Question about my parameters

Treezer8

Treezer8

Reefing newb
Some of my corals were looking a little off..So I did my water change a little early, and did it last night. Just checked my water and here's everything that I can test for:

Ammonia-0
Nitrate- <5
Nitrite-0
Phosphate-0
Alkalinity-8.4 dKH
Calcium-400
Salinity-0
pH-7.9-8.0

My corals:
RBTA
Frogspawn
2 aussi acans
neon trumpets
some other teal trumpets
War coral
GSP
red comet chalice
vanessas vomit chalice
duncan
ricordia
blasto
a bunch of zoas

The ones that looked a bit off:
Frogspawn--Not opening up anywhere near as much as usual
GSP-only about 1/3 of them are coming out
Duncan-Looks pretty good..But the mother head isn't extending as much


Does anything with my parameters have anything to do with it?
I will be dosing calcium/alk with the 2-part system. I use instant ocean reef salt now since the store was out of reef crystals, I've seen that they give less calcium
 
salinity says 0, i can only assume that is incorrect. lol
what temp do you keep the tank?
Sometimes things close up for a day or two and we never know why.
 
What kind of lighting do you have? How old are the lamps in the fixture?

The lamps could be old and causing issues with your corals not opening.
 
Your calc and alk are fine - in fact alk is a tad high - no need to dose anything at this point and doing so could create more problems. Just keep an eye on those levels.

Did you change flow or anything in your tank, or could someone be bothering your frogspawn?
 
I have brand new led fixtures. Been doing good for over a month now. I did change flow to give them a little more
 
It could be a delayed reaction to the change in lights - what intensity are you running the LEDs at?

It could also be the change in flow - I'd change lighten the flow just a little (even just a small shift in the location of the powerhead can make a big difference) and see if that helps.
 
I ran the LED's at about 25% power for 4 days, then upd it to around 50% for a week, they were still doing great, so I put it up to 75% for another 10 days. Now they are on full power. They were doing fine on 100% for over a week, and now just those 2 corals are looking a little wierd

The duncan is looking better today
frogspawn is looking a tiny bit better
GSP just a very tiny bit better

We'll see.
 
That's really fast to bump to 100%. I'd back it down to 35% and see what happens. You really should only increase by about 5% every 2-3 weeks. Very few people run at 100% without killing everything (even SPS). The only guy I know who does has his lights mounted about 3 feet off the water and it took him a year and a half to ramp up to 100% for 6 hours a day total. His tank is almost entirely SPS.
 
FishyReef said:
That's really fast to bump to 100%. I'd back it down to 35% and see what happens. You really should only increase by about 5% every 2-3 weeks. Very few people run at 100% without killing everything (even SPS). The only guy I know who does has his lights mounted about 3 feet off the water and it took him a year and a half to ramp up to 100% for 6 hours a day total. His tank is almost entirely SPS.
Click to expand...

Each of the fixtures are 120 watts. But I'll turn them down for a few days and see if those corals start doing better.
Thanks!
 
Here they are at 35%

2012-12-20_17-07-22_190.webp
 
Just a question..
Can splitting cause it to shrink up?

Like if one of the heads is in the process of splitting into 2, would it cause something like this?
 
I run LEDs and have found now that I got me a PAR probe that they really pump out the pars.

My tank is a 95 with 23" to the sand. My LEDs are a mix of RapidLED 3 watt Crees and AquatecLife. The AquatecLife is 54 watts, the rest of the watts are in the Crees. I have just over 200 watts of LEDs. My AquatecLife is on full and has no dimmer. I have to crank my RapidLEDs down to about 1/2 on the blues and 1/3 on the whites. This allows me to have corals on the bottom and up on the rocks according to what they seem to like. I find that if you over blast them with LED it takes days for them to recover if they even do. .. I'd be slow to crank those babies up. I sit and watch my tank and tweak just a hair of power then watch to see which corals open, which do nothing, and which close.. then a hair more or back to less... and ended up with the settings I stated.
 
Last edited:
Well said. I understand what you're saying. The only coral that is having trouble opening up are the GSP. half of them are open all the way and another part barely comes out. When I turned the lights down like you said, they all started coming out.
 
Treezer8 said:
Well said. I understand what you're saying. The only coral that is having trouble opening up are the GSP. half of them are open all the way and another part barely comes out. When I turned the lights down like you said, they all started coming out.
Click to expand...

Yep, being able to crank them up or not is both the magic or can be the death of coral. LEDs really pump out the power.
 
chichimom79 said:
Scoly corals are not fond of lighting that is too bright. Work your way up with the lights slowly. :)
Click to expand...

Yea, I had talked to the guys at the store that I got it from. Was going to get a really really really cool clam, but after hearing that they don't do to well in LED's, and prefer a stronger different light light from halides, I didn't want to risk it and risk its health.

They said these scoly's LOVE LED's, and I have it at the bottom of my tank under mine at 35% right now. Did good on its first day, watched the amazing feeding process that it goes through.
 
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