New Frags And Placement

So my large order came from tidal gardens where I decided to buy an assortment of sps frags that seem to be more beginner friendly

New sps and lps frags

• Ernest Sacco
• Jan 8, 2019

Amongst the selection are a blood orange lepto...a few differnt pavona frags as well as two different montI digita.....I also got to Favia frags because they looked really nice

I went through with this because of the near perfect success I've had with my few sps frags already in the tank..my birdsnest and montI frags are all doing great with encrusting and growth evident

Plating montis

• Ernest Sacco
• Jan 4, 2019

Recovered and encrusting monti

• Ernest Sacco
• Jan 4, 2019

The only issue I've had is with my stypholopora who is still not doing well

Half dead stypholopora

• Ernest Sacco
• Jan 8, 2019

It's strange because of all the sps he was initially doing the best....I've checked all of my parameters and nothing seemed to be wrong except a slightly low alk (10.4)..
I can only hope that there will be recovery


So now that I have the frags I am trying to finalize eventual placements....I am going to keep them in the same bed for a few days and then I'll turn my lights onto acclimation mode when I move them up the rock work like I did with the other frags....I have ideas but any suggestions would be appreciated

 

Congrats!

Hmm, the stylo... It has me wondering about alk. I don't think yours is low at all, and all my SPS are happy with a consistent level of 9.5. But, I've experienced unhappiness in branching SPS too. They, in fact, were the first ones to tell me that I had a big problem a few months back. They were quite unhappy and I thought I might lose some of them at the time, but I'm happy to say that they've rebounded well. The issue was with a doser and fluctuating/dropping alk levels. So, my advice to you is to check alk every day and log your values for comparison. I've found that my corals will show no issues with slight variations in calc and mag, but are quick to anger when alk varies.

 

Agreed on the Alk issues. My Euphyllia are pretty forgiving for most things but some tend to get cranky when the alk gets lower.

 

The alk is low it seems....I tested myself two days ago to find a value of 10.4....today I just got it tested at my lfs and it is at 8....I don't know how this is possible because I'm dosing roughly 35 ml a day....my calcium is at 480-500 and my mag is at least 1600....what can I do to increase my alk....should I just up the dosage?

 

How big is the tank again?

 

How big is the tank again?

60 gallon cube with a 20 gallon sump give or take

Also all of my lps are doing fantastic with my one hammer continuing to split while the other looks big enough to burst if you catch my meaning....all of my acans and micromussa are also fine

 

What are you using to dose? It sounds like your dosage isn't keeping up, and/or someone's test is inaccurate. First, you'll want to know you can depend on your test at home, so if you're using something like API (not really known for pinpoint accuracy), you'll want to upgrade to Salifert, RedSea, maybe NYOS, whichever 'reefy' brand you trust.

When you know you can trust your test, you'll probably need to spend several days testing and figuring what your dose should be. For example, I wanted my alk steady between 9 and 10. The tank had been running at 7.6-7.8. So, I got the BRS dosing kit including calk, alk, and mag, then followed instructions to gradually bring the alk level up. BRS has a calculator for using their product, and when used, along with the calculated results, it gives some handy notes on how to elevate levels safely. In this example, BRS tells me that it would be dangerous to increase alk by more than 1.4dKH per day... but I'm Stella the slow and steady, so halved that and didn't increase by more than 0.7dKH per day. Then, once I got to the target level, I tested at the same time every day... about 23.5 hours after the last dose. I saw a slight drop, calculated the dose to account for that, dosed this smaller amount, then tested again 23.5 hours later. By doing this for several days in a row, I learned what my daily consumption was, and thus, knew the ml that would be needed every day to maintain the desired level. Only then did I begin using an auto-doser.

Now, as things change in the tank, (i.e. more corals are added or taken away, little frags become colonies, etc) consumption will also change. So, in these instances, I'd have to figure out consumption again... and, of course, regular testing must be kept up with, because a change in uptake of calc or alk may not always be easily seen.

As for a specific alk level... well, my corals were not unhappy at 7.8dKH, but I hoped they'd grow a little faster at 9.5. The slow method of increasing alk did not upset the corals either. However, when the big mistake happened and I nearly lost a few SPS... well, this was because my doser went offline, and that went unnoticed for 3 days. The alk level dropped to 7.8, which we may think is no big deal since the tank was fine at that level for about a year before I started dosing. Thing is, the corals got quite used to 9.5, they did seem to grow faster, (YAY), but some were very quick to get very unhappy with the sudden change back to 7.8. To be specific...

• A mille acro went almost white... I thought it was dying, even for several weeks after addressing the alk issue.
• Another acro, an unknown purple guy... went kinda reddish brown. There was zero polyp extension on either of these acros. If the color change weren't scary enough, I didn't see polyp extension on either of them for more than a month. It was really scary, but what could I do besides maintain stability from there forward? They did both come back eventually, and finally began to grow again about two months later. Yeah... they go south quickly and took a very long time to get back to a thriving condition.
• LPS was affected too. Weirdly, two out of six acan colonies were upset, while the others never reacted to this debacle. My Duncan got pretty mad, as did the purple hammer, while the green hammer and the torch showed no signs of anything wrong. The purple hammer took it the worst though, and though it seemed to try to get better, more than two months later, 2 of its five heads stopped extending... at all. I still have 2 happy heads, 1 pretty upset head, and 2 dead heads on that hammer.

Anyway, just wanted to share the long-term results of my big mistake, in hopes that you'll see that although the daily testing, calculating, and manual dosing can be time-consuming and become a bother, it was and is necessary for stability among the big 3. Consistent levels are key, and this is why purchasing auto-dosing equipment is also worth it.

 

What are you using to dose? It sounds like your dosage isn't keeping up, and/or someone's test is inaccurate. First, you'll want to know you can depend on your test at home, so if you're using something like API (not really known for pinpoint accuracy), you'll want to upgrade to Salifert, RedSea, maybe NYOS, whichever 'reefy' brand you trust.

When you know you can trust your test, you'll probably need to spend several days testing and figuring what your dose should be. For example, I wanted my alk steady between 9 and 10. The tank had been running at 7.6-7.8. So, I got the BRS dosing kit including calk, alk, and mag, then followed instructions to gradually bring the alk level up. BRS has a calculator for using their product, and when used, along with the calculated results, it gives some handy notes on how to elevate levels safely. In this example, BRS tells me that it would be dangerous to increase alk by more than 1.4dKH per day... but I'm Stella the slow and steady, so halved that and didn't increase by more than 0.7dKH per day. Then, once I got to the target level, I tested at the same time every day... about 23.5 hours after the last dose. I saw a slight drop, calculated the dose to account for that, dosed this smaller amount, then tested again 23.5 hours later. By doing this for several days in a row, I learned what my daily consumption was, and thus, knew the ml that would be needed every day to maintain the desired level. Only then did I begin using an auto-doser.

Now, as things change in the tank, (i.e. more corals are added or taken away, little frags become colonies, etc) consumption will also change. So, in these instances, I'd have to figure out consumption again... and, of course, regular testing must be kept up with, because a change in uptake of calc or alk may not always be easily seen.

As for a specific alk level... well, my corals were not unhappy at 7.8dKH, but I hoped they'd grow a little faster at 9.5. The slow method of increasing alk did not upset the corals either. However, when the big mistake happened and I nearly lost a few SPS... well, this was because my doser went offline, and that went unnoticed for 3 days. The alk level dropped to 7.8, which we may think is no big deal since the tank was fine at that level for about a year before I started dosing. Thing is, the corals got quite used to 9.5, they did seem to grow faster, (YAY), but some were very quick to get very unhappy with the sudden change back to 7.8. To be specific...

• A mille acro went almost white... I thought it was dying, even for several weeks after addressing the alk issue.
• Another acro, an unknown purple guy... went kinda reddish brown. There was zero polyp extension on either of these acros. If the color change weren't scary enough, I didn't see polyp extension on either of them for more than a month. It was really scary, but what could I do besides maintain stability from there forward? They did both come back eventually, and finally began to grow again about two months later. Yeah... they go south quickly and took a very long time to get back to a thriving condition.
• LPS was affected too. Weirdly, two out of six acan colonies were upset, while the other two never reacted to this debacle. My Duncan got pretty mad, as did the purple hammer, while the green hammer and the torch showed no signs of anything wrong. The purple hammer took it the worst though, and though it seemed to try to get better, more than two months later, 2 of its five heads stopped extending... at all. I still have 2 happy heads, 1 pretty upset head, and 2 dead heads on that hammer.

Anyway, just wanted to share the long-term results of my big mistake, in hopes that you'll see that although the daily testing, calculating, and manual dosing can be time-consuming and become a bother, it was and is necessary for stability among the big 3. Consistent levels are key, and this is why purchasing auto-dosing equipment is also worth it.

So I am using a red sea test kit....those at my lfs already told me that it is more reliable than their system...an auto dosing system is on my list and is right behind a new hydra light and before an auto top off system