sps coral and tips on keeping them.

i would think about maybe more flow, those k2's dont seem to cut it for me. lighting looks good, make sure to start dosing with kalkwasser as well to keep up your alkalinity. and make sure your tank is stable and the salinity dont fluctuate very much as well, definitely need to have an ATO. salinity can mess things up. before you start adding frags to current tank make sure all your parameters are in check, calcium, magnesium, and alk. and its been stable for quite some time. i've lost alot of sps because of unstable tank

 

Hi Mthomp

I am in Davenport...good to see another QC reefer!

Snowman is right I think an increase in flow would be helpful for sps.
Also as he said water parameters are extremely important. Calcium, alkalinity and Magnesium being the big 3 to keep in balance. If those 3 are in correct balance with one another you will find that your SPS will prosper
There are other elements but before you get into those you need to have those main 3 elements balanced and rock solid.

Here is a link for a calculator to keep those 3 in balance....if you going to keep SPS this is an invaluable tool for balanced parameters.

http://reef.diesyst.com/flashcalc/flashcalc.html

Hope that helps a bit....Good Luck!!

einsteins

 

An important thing to note is that an all SPS system will use your calcium and magnesium MUCH faster than what you have going now. What is stable now can fairly rapidly become depleted the more SPS you keep. SPS also tend to like a lower nutrient system, which I didn't really see mentioned. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, it just depends on what all you want to be keeping.

 

+1 to everything Einstiens said (BTW, welcome back Bill!!!)
An SPS tank isn't hard at all if you have the basics covered.
1) Large water volume and a controller for stability.
2) Good lighting (metal halide or T5) - Proper wattage depends on many things (watts/gallon is useless). I'd also recommend 12K to 14K spectrum for good color and growth with minimal algea.
3) Balanced Alk/Calc/Magnesium levels - Critical for growth & color.
4) As much Indirect flow as possible.   In other words, you want lots of flow, but you don't want to blast the corals themselves.   There needs to be good water motion throught the entire tank.
IMO "super clean" water is not necessarily a requirement for most SPS. In fact, according to Calfo, water that is too clean leads to dull colors.
-JB

 

When it comes to SPS, I believe that if you keep your fish well fed, your corals will be well fed.

-JB

 

Posted By JB on 05/09/2010 04:06 PM
When it comes to SPS, I believe that if you keep your fish well fed, your corals will be well fed.
-JB
+1 on the fish poo diet. It seem that if I feed my coral directly more that once a week I end up with a nice algae bloom on the glass for a day or two. When I do feed the coral I shut off the return pump for about 2 hours and turn my mp40s down also I always feed the coral at night 3 or 4 hours after lights out that way their polyps are fully extended.
-Bill

 

I dont have the money for controllers or calcium reactors, and i am far too busy to manually dose, so, with my 75g sps tank i am sure to do a 15 - 20 gallon water change per week. I use reef crystals for salt and my levels stay pretty darn solid, and calcium is always around 420ppm.
I also agree with fish poo diet, but every couple weeks i put in a little tiny bit of golden pearls. they are cheap on ebay.
Flow is always a big consideration. The price gap between high end and good enough is very large. mp40's are around $400 but are nice and slim, while you can buy several koralias and may still not have the best flow and you have three very bulky powerheads in view. You can easily spend $150 in koralias. I opten for the dual sunsun (strongest one they have at reefshops) and i absolutely love it. with shipping it was around $45. I wont buy a koralia ever again. The dual pulasting wavemaking powerhead i got from china creates a nice pulsating wave with alternating flow. It too is bulky, but has a quality magnet and plastic and i dont have as much obstruction. i have the largest dual sunsun and i think it would be enough for a 125 gallon tank. it may be just a bit too much for my 75, so i should have gotten one size down. I am looking forward to these being sold in the US. You can also find the sunsun pumps on ebay, and shipping is high b/c its shipping form china, i chose the cheapo shipping and it took well over a month to get to me.