No growth why??

[polyppetey]

Well, I hate posting this type of question buy here goes.

My tank a 56 gallon marineland cube has been up and running about 15 months now. I have a few LPS, a few SPS, alot of zoanthids and palythoas, a medium sized finger leather and one big green tip bubble anenome.

While everything is doing fine, I have little to no growth with any of the LPS or SPS. My mushrooms and zoanthids also are slow growers. I have looked in the forums for a while now and am even more confused than before.

The setup consists of the 18 x 30 x 24 inch deep tank with a 5 inch DSB, @ 60 lbs live rock, I have a 20 gallon high tank for a sump with a 6 gallon capacity fuge. The macro algae grows in there OK but it is not going like it was in my last tank.
Lighting consists of 2x 150 watt 14K ushio bulbs, 1 month old and 4x 25 watt VHO actinics, a mix of geissman 420nm and regular super actinics (can't remember the name right now) and ther return pump is a quietone 5000 and I have 2 koralias for additional circulation in the tank.

The fish I have are 1 true percula clown, a purple pseudochromis, lawnmower bleny and a bi-color blenny. CUC consists of a mix of 12 snails and 1 hermit crab.
Corals are about 12-14 inches from the lights (sps) and 18-20 inches for the LPS.

My frogspawn has gone from 2 heads to 5 in a years time. I have a green staghorn that has encrusted then stopped growing, all the other corals have ok to good polyp extension but do not grow. My tubinara is gradually slowly receding and dying but still has good polyp extension every day.

Parameters are as follows I have API tests ( I know they are not that great but all I can afford right now)
Ammonia 0
Nitrates 20-25
nitrites 0
ALK 9 DKH- i recently gradually raised it to 9 from 7
calcium 440
mag 1490
ph-tested during the day 8.2
phospates 0
salinity 1.026 -refractometer
Halides are on 8 hours a day, actinics 10. My fuge runs in a reverse light cycle.

I do a bi-weekly water change of 20% using reef crystals and RO water from the Hidden Reef in Levittown pa. I mix it for a day before doing the change.
Also maintenance consists of lightly vacuuming the sand surface during the water change and changing the filter socks every other day.

Dosing-- For a long time the tank was using 1 DKH every day, it has since declined to .5 dkh a day so I dose 1 tsp @3 grams of reef builder a day and use about 20-40 ppm calcium a week.

I do want to get into the 2 part regimen or at least match my calcium to the alk addition but can't figure how much calcium to add to match it to the alk consumption. I use reef advantage for the calcium.

I battled a super long cycle for some reason and cyano for 6 months, it has finally subsided 2 months ago with little traces here and there in low flow spots.

My current issue is dinos but through better feeding practices it is declining as well. Also have a little algae but this has decliined as well.
I feed the fish every other day and only put in more food when thet have eaten what I have just added, I feed the rest of the tank a small pinch of cycloplese(sp?) every other night when they open up to feed.

Thats all I have to offer, could anyone smarter than me help me out here?

[THE ROOK]

IMO, it's as simple as too deep of a tank for that lighting. I didn't have much luck with 150's over my 18" tall 75. I since used 250's & now t-5's & have had much better growth for sure.

Just my 2 cents.

[polyppetey]

I dunno about that one, there are some sweet tanks here with a similar setup, some tanks bigger than mine.

[neoalchemist74]

The Rook may be right. I have 150's on my 75 but most of my corals are placed in the top 6" of the tank. I have a 24" deep cube and on that system I run a 250, also your nitrates are a little high. Dino's can also cause some problems and even though you see them on the sand they are mostly in the water column. I'd start with getting rid of the dino's (easier said than done) and then go from there.

[laud]

Yeah, but...

The stags were growing fine before and the higher they get the better the lighting, so the low light theory isn't sitting right in my head.

Check your phosphates, from the LFS RO water, through a hanna PO4 checker before putting it in. I wonder if they have changed their filters frequently enough. The algae outbreaks makes me think the RO water may be off.

[Chris27]

How old were the lights before you changed them?

Do you run activated carbon? With a mixed reef containing leathers, it's almost a necessity.

[polyppetey]

Chris, I do run carbon and change it bi weekly, the old lights were reef lux brand about 9 months old.

Laud, thanks for the tip, I need that phosphate checker. I would expect the LFS to have quality water but sadly that is always not the case. I do have a ro system on the wishlist but it wil be a while. I have a rainbow stylo that I got from a fellow reefer, kind of brown when I got it, it has colored up to pink and purple, that one is about the same level as most of my SPS @ 10 inches from the lights. My staghorn is about 2-3 inches lower.

I am having a hard time getting rid of those dinos. Just got all new filter socks, that seems to be helping out a bit. I made a DIY dino exporter out of a plastic coat hanger wrapped in about 100 feet of fishing line, I hang it in the tank in the morning and by the end of the day it collects a significant amount of the stuff. I rinse it off at night and do it again in the morning. That has been my barometer and so far it indicaated the dinos are on the decline.

Thank you everyone for the advice and insight so far>

[campos]

Also how does your flow look? I had the same issue with my SPS, then I got 2 MP40's and the corals took off. Amazing what some flow will do

[polyppetey]

Thanks Campos,

for flow I have acording to the head loss calculator here 750 GPH from the sump and 2 koralias pushing 1300 gph each. The water flows in a circular pattern which I found helps keep crud off of the sand. I used to have them pointing at each other from opposite sides of the tank, the way I have now seems better. I did experiment with this quite a bit in my cyano days.

[BuckeyeTodd]

you could use more flow, i.e. mp40 for sps growth. If stylo is doing great, then you should have acros higher. Stylo's are low light sps, more similar to lps in lighting requirements

[saltjohnswharf]

Honestly I would switch salts and see what that does. Not sure what kind of flow you are getting from Koralia but do move them around a bit. Sometimes growth slows because the water movement is not just right. I too looked at the 56 tall but passed because the dims were going to make flow difficult. That and the stupid center brace!!

If your lamps are not that old then light is not the issue.