GSP not opening!

Hey Everyone,
I started my 33gallon reef tank about two months ago,
I now have two firefish, a six line wrasse, a cleaner shrimp and a cleanup crew in the tank as well as about 35 lbs of Live rock.
I got a water test two days ago and the results are as follows:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrates: 0
Phosphates: 0.5
Calcium: 360
I think the salinity, and PH are just fine or else a flag would have been raised.
I believe my calcium is too low and Phosphates too high.
about two weeks ago I introduced some Green Star Polyps and they are still not showing up.
I am rocking the Coralife Compact Fluorescent Lunar lights and running them from 6 PM to 2 AM. The lights at the store I bought them from were running from 9AM - 6PM so I think that may have something to do with it but I don't think it should take two weeks.

When I first got the polyps, they were poking out for the first two days(only a few fingers with about a cm of extension) and now they do not appear at all.
I took a turkey baster yesterday and cleared off the polyps of any substrate and also changed my flow so that my Maxijet 700 powerhead has a less forceful output, additionally I have an aquaclear 70 HOB filter.

My question is, What should I do? Should I leave them alone and do water changes to fix my phosphate and calcium levels? perhaps I have placed the polyps wrong. I don't know...

Thanks to anyone for suggestions/help!

Calcium doesn't matter for a soft coral like gsp, and as long as you are doing weekly water changes you don't need to worry about dosing. Phosphate levels can be caused by several things - one likely culprit is over feeding. What are you feeding, how much, and how frequently. The biggest reason I see for your gsp not opening is that you don't have adequate lights. You need to upgrade your lights to be able to maintain any corals, even low light corals.

Edit: Also, if you have phosphates, you probably do have some nitrates in your system. You said you had your water tested - I'm guessing that means you had it tested by your LFS? If so, they often use test strips to test (which are notoriously inaccurate). You really should get your own basic reef test kit. API, Salifert, and SeaChem make decent kits. Do you know what your salinity, pH, and alk are?

Also what are they near, if anything. If they are close to some zoas/palys you may want to move them.

They are the only coral in the tank so far. I will check how they tested my water but I assume it was well tested as it is the most popular Marine aquarium store in the city.
As for my lights, do you really think they are not adequate? Here is a link to the ones I have(99% sure) Coralife Lunar Aqualight Compact Fluorescent Fixture 96 Watt coralife 36 inch lunar aqualight 36 lunar aqualight

I have fed the fish a half block of mysis shrimp, perhaps it is too much.

I will get my alk, salinity and pH tested today.

Sadly, yes, your lights are not adequate. What are the dimensions on your tank? There are a few few different types of lights that we can recommend, but knowing your dimensions will be helpful!

>.< I waas told at my LFS that the coralifes would be just fine. Doh!
My dimensions are 36x12(depth)x18(height).

For your tank I'd check out either a 4 bulb T5 fixture or something like the marineland reef capable LED fixture. In your current set-up, if you have the GSP down near the bottom then I'd move it up closer to the light to see if you can get it to open. If you can get it to open up at a higher point in the tank, then you can probably maintain it under those lights temporarily until you can afford a new fixture. And then you can always sell your current fixture on Craigslist to help off set the cost of a new fixture. Hopefully someone else will chime in on this too!

I am wondering, what makes my lights inadequate? Do they not provide enough lumens, or wattage per gallon?

I'm using a marineland reef capable on my 30gal atm, and I'm growing things such as war corals (about 2-3cm all around per month), frogspawn(bought when it had 1 head, now it has 4..been about 4 months) zoas, my duncan just made a new head, acans, star polyps, candycanes, but I haven't had a whole bunch of luck with anemones. I don't really do anything "special" with my water or anything, but I'll vouch for this lighting fixture. Also makes the colors on the corals look amazing

ChrisKrillz said:

I am wondering, what makes my lights inadequate? Do they not provide enough lumens, or wattage per gallon?

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PowerCompact bulbs, it turns out, do not produce as much useful light energy for corals as originally expected.
There are a lot of interesting data and comparison charts on the internet showing the different PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) of different types of lights for reef aquariums.

"Watts per gallon" is no longer a reasonable rule of thumb. With different bulb types, the same amount of power supplied to different bulbs will yield different illumination and different levels of effectiveness.
For example:
An LED fixture using 100watts could provide comparable or better PAR than a 250w Metal Halide fixture for the same tank.
A 39watt (36") T5 HO bulb will produce significantly more PAR than a 96watt (36") PC bulb.

Thanks everyone for the awesome feedback. I am going to be doing a water change this week, I moved the GPS to a bit higher of a spot in the tank and I am planning to get a new light fixture, I am leaning towards some sort of LED fixture. Any suggestions other than the Marinelife would be awesome, I have been suggested the Vertex as well.

I took a picture(on my phone) of my coral tonight, and I know they are hearty, but I have a hunch my GPS is dead...
Here is the pic

Let me know what you guys think and again thanks for the help!

Ya, that doesnt look so good. It might recover though, soft corals are very tough. Also, my GSP has always done better when there has been more flow, not less. So i would put it back in a high flow location.

Also to the poster about the marineland LEDs, LPS and softies corals have very different light requirements than nems. Nems require very high lighting conditions, the corals you listed dont. Nems also require very mature, established tanks with pristine water conditions to thrive. Both of these reason would contribute to your problems with your nem.

I'm surprised that your LFS is selling PC lights still. Most places don't carry them anymore because the technology is so old and out of date. PC lights are just not used in reefing anymore because T5s, metal halide, and now LEDs provide so much better quality lighting.

Is it too late for you to get your money back on them? I hate to think that you wasted all that money on a bad product because of bad advice from your LFS.

a GPS isn't a nem though right?(I assume nem means anemone). I moved to GPS to a higher flow location and higher elevation as well. That being said it isn't looking so hot. I am going to work on getting my water conditions right, getting new lights and then introducing a new frag.
I am going to find out today if I can return the lights that I bought about two weeks ago, I have a hunch that since I got the lights on sale, I won't be able to return them which is a piss off seeing as how I was recommended the PC's. If all else fails and I can't resell them for what I want I am going to use these lights on my 60 gallon fresh tank and make that tank more planted.
I think I am going to go for these lights Vertex Illumilux LED Lights | Blue World Aquariums

No, GSP is a soft coral, not an anemone.

It's not your lights. We have 216w power compacts and everything we have opens and thrives. Our calcium is higher than yours at 460. The day we got ours and put it in our tank it opened about halfway, the next day it was fully open. Ours is in the middle of our tank.

LoveJC03 said:

It's not your lights. We have 216w power compacts and everything we have opens and thrives. Our calcium is higher than yours at 460. The day we got ours and put it in our tank it opened about halfway, the next day it was fully open. Ours is in the middle of our tank.

Click to expand...

What corals do you keep in your tank?

ChrisKrillz said:

What corals do you keep in your tank?

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3 kenya trees, hammer coral, frogspawn, yellow polyps, green polyps, 3 types of mushrooms, 2-3 types of zoanthids & gsp

That really surprises me LoveJC03. Can you provide a link to the light fixture that you have? How long have you had those corals in your tank?

Short term they will grow, hell short term a squiggly bulb will grow them. Eventually i find they start to do worse and worse. Slowly bleaching out.