High Phosphates - Look at my corals - Oh No What Should I do ????

[o2manyfish]

Hi Guys,

Been awhile since an update. I have tried at least 6x to get some photos of the tank since Dec and just can't get decent photos. I even had the Tedinator stop by last Friday night and together we couldn't get any real good photos.

So I tried something different, put the hood on the lens and took some top down shots that turned out pretty nice.

If you want a FTS log onto the webcam and take a look, but for now, here is what things are looking like from above.

Here is one of my favorite colonies, still have no idea what it is, but it's just getting bigger and bigger

Here is a little Aussie piece I picked up about a month ago. Wasn't anything crazy but it caught my eye and thought it had potential. Of course I placed it all the way at the bottom of the tank, so not really giving it a fair shot to see what it can do, but I still think it might do something.

Originally thought this was the Jason Fox Beach Bum, but have since been told it's actually the WWC Kung Pao Monti. This is also sitting on the bottom of the tank and and seems to be really happy. Scroll back to the photos in Nov and look how much this beauty has grown in the past few months.

This is the left side of the island.

Here is another show of the first colony with some of the stags behind it that are starting to grow over the top

Picked this one up awhile ago, also sitting on the bottom of the tank.

The Grafted Cap is getting big

Here is the Purple Pink Milli that Jake Adams collected last year. Its grown a nice sold encrusted base and the colony is atop a long single stalk of coral. The colony head is really starting to grow. As pretty as this piece is I gave a piece to Chefzilla. His piece has outgrown mine and his has much better color.

There are some photos of these millies from a few months back. The bigger one doesn't look like much from the front view, but top down it's kicking. The little one is sprouting more and more branches and the orange color is showing up more and more

 

[o2manyfish]

How crazy has this millie turned out... This isn't shot under blue leds either, this is with Radions set to almost 14k at 100% (just for shooting the photos)

Another nice milli

This is another milli, Oregon tort at the top of the photo. Take a peak at the acro to the right of the milli in the center.That 'colony' was a 1.5" 2 branch frag about 5.5 months ago. Since I started dosing the Triton Base elements some of my corals have just started growing like weeds. And this piece in particular. I don't think I have had a monti digi grow as fast as this acro has. It's really amazing 5.5 months

These are some Orange Rhodactis. And they just love the back bottom of the tank.... This is what gets thrown to the back of the tank lol....

Pink Lemonade Colony - This has been growing well, but strangely all the new growth on this colony is growing from the underside forward. It's actually growing from the shade under the colony out. Silly corals don't always make sense

So this is my Red Planet colony. This has grown from small 2 branch frag to this colony in about 18 months. The way it grew out, it grew out from the rock and upward at an angle. So the front dark edge of the coral was blocking the view of the pretty part of the coral and the colony was actually hidden from view by itself. Well it kept growing and growing and grew right up to the acrylic. So last weekend I go in with my clippers to trim it back an inch. Of course as soon as I go to cut my first piece the entire colony pops off the rock it was mounted to. So I pull the colony and trim in back an inch and a half. You can see how dense the growth is. So as I trim the coral it is coming apart in such small frags that I would be embarrassed to give them to a friend because they are so fricking tiny. But being a coral addict of course I took the time to mount these stupid little nubs and put them in the outdoor frag tank. Then I go to put the colony back in the tank, and it won't go back and mount the way it was originally. So to get it to epoxy to the rockwork, I have to turn the coral 90 degrees. So the good part is I now have a nice pretty view of my Red Planet colony. The bad news is, there was no reason to trim the darn thing back.

My strawberry shortcake. Got this piece from a Wild Aussie shipment. Started out with some color, immediately lost all color, and now months later is finally starting to color up.

And a tort

Well that's it for the photos for the time being. I promise to try to get some front photos soon.

For those of you struggling to lower your phosphates, so your corals will be pretty.....

On February 8th the phosphates in the tank were .32...... not a typo.... not .03 not .02 but .32

My Hanna colorimeter read .34 and my Triton ICP came back with the ,32


I got news my new Calcium Reactor finished being built and was tested and shipped this week. So next week I should have some new equipment pics to share.


My tank is happy.... I hope yours is too!

Dave B

 

[Fitz_BizZle]

Wow nice stuff great color

 

[Smite]

Droool, soooo nice! Great update. Amazing pieces. I really like the piece that's growing like a weed, great color.

 

[tofucube]

Wow! Those millis look awesome. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Paranoiattack91]

Sweet. Sorry if I missed it, but is that tank under led only?

 

[theMerchant]

nice! what do you feed your corals?

 

[BeanMachine]

Best bet is to just shut it down [MENTION=824]o2manyfish[/MENTION]

 

[Tangwich]

what you should do is punch yourself in the face for having such amazing corals AND fish. and i mean that in the most loving of ways. [MENTION=6904]Zoarder[/MENTION], where you at?

 

[Bouncingsoul393]

It's awesome you're able to achieve such nice coloration and growth with phosphates that high. I've always tried to keep them as low as possible specifically to limit algae growth. How is the algae action in this tank? Are there any issues with cyano, hair, bubble etc on the sand bed or rock?
One important thing to keep in mind is that although a coral can grow and color up in high phosphate water, the coral itself will be much more brittle and prone to breaking compared to a wild SPS grown in low phosphate water. How many times have we accidentally fragged an SPS with a light brush of the back of our hand? I know I've done it before. I've handled many many maricultured Acropora colonies *grown in ocean water with very little phosphate and high flow* that were super strong and had an obviously dense skeleton such that they were hard to frag with bone cutters by hand.
But you don't have to take my word for it:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022098111004588
Just something to think about.

 

[Zoarder]

what you should do is punch yourself in the face for having such amazing corals AND fish. and i mean that in the most loving of ways. [MENTION=6904]Zoarder[/MENTION], where you at?

Driving just arrived at my 3rd location, after this HB!

Sent from my SM-G860P using Tapatalk

 

[lowbudget]

dave can i have some of your phosphate

 

[o2manyfish]

Smite,

There is a kind of funny story about the weed. I got the weed originally about 24 months ago. It was supposed to be a frag of a Cali Tort. It was a small branch without enough color or shape to say what it was. But the person I got it from was trust worthy. So I mounted it on the right end of the island on the right side of the tank about 1/2 way down. When I sit on my couch and look at the tank from the end it would be right in the middle of my view and I thought great. So the coral goes in and starts growing. The coral does not appear to be a tort, but it grows long thig branches and the branches curve in all different directions kind of like a stretched out birdsnest. Colors aren't anything wild, but the growth is really cool and in a little over a year grew into a colony bigger than a grapefruit. So first it grew close to the glass, so I was constantly breaking the tips when cleaning the glass. And then finally the hole colony pops off the rock. The coral didn't encrust really and just grew outward. I tried multiple times to remount the colony but because it kept growing towards the glass, as soon as the magnet the colony it popped off. So 5 or 6 months ago it fell down and broke into 3 pieces and stung the duncan colony below it. I took the big piece and just threw it in the back of the tank. You can't see the colony from the front of the tank. But it's still growing in all new directions from it's spot on the bottom.

 

[o2manyfish]

Paranoiattack91,

These corals are lit with just Radion G3 Pro. I run a slightly tweaked Apex 20k profile at various levels 70-86% in different parts of the tank. A couple of hours of blue ramp up. Then 8.5hs of 20k and the a couple of hours of blue ramp down. When I shot these photos I run a 14k color profile at 100% to make it easier to get the photos. So none of these photos/colors are taken under hyper blue lighting.

Dave B

 

[o2manyfish]

TheMerchant,

I dose Triton Elements and AcroPower. For coral food I have about 120 fish in the tank. I feed Chefzilla's chowdown. Brent's food is amazing for the fish and corals. I can't recommend it enough. If you haven't tried it, track Brent down and get some. It's awesome.

Dave B

 

[o2manyfish]

BeanMachine,

I think you may be right, it might be time to just pull the plug. I don't think I have the heart to do it. If I were to leave the front door unlocked, put a stack of buckets in front of the tank, and left a briefcase with $250k in small unmarked bills, do you think you could come clean up this mess for me

Dave

 

[o2manyfish]

Tangwich,

Self-flagellation is just not my thing. How about I inhale deeply from the ozonizer while dripping Kalk in my eye?

LOL

Dave B

 

[o2manyfish]

BouncingSoul393,

I think the algae is a pain in the butt because the front glass is covered in film in 48 hours and at 4 days is quite heavily covered. But I am a super lazy reefer, so wiping algae is a lot of work to me. However the tank has no algae issues to speak of. By the return outlet at the top back left of the tank. I usually have a small patch of Bryopsis. Like 2"x3" other than that no other algae in the tank. And the Frag tank outside in direct sunlight there is almost no algae growing right now. Usually the frag tank the algae covers the glass in a couple of days, and the frag racks are constantly a mess of algae. But the way the tank is running at the moment the frag tank walls you can still see through pretty clearly after 2 weeks without algae wiping.

My only explanation for this is that I have a huge volume of Xenia. There is 1000+ stalks of xenia in the display tank. I harvest about 100-150 heads of xenia about every 3-4 weeks from the display tank. And the outside frag tank literrally has xenia by the square foot. At this point maybe 5-7 square feet of pulsing xenia. So they might be pulling out everything that the Algae would want.

But even before the Xenia population got so large, this tank hasn't had too many issues with algae.

Dave B

 

[Tangwich]

Tangwich,

Self-flagellation is just not my thing. How about I inhale deeply from the ozonizer while dripping Kalk in my eye?

LOL

Dave B

and with that post, you earned your last positive rep polyp...you are now officially one of us. lol

 

[OGFrenchHorn]

Oh man! So sorry to see your colonies suffering. First thing you should do as a quick fix is pour a bottle of bleach in your tank. Then throw in a few dollars in pennies in your sump. That should fix your problem.


Hahaha


Beautiful tank man!


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