MartinM
Valuable Member
I’m not new to marine aquariums (nearly 30 years) but I am new (~1.5 years) to SPS.
I have a 1000L system. It’s mostly clam and anemone dominated (10 clams, 3 large mags, one large S. Haddoni, one large BTA I wish I could remove) but also 3 small acro colonies, one small digitata colony, two large purple stylophora colonies, and a few acro, monti, and stylo frags. The system is coming up on 2 years old in December.
Here’s what does amazing: clams, anemones, and stylos. The small clams grow like weeds, the bigger clams continually put on growth, the anemones have doubled in size (or more) in a year. The stylos grow like crazy: the newest colony went from smaller than a fist to several cm larger than a softball in three months, the large colony went from a small colony to the size of a soccer ball in about a year. They form round, dense colonies similar to what they look like on reefs for me, rather than the branching style this same colony tends to do in reef tanks (I got it fragged from a mother colony at my LFS, the mother colony is much less dense than mine, probably from lower water flow). PE on the stylos is amazing, they look furry all the time. Same for the digitata. The digitata colony and frags grow just fine I think, about 1/4th the rate of the stylos (the stylos are the fastest growing coral of any type I’ve ever kept).
However, the acros hate my system. They’ve all turned (and stayed) brown. Some have died back. Others have barely grown. PE is poor. I don’t know why. I’ve tried frags and other colonies and lost them, slowly but surely.
I’m not going to get any more until if/when I get the ones I have back to health.
Params are always consistent: alk is maintained at 10 by Alkatronic, CA about 450, both via tropic Marin AFR and kalkwasser. Ph stays steady around 8.25 and doesn’t dip much at night (large clams in the fuge help with this). Mg is always around 1300. Nitrates are always 1ppm and PO4 is always .01. I do bacterial dosing (microbacter 7, 10ml/day) and does 5mL/day of TM’s pink carbon source (forget the name). It’s a bacterial driven system I think, I don’t get algae on the glass, just white bacteria film and coralline. I feed heavily: fish get about 5 frozen cubes/day, and in a 24 hour period I feed about 75mL combined of Reef Nutrition, Roti-feast, Oyster-feast and SDaquarist Phyto, as well as about 50mL of Red Sea AB+, as well as freeze dried krill and reef nutrition pellets of various sizes. A few times a week the system gets mysis-feast, R.O.E, and arcti-pods also. Temp is always maintained +/- .3 degrees C via a Teco chiller/heater.
The tank has about 50kg of live rock (from the ocean) that’s still full of life after almost 2 years (sponges, tunicates, oysters, encrusting corals) and I have a lot of various species of snails and limpets (some breed like crazy), including, unfortunately, vermetid snails). Sand bed is very alive, with tube worms poking out of it, and it gets turnover from conchs, snails, sea cucumbers, sleeper goby, and diamond gobies.
Lighting is 14k halides and T5’s. Acros sit at about ~300 PAR (halide glitter lines make this bounce up and down by +/- 50, but I’d say that’s the average). Stylos are less, around 225. The half of the tank the acros are in gets a lot of turbulent water motion, while the right side is designed to be calmer for the clams. Stylos share in the turbulent water motion. Skimmer is a massive Reef Octopus Regal 250-E. I use about 150mL of activated carbon and change it every week very consistently. No mechanical filtration (unless you count the mesh sock the carbon is in, maybe 200 microns).
Ok, I think I’ve brain dumped everything about the system I can think of. Interested to get some input from you acro experts!
I have a 1000L system. It’s mostly clam and anemone dominated (10 clams, 3 large mags, one large S. Haddoni, one large BTA I wish I could remove) but also 3 small acro colonies, one small digitata colony, two large purple stylophora colonies, and a few acro, monti, and stylo frags. The system is coming up on 2 years old in December.
Here’s what does amazing: clams, anemones, and stylos. The small clams grow like weeds, the bigger clams continually put on growth, the anemones have doubled in size (or more) in a year. The stylos grow like crazy: the newest colony went from smaller than a fist to several cm larger than a softball in three months, the large colony went from a small colony to the size of a soccer ball in about a year. They form round, dense colonies similar to what they look like on reefs for me, rather than the branching style this same colony tends to do in reef tanks (I got it fragged from a mother colony at my LFS, the mother colony is much less dense than mine, probably from lower water flow). PE on the stylos is amazing, they look furry all the time. Same for the digitata. The digitata colony and frags grow just fine I think, about 1/4th the rate of the stylos (the stylos are the fastest growing coral of any type I’ve ever kept).
However, the acros hate my system. They’ve all turned (and stayed) brown. Some have died back. Others have barely grown. PE is poor. I don’t know why. I’ve tried frags and other colonies and lost them, slowly but surely.
I’m not going to get any more until if/when I get the ones I have back to health. Params are always consistent: alk is maintained at 10 by Alkatronic, CA about 450, both via tropic Marin AFR and kalkwasser. Ph stays steady around 8.25 and doesn’t dip much at night (large clams in the fuge help with this). Mg is always around 1300. Nitrates are always 1ppm and PO4 is always .01. I do bacterial dosing (microbacter 7, 10ml/day) and does 5mL/day of TM’s pink carbon source (forget the name). It’s a bacterial driven system I think, I don’t get algae on the glass, just white bacteria film and coralline. I feed heavily: fish get about 5 frozen cubes/day, and in a 24 hour period I feed about 75mL combined of Reef Nutrition, Roti-feast, Oyster-feast and SDaquarist Phyto, as well as about 50mL of Red Sea AB+, as well as freeze dried krill and reef nutrition pellets of various sizes. A few times a week the system gets mysis-feast, R.O.E, and arcti-pods also. Temp is always maintained +/- .3 degrees C via a Teco chiller/heater.
The tank has about 50kg of live rock (from the ocean) that’s still full of life after almost 2 years (sponges, tunicates, oysters, encrusting corals) and I have a lot of various species of snails and limpets (some breed like crazy), including, unfortunately, vermetid snails). Sand bed is very alive, with tube worms poking out of it, and it gets turnover from conchs, snails, sea cucumbers, sleeper goby, and diamond gobies.
Lighting is 14k halides and T5’s. Acros sit at about ~300 PAR (halide glitter lines make this bounce up and down by +/- 50, but I’d say that’s the average). Stylos are less, around 225. The half of the tank the acros are in gets a lot of turbulent water motion, while the right side is designed to be calmer for the clams. Stylos share in the turbulent water motion. Skimmer is a massive Reef Octopus Regal 250-E. I use about 150mL of activated carbon and change it every week very consistently. No mechanical filtration (unless you count the mesh sock the carbon is in, maybe 200 microns).
Ok, I think I’ve brain dumped everything about the system I can think of. Interested to get some input from you acro experts!
Last edited:
