Acropora

[Novicereefer]

Hey, so I finally dipped my big toe in the Acro world. I went to my LFS yesterday and asked for something "cheap and easy". He had this purple looking piece with what looks to be goldish dots on it. He gave me this frag of the colony for $40. It's called Garf Bonsi he said ‍. From what I noticed about Acros (from tons of research) is that they grow really fast, soak up tons of calcium, super sensitive to swings of any kind, like high light and flow. My nitrates are around 15ppm, phosphorus is about.025. I tend to do about 25% water change every week (I spot feed my corals reef roids 3-4x a week (clam, zoas, Duncan, blastomussa, mushrooms, Gargonian)). There are other corals in this mixed reef, but I don't really go out of my way to spot feed them. Wish me luck!

Suggestions are greatly appreciated!

 

[Dburr1014]

My advice is don't do 25% weekly water change. Lower that to 10%.

Have you checked par of your lights?
Is your water pretty stable?

Good luck and enjoy!

 

[Miami Reef]

My advice is don't do 25% weekly water change. Lower that to 10%.

Why?

 

[Dburr1014]

Why?

25% is a lot for trying to keep stable water, imo.

Edit: just to add, lots of people setup awc just to keep things stable. So that's only 1-2% daily.

 

[Novicereefer]

My advice is don't do 25% weekly water change. Lower that to 10%.

Have you checked par of your lights?
Is your water pretty stable?

Good luck and enjoy!

I heard that's what I should do regarding water changes. Is it because it's less likely to cause big swings?

Yea, it's currently under 230 par. And everything is stable. My torches and clam are doing fine and I think they are my most sensitive corals

 

[LobsterOfJustice]

Alkalinity is the most important thing for acros. You need to be testing it twice a week at minimum and have a plan for dosing daily to maintain levels. As you stock more corals and they begin to grow you need to keep a very close eye on this to make sure you minimize swings as demand increases.

 

[mrpontiac80]

Good luck! I love garf bonsai. After 2 yrs I am finally seeing success with acros. It can be a learning curve for sure. But keep everything the same as best as possible and you’ll be fine. Me personally, I tried 2 part dosing for a while and it wasn’t until I changed to all for reef that everything really settled into a groove and was the same test results every test.

 

[nothing_fancy]

Second the alkalinity, test a lot at this point, in the future you can sit back a little. some would disagree but for me getting the swing to be no more than .5 dKH is what works best. 1 dKH swing is fine too but some stuff is just not gonna tolerate that especially if its new to the system and especially if its a thin skinned SPS of some kind like a tort... I was never able to keep acropora decently when my dKH was high either, like above 10. Again, just my experience. SPS will consume cal and alk but you're a ways off from that. You need to have a few big colonies before you have noticeable consumption. Lastly I would slowly get that par up.

 

[Dburr1014]

Yes, watch those alk swings.