Acropora

What type of test kit are you using ?
Lighting ?
What brand of salt ?
Calcium additive brand/type ?

 

trajik ink may have some tips for you. I'm not sure if he has any in his tank or not but I'm sure he knows more than I do on this.

 

ok man... You have quite a bit of usable info in here for me to try and help you out a bit!
lets see:

As far as Acros of almost any type,(montis actually stay pretty colouful on 10 k) they grow pretty well under 10k, but they loose some of their coloration due to the spectrum of the light. This increases the Zooxanthellae so much in some cases that the corals start loosing their sweet colour and start shifting towards a brownish tint, also some of the discoloration can be attributed to nutrient levels in your tank. Your calcium levels are a the lower end of the good range and your mag it's more than ok. There's ST tests, but dont even complicate yourself. You can bring up your levels by simply doing water changes once monthly (for mang/st). As far as the Croceas maximas and other clams, they need some good traces of phosphates and Nitrates to grow fast, and their growing even under the best conditions is somewhat un-noticeable in a month's time (specially during the 1st month) when the clam is just barely acclimating to everything. So just give it time, you are doing fine !

You should be able to keep soft corals, shrooms and such.Is a matter of light adaptation. You need to put them not only low but also stray them away from penetrating 10+k frequencies. put them under the 10k and under a rock for shadow and over WEEKS and months move out horizontally and then vertically if desired. I think you forgot to mention a KEY thing which is your ALK/DKH! You need to know what your KH is so to understand how your calcium is BIO-Available for usable comsumption by corals. If your KH is up there, not only you suffer the risk of precipitating your calcium out of solution, but you make it difficult for the corals to consume it! Your mg helps on your coral's abilities to metabolize calcium, but your alkalinity must be on the mid-lower range to allow the calcium to be used. Your temps are OK at this range! I wish I got away from using my chiller if my temps stayed within 78-81 degrees or so, but they dont in my tank. As long as your temp fluctutations from day to night dont exceed 2 to 3 degrees then they are good! Your ph is an indication of your ALK which kinda tells me it might actually be on the low end. You might need to bring it up a bit! It is normal to drop from 8.2 to about 8.00 from day to night cycles but a bigger variance of .20, might be an indication of a different issue. Your ph is also fine thoug.How much are you feeding? what else do you have in your tank? how much circulation you have via inner pumps and main pumps? how's your surface agitation?
Seems to me you might be OVER doing it with your supplements (mag/calcium/)
I have over 150 corals in my tank and over 145 fish, and this is on a 100g reef. and thoug I have dozens of acros, I only use about 15ppm of calcium every 3 to 5 days and the corals are growing really good! I do dose Kalk per evaporation, but dont add mg or strontium. I only do a monthly or bi-monthly water change to replenish these. You can easily "stunt" corals out of growth if you dose too much in your system. Your corals might be trying to defend themselves rather than to use the additives. For you to understand this, heres an example: imagine I have a snake (which I do) and the snake feeds on mice, the snake will grave one if available, but if I throw 100 mice in there, the snake's senses might not differenciate between one potential meal or a massive threat and instead of feeding, now you caused it to stress and try to defend itself! Survival is always first!

Ok.... I will write a little more later. You can check some of my tank's pictures in the pictures thread!

I hope I helped some!

 

I meant to say keep your shrooms away from penetrating frequencies over 10k!

 

I have mushrooms under 18k and 10k bulbs and they're doing great.

 

The more simple the better! You can have $10k on great equipment but if you dont know how to use it is worthless! In the same token you can have a $1200 setup and your corals might be the best around! Is how you use the information, not how you spend the money! lol! Of course if you have the money and info and Know how to use them both,..;..... WHATCHA!

 

I didnt say you cant have them under that frequency! I did say you have to adapt them to it sometimes specially when you have so much total wattage. The 18k are actually better for them, (closer to what they are exposed to) but when you first get any corals, you start at the low ends of your penetrating light capabilites and work your corals towards the deeper pentration lights! Its called photo-adaptation. It can take weeks sometimes months!

 

I guess I should clarify:
while you are acclimating them! "reddish" frequencies are far more forgiving!for photoadaptation.

 

Hi there again! I checked out your tank in the photography section. Looks good! With your lighting you should be able to keep just about anything you want! Your purple acro is now dead in a good section of it so it seems by the pic! You should break the dead piece of and dip the end on some iodine solution. I can see som new growth on it, but the pic unfourtunately doesnt give me enough detail for me to make and educated guess! You ask me waht lighting do I think is best, and IMO and based on experimentation with dozens of setups I have done and my own I believe 14 to 20k spectrum yields for best colorations overall. If colours are your ultimate goal suplementing a good 20k with a 10k should yield great results.Dont obsess so much with the numbers as sometimes (if read or interpreted wrong) could lead you to wrong actions. Learn to interpret your corals behaviors, needs, tendencies and you will be a more content reefer with less stress and the numbers should only help you support your theories, they should not be the ONLY determining factor for your decisions. As I said before, your MG and calcium are ok. I dont believe you are dropping over 120ppm from day to day in your calcium, It's not that I dis-believe what you are telling me, but I do disbelieve your tests or their accuracy. Tests DO go bad, and sometimes even when "good" they are a reference and can be off quite a bit. Unless you are using LAB grade testers, consider your tests a "reference" point, nothing else nothing more, if you do, in some cases you are gonna have to have a Chemistry major just to be able to balance your water to what your tests tell you it should be at. If you learn to understand how your water chemistry affects your inhabitants adn the way they develop according to parameters, you will quickly realize that the tests only confirm what you KNEW was the problem. Your coralline algae will consume calcium, but not to such high degree that you have to "shovel it" lol, back in! I did however see a couple problems with your setup, and I hope you dont take this as harsh criticism or just an attack but rather as a most probable/possible explanation to some of your issues.

Here it goes:
1.Circulation. Your hypothetical view on overall flow rate of your magdrive 1200 (12) is 2400gph at 0 Head (no piping).So you do not have 2400gph running thru your tank.
You have to route the water to your tank thru some piping and your pump yields about 1200gph at 4 feet on 3/4 (flex vynil tubing) which Im sure is what you are using. Because you have a 6 foot long tank from the center of your sump to the bottom of the connection of your tank might be 3 to 4ft of vynil clear tubing, but you still have another 2 feet going up on the pvc pipe plus a harsh 90 degree bend that leads to the return ball pipe inside your tank. You are now 5 to 6 ft worth of head pressure on your 1200gph pump, this puts you more accurately at 950gph or so per pump or so, to a total of about 1900gph of total flow. Its not bad, but it can definately be upgraded via internal pumps or getting a bigger return pump. I notice in your tank you have the flow restrictor in your return pipe on your right side of the tank. This only diminishes your total flow plus puts more pressure on the water coming out and decreases the efficiency of your pump, maybe you should take it off as you have it on your left return. Corals NEED good strong flow, but IT needs to be non-laminar (one direction like a river) and non-directional, (like you putting your finger over the garden hose and washing away the petals on that beautiful rose. More OPEN vast flow, less constricted direct flow.
SEE NEXT POST....

 

2.Feeding and bioload.
You are overfeeding. Not only to the fish but with additives. phytoplankton? cyplopeeze?/Articpods?
I find this is the number one issue on my accounts. They tend to overfeed their fish and add un-necessary nutrients that they DONT need for what they have in their systems. It's not that is bad to put things such as phytoplankton, but that if you put it to a tank that doesnt need it is just wasting your money for no good cause, and you are now effectively raising your nutrients levels and TDS in your tank to the point where most people have issues with cyanobacteria, algae blooms, dynoflagellates, diatom blooms ect. Do as you please, but the reality is, you do not need to feed nearly as much as you are doing and you are adding stuff you dont need that will most likely come back to hunt ya!

 

try to feed more plant matter (spirulina) less frozen food! They offer far more nutrition than most (and I repeat: "MOST") frozen food preparations. On top of that, you can regulate your waste better as spirulina thats un-eaten requires far less metabollic processing to be taken out of your tank. Feed one cube per day and suplemment with spirulina! (flake food/ the green one).

 

3. Cleaning crew: Why are you trying to eliminate hermit crabs from your main display? they and the snails are your cleaning crew , and are the ones that keep your tank looking clean for ya! You want about 1 per gallon, so you need to buy quite a bit more.

 

4. Nutrients control. Your tank seems to have a overload of nutrients. You can see this on your substrate, rocks and the side walls of your pics! There will always be some little patches here and there, but you need to check and control your nutrients before they control you! lol!

 

scraping the coralline or letting it be will not make a difference. More will grow in its place. After looking at your tank and based in what you have said you might be spending your calcium to bioload, and low alkalinity. Have it checked, Im 85% sure is on the low end. I would scrape the tank walls, stir up some of that bottom sand and suck up as much nutrients as you can while performing a good 30 to 45% water change with some good quality RO water and some good salt mix. If you are mixing your own water I surely hope you are not using tap water and some de-chlorinator such as (amquel) or so, thoug it would not surprise me based on experience. Do yourself a favor, get some good ro water at the LFS mix it with a pump for a good 12 to 18 hrs with a good pump, let it warm up to your tank's water temp and do a good water change. Increase surface agitation (via returns) should help some on PH, decrease some of your feeding, dose some mg and buffer your alkalinity to about 12 to 15dkh (notice DKH) as in Dutch!
Ok... Im out for the count.... you are gonna have to take some more pics of your MAJESTIC, majestic angelfish! I love it.... I think after all this typing I deserve to have a closer look to that beautiful fish! lol!

 

Check out my tank and give me some comments!