SPS Coral

[Tuton]

I am going to my LFS to buy coral tomarrow and they have a few staghorn SPS corals for sale
My parameters are:
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm
Phosphate: 0ppm
Calcium: 460ppm
pH: 8.3
Alkilinity: 180ppm
Salinity: 1.025
I have 324 watts of HO fluorescent bulbs
About 2,000gph flow that switches back and forth
Do you think it will work?

[Allmost]

you wont know till you try

1. what do you test iwth ? API is not that good.

2. keep KH, CA++ and mg STABLE, meaning they should ALWAYS test the same.

if you can do that, then you will be able to keep it alive, once you keep it alive for a week or two, then you can look at color and growth and ... and improve lighting and flow if needed.

HTH,

[Tuton]

Sadly yes I test with API (its the only test kit my LFS carries)
I mean it seems accurate, because when I tested my premixed saltwater all the levels came out to what it said on the salt bag

[Allmost]

API for example po4 test kit STARTS at 0.25 PPM.

at 0.25 PPM, calcification stops and all hard algae and corals die. so if you use an API for po4 and wait to register something it would be too late before you get a readin on it.

about the KH and CA++ they can be used, so your aim needs to be to keep them stable, through the day and night.
keep salinity and everything else stable too. by testing.

[Tuton]

I have tetra dip strips for everything else and I run phosphate sponge on the weekends to keep PO4 down to undetectable levels plus I do 10% weekly water changes
I have good soft coral growth and I managed to save a piece of candy cane coral that was bleached white as a sheet
I did loose a favite for an unknown reason though, so that scares me a little

[Allmost]

not sure if you are here to learn more or defend a test kit and what you have been doing

you will see what I mean soon

Either way, good luck.

[r-balljunkie]

how old is your tank.

[Palting]

Originally Posted by Tuton

I am going to my LFS to buy coral tomarrow and they have a few staghorn SPS corals for sale
My parameters are:
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm
Phosphate: 0ppm
Calcium: 460ppm
pH: 8.3
Alkilinity: 180ppm
Salinity: 1.025
I have 324 watts of HO fluorescent bulbs
About 2,000gph flow that switches back and forth
Do you think it will work?

Those numbers look pretty decent. I'm not fond of compact fluorescent's for SPS, so that's one factor that may cause a problem for you. SPS prefer the intensity of MH or T5. And yes, how old is your tank?

[Ron Reefman]

Age of the tank is important, sps don't like tanks that haven't matured (6-9 months old is fine). I agree that the lights could be a bit weak for sps, but that depends a bit on how deep your tank is and where you plan to put the new sps. You might ask if your LFS has a PAR meter, or see if anybody in your local club has one they could loan you. I'd let you borrow mine, but you live a bit too far away! I don't agree with the bad rating for API test kits. Our local club did a big water testing meeting and people had API, Salifert, Red Sea, Elos and Hanna. The API kits don't read down to small numbers like some of the others, but they aren't any less accurate. It's more about how well you do the test and how repeatable the results are (meaning you do it exactly the same way every time and get the same result).

Good luck.

[sponger0]

What are the fluorescent lights? T5s?

Replace those API kits. With SPS, you really want to know your water levels good. API dont cut it.

Alk, temp, and salinity are really the ones that need to be stable. Calcium and magnesium are going to change but as long as they are high enough you will be fine.

Alk should be between 8-11 dkh and not fluctuate more than 1 point in 24 hrs.

Temp is best with no more than a 2 degree swing.

And I highly disagree with Ron on API kits compared to others. 0-.25 phosphates is too broad of a range. I had all the API kits when I started really getting into water parameters. Each time I did it with alk, calc and mag, the readings were different each time and within 5 mintues of each other. I got red sea coral pro kits and they were the same on each test. API has a big error margin

[Tuton]

The tank is over 10 years old but it crashed two years ago and has been a Fowlr ever since
I have been walking back over to the reef side of things rescently

[Palting]

Two years running as a FOWLR, and nitrates of zero? You must be doing something right . I say go for it with the staghorn SPS, and see how you do.

Try to put those SPS as high as you can on the rockscape to get as much light as possible. If you are interested in the difference in compact fluorescent vs MH lighting and their effects on SPS, I have a few pics for you. I recently fragged one of my SPS since it was starting to encroach on another SPS. Nothing else better to do with the frag, I placed it in my predator tank. The reef tank is MH+T5 lighting (see my sig), and the predator tank has the 324 10k/actinic compact fluorescent.

Under MH+T5, the mother coral:


Under 10k/actinic compact fluorescents, the frag:


The frag has been there for about 2 months now is definitely able to live and grow slowly under CF lights. However, it has changed slowly from the original bright green to the current brown/rust color, as the resident brown colored zooxanthelae multiplied in number to be able to get and deliver more energy from the lower light. If you are serious in getting back to reef, I suggest plan n a better light sometime in the future. Oh, I agree, better test kits as well, also sometime in the future.