you experiences. Has color changed much after starting the scrubber?

[SantaMonica]

A few things:

When you start dosing dead food, as opposed to live food, you are adding nutrients along with the food. The nutrients go into the water column immediately, and are picked up by the cyano before the water even gets a chance to go to the scrubber. So you will start noticing, as I have, that the more you dose, the more thin cyano you get in the darker or lower areas (has nothing to do with your lights). Interestingly, how strong your scrubber is does not matter, because the cyano gets the nutrients before the water ever gets to the scrubber. So, for highly-dosed tanks (which is a new area for reefing), the ways to combat this are:

1. Dose really slowly, so that the standing-amount of nutrinets in the tank never get too high before they can overflow into the scrubber.

2. Design an ultra-high flow scrubber system, so that as soon as you dose, the nutrients do not get a chance to "sit" in the tank...they instead are pulled immediately into the scrubber, repeatedly. This means that the entire volume of the tank would need to pass through the scrubber every 10 or 20 seconds. This level of flow would make the return pump look small.

3. Dose into the input of the scrubber, so at least it gets one pass through the scrubber before coming into contact with the cyano in the tank.

4. (Best but hardest solution)... Dose live food only. If you do this, you can ignore the above three items.


As for Anthony, unfortunately he is wrong; the more algae you have in your system, the more it approaches a natural reef (which is 90 percent algae), and the more protein, amino acids, and food particles it will have for coral growth, and the lower the nutrients will be.

[iggy]

As far as colors go, they are very good. Tyree Sunset Montipora and Orange Montipora with white base stand out now. It seems nitrates can effect coloration and SPS respond in 2-3 months time with lower levels.

As for food I use a lot; Average day
10-15 cc oyster feed daily
1 cube H2O Caviar- Roe eggs
2 cubes pollock with spirulina
2 cubes H20 Coral Food - mix
1 cube frozen rotifer
1 chunk mysis
1/2 sheet nori every other day

I thaw it in hot water and do a very quick rinse in brine shrimp net. Enough to lose nutrient rich water and keep food behind. This eliminates a lot of nutrients. Not home enough to dose (food) but would make sense. Rotifers are difficult to screen and I don't have that much patience normally.

Cyano was mild overall but certainly present. I am aware that blue-green algae thrives in fresh water tanks with high phosphates and low nitrates. It is fixed by water changes and potassium nitrates. It is entirely like Cyano can be limited by adding nitrates back to favor growth of other algaes. I am reluctant to do this however. Only 1 ppm in tank might be necessary. I would prefer to lightly scrape 1X per month if necessary instead of anything drastic.

[sklywag]

I also get/have Cyano in my tank. Comes and goes in what some may call severity but never out of control. If it were a nuscience I'd maybe be upset, but it is never out of control so I consider it part of my reef. Unless I know we're having company in a couple of days in which I add some Red Slime remover and it dissapates for a good week or so.

[iggy]

My issue is more of a long term care concern when compared algae present in what Coral Magazine/Shimek called anorexic in recent issue. I am trying a few things that may not help situation. Flow is very high with two 6105's and eheim 1262 on 140.

Carrying over from growing vascular plants, Blue Green algae exists when phosphates are not limited compared with nitrates. In a low nutrient reef it is possible that phosphate spikes from food are enough to enable cyano to get a foothold.

A few long term techniques I am considering are

1) Tank will have 2-3 consecutive days without halides per month. Cyano is known to deteriorate fast without light with new controller.
2) Sump is connected to ATS and Tank. ATS should be above tank ideally.
3) Increase lighting to 1.5 watts per gallon from 0.7 watts per gallon on ATS
4) very reluctantly add a nitrogen source to have algae out compete cyano more effectively (Is amino acids possible?)
5) live with it :? ?

[sklywag]

Looks as though I've already chosen #5.

Everyone(popular sites) states it's from low flow. I never thought it was flow for I have lots of flow and still get it. As stated in #1, have noticed it comes and goes daily with lights. In the morning it will be faint but by the end of the day more prominent. The run the same course again the next day. I run T5s. And I'm sure the food I buy is garbage. But the fish and corals enjoy it and it's really all about them.