"Hi, Shane. You mentioned you changed lighting. Were your corals doing well
before the change?"
No, not necessarily. Most have actually colored up very nicely since the
change, however, growth seems to have always been an issue. I went home and
really looked again, and saw that the green acro has really lost a lot of
color and has not grown at all. Very very pale. The hydno has not really
lost much more color over the last couple of weeks, but has not really grown
since introduced to the tank (4-5 months ago). As mentioned, it really
extends it polyps, pretty much 24-7. I gave it lots of space, and it gets a
nice surge of water via a Sea Swirl every 30 seconds or so. Both the acro
and hydno are right up on top of the reef, in between the 2 MHs where the
light concentration is the highest. The tank is the 70 gallon with 2-275
watt MHs and 4 - 36" vhos. Total wattage is over 10 watts per gallon. It is
22 inches tall.
Parameters are:
Alk. 4.4-4.6 meq
Cal. 440-450 ppm
Ph - 8.1-8.3 (7.9 at night)
A/N/N All zeros
PO4 ???? I do not have a test for this, and have never ran any type of
removal resin.
As for food, I do feed all my corals. Generally is what I feed is phyto and
I also squirt them with the very fine particulate left over from frozen
foods. This is done almost daily.
When I put all of these frags into the tank, they were acclimated with
layers off eggcrate. They went through 3 layers and 4 weeks of acclimation.
Unfortunately, I don't have the room to put new corals on the bottom and
move them up, so I place em where I want em and use multiple layers of
eggcrate and then remove a layer every week or so.
Something that I have noticed is that when I move corals from under the 55k
to under the 10k, they loose color. When I move them back, they color back
up. This holds true for my purple colored corals. The greens just seem to
have problems all around, whether under the 10ks or 55ks. Not sure why it
seems to be just greens. Maybe it is all of them, but just most noticeable
in the greens.
You mention that you have the hydno mid way up under a MH. What wattage is
that? Do you think the hydno is getting too much light?
Right now, I am thinking it may have something to do with PO4. I don't have
a ton of algae growth in the tank. I do have the bubble algae, and have to
scrape the glass every few days, but not anything to bad other than that.
But, I have a refugium full of caluerpa which is probably getting it before
the micro algae is. There may be enough to effect the corals, but not enough
for both the micro algae and the caluerpa.
Any more thoughts??
Thanks again,
Shane C.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 5:49 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Help with SPS
Hi, Shane. You mentioned you changed lighting. Were your corals
doing well
before the change? I have some other thoughts on this but need more
info.. If
you already posted your dKH, pH(day), Ca+, and PO4 I'm sorry please
tell us
again. Hydnophora need space...lots of it. They can easily burn/melt
anything
they come in contact with but can also be easily stressed. I have a
parent
colony very green, nice light brown polyps. Have taken several frags
from it.
I keep the parent colony med-high under 10KK MH (Ushio). Frags also
under
10KK Ushio in prop tanks. They are very hardy, medium-fast growers.
They like
dKH over 12, Calcium 450ish, and pH anywhere from
7.9-8.35....Acropora
generally do very well in systems with shallow flats lighting
(6500K) like
Tridacna OR deeper water replication with 10K+ MH. I find (IME) they
color-up
better and grow faster under 10KK crisp white like Ushios. I use no
supplemental actinic on SPS prop tanks and they do great. For
Monti/Stylo I
use VHO lighting on prop. tanks....1/2 03 blue, 1/2 50/50. They
color-up,
extend, and grow very quickly (weeds) under these conditions. All
corals will
change somewhat under different conditions. You might just keep an
eye on
water parameters and give them some time. If you are not feeding
them....start! I do not use phyto. I grind up
shrimp/squid/scallops/clams/fish to a milk shake consistency and
direct feed
with an eye dropper at night. They DIG this food. You can freeze it
and break
some off for feedings....Fed SPS will get fat. Not fed SPS grow tall
and
skinny. Also, you can try some "Coral Heaven" available at
Tropicorium and
Indo-Pacific Sea Farms....I got a free sample and like it a bunch.
Have to be
carefull with it, however. One last thing....I put corals on the
bottom when
introducing to my systems....I leave them like that for a week or so
and then
move them higher if needed and increase photoperiod gradually (from
4-5 hours
MH to 8-14). I have found it is easier to gradually increase light
requirements than to fix a coral burnt or shocked. People tell you
it is not
possible to give too much light....It can be done, trust me. Use
some plexi
UV screen when introducing new animals especially. Later!
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