Question About Frag (1 Viewer)

[tdmiata]

I am only been at this reef hobby for 4 months so bare with me. I buy quite a bit of frags from marsh members. My question is this..The frags that I bought which were 1'' or less usually doesn't survive in my tank. Is this normal or am I doing something wrong.

 

[i_am_poor]

What frags? Softie? LPS? SPS? You can increase the chance of survival by buying encrusted/healed frags and not fresh cuts.

 

[tdmiata]

sorry lps..thanks for the advice

 

[tdmiata]

man I'm dyslexic..sps..

 

[tas5tas]

what are you water parameters??

 

[tdmiata]

Specific gravity: 1.024 - 1.025 sg
pH: 8.2 - 8.4
Calcium: 460 ppm
Alkalinity: 9 dKH
Magnesium: 1200 ppm
Temperature: 79°-82F

haven't test for nitrate or phoshpate..55g tank with 250w 14k MH...two 96w actinic..euroreef 120 skimmer...running carbon, mangroves, and GFO in a sump..

 

[CBBSteve]

Hi, tdmiata.
IMO, a 4 month old tank is kinda young, it may not be ready to support sps type corals. You might consider abandoning sps for the next 6 months to a year, let the tank get really going strong and stable. You might have more success with mushrooms, rics, zoa's, leathers, etc.

Good luck,
Steve

 

[tdmiata]

Good Evening Steve

Forgot to mention, the tank was FOWLR for 4 years before migration to reef...in your opinion is that still too young for sps..

 

[bdblkta1]

was the tank ever treated with copper (ich treatments) of any sorts? that would also cause your problems.

 

[tdmiata]

Hi Josh,

no copper, but in those early days, every chemicals you can think of to treat algea, I would put it in my tank...looking back, I was such a dumba**, I would buy all these chemicals from these kids recommendation at petco/petsmart..

 

[CBBSteve]

Forgot to mention, the tank was FOWLR for 4 years before migration to reef...in your opinion is that still too young for sps..

Wow, well in that case, of course its matured enough for sps...

FWIW, I lost probably my first 5 acro frags before one finally survived...then I decided I didn't really like them...

Good luck,
Steve

 

[tdmiata]

thanks Steve for you advice, I guess I just need some patience when dealing with sps...

 

[tas5tas]

Here' some good advice.....just b/c it's a piece of sps or another high light coral......always....ALWAYS....start with them on the bottom and slowly move them up in the tank over a period of a couple weeks or us some screen meshing and start with 4-5 layers over the entire tank and remove 1 layer per week until all are gone. Most of the time when people are losing newly aquired corals that were thriving it's b/c nitrates and mainly phosphates are too high. SPS corals hate po4. In other instances where there is coral loss it's b/c they are not properly acclimated either temp, salinity, or lighting.


Just my $.02

 

[tdmiata]

Thanks tas5tas for the advice..Do you recommend I do the same for a newly acquire colony of sps also?

 

[tas5tas]

Yes...I do this with all of my corals. It's kinda like someone moving from Maine to say...Houston and having to adapt to our extreme heat and UV rays. If something or someone isn't use to high UV exposure....it's/they're gonna burn....same with corals.

 

[fishcraze]

thanks Steve for you advice, I guess I just need some patience when dealing with sps...

Maybe that's all you need
Your tank is 4 yrs old so your sandbed/rocks should be mature as Steve said. However, being sucessful at keeping fishes only or softies/lps tank only doesn't mean you would be able to keep any sps right away.
We tend to overfeed in a FO tank or softies/lps only tank since they would normally be fine w/ a little high NO3/PO4. So you may want to check your tank nitrate and phosphate. With sps, you should try to keep them as close to 0 as you could.
Other parameters critical to SPS are dKh stability/temperature/flow and lighting (look like your lighting is adequate).

My recommendation would be start w/ mearsuring your dKh more frequent (especially do a day/night test - or get a pH monitor) to see how your tank dKh swing b/t day/night, b/t day/day and when it starts dropping significantly that u need to add bufer or kalkwasser to keep it stable. After a few week, you would get an idea how much /how frequent buffer u need to add then relax on the testing schedule. Also monitor how ur tk temp varies day/nite. Also be careful w/ how much carbon or gfo media u add or flow to it.. too much of them may not always be the right thing to do.

On getting the SPS frags, try to start with the easy to care and hardy ones first. I'd stay away from wild colonies or 'fresh cut' sps frags from wild colonies at the beginning, fully encrusted frags are safer.
Sorry for the long preaching and telling you stuffs you may already knnow (!), but somehow I'm in the mood of posting now - maybe due to the coffee cup during my poker games a while ago

 

[tdmiata]

Thanks Quoc for the detail advice..One thing I don't do enough is testing...will start on the nitrate andd phoshhate asap..You should ivite me to your poker party, i'm what they call " a calling station"..

 

[i_am_poor]

Hopefully you dont mind me asking this here but I test my alk every morning for a whole week and I see a drop of 2 point daily. I go from 11 to 9 and calc is around 460ish. Is that normal? Quoc? Anyone? Thanks .

 

[fishcraze]

it's quite hard to maintain a dKh of 11 (unless you have a calc rxtr and really crank it up) and that's probably why you see it drops to 9. Therefore it's better to keep your dKh around 8-9 for stability. if you want to keep dkh at 11, u may need to do more frequent buffering (eg. w/ baking soda every 2-3 days).

 

[MarkieB]

Before I can comment please tell me this.


1. Are you buying the frags loose or mounted?

2. What is your acclimation process?

3. If they are loose how do you mount them?