Acropora Agonizing.

Okay, the numbers first...

NO3 - 0
PO4 - 0.02
Alk - 175ppm
Cal - 475ppm
Mag - 1450ppm

I run purigen in a reactor, GFO in another reactor, skim with a skimmer that removes good continuous gunk, and have 2 AI Vega's over my 60. I feed 3 times a day a mix of oyster ova, rotifeast, mysis, cyclopeze, and decapped brine eggs.

Everything in the tank seems to be doing great. My montipora, my birdsnests, my chalices are all doing great. Lots of growth, polyp extension, great colors, etc.

I can't seem to keep acropora healthy. It does well for a while, then begines to slowly fade. My theory is not enough food. I feel like I feed a lot though and I'm not sure how to respond.

Any recommendations or ideas?

 

In my opinion I do not think that you are lacking the nutrition to keep acropora.

When you say fade do you mean a loss in coloration or a loss in tissue?

How are you acclimating the acropora to your lighting?

 

It may be lighting. I had a crap chinese LED panel that grew numerous sps and lps (torch, frogspawn, birdnest, cyphastrea, acan, and more), but when I put acros under it they always died. The process was they would be fine for a week then polyps would close. Over about a week from that the colony would brown out and then bleach or develope RTN during the 3-4 week. Turned out my light had a terrible spectrum and the acros just couldn't handle it. After building a new LED they grow fine. Also the browned out acros would recover when moved to a friends tank with MH. So any symptoms like that, light may be an issue.

 

you don't mention water flow? acros do require some motion in the ocean

 

I'll try to answer all the questions here:

By fade, I mean I usually see some coloring up and growth early on, then the growth stops and over time, the polyps extend less and less. After about 3 months, I see little PE, then eventually slow tissue loss and small withdrawn polyps.

My water flow is excellent. I have an MP 40 running a 57g tank and as set, I see lets of polyp movement, a continual gyre, and little or no settling on the bottom of the tank.

Lighting was my other guess, but given the time period (3 months or so), and given the fact that I do light acclimate, I discounted it. I keep corals on the bottom of the tank for a week, raise then to about 1/3 up for about 2 weeks, then move them to their permenant spot.

Thanks for the help!

 

I've seen this too, it usually occurred from not light acclimating enough for me, especially with maricultured colonies. HTH

 

All I can contribute is that regarding nutrition is that I feed every 3 days and not a lot, but I do not run a skimmer or any other means of filtration. I also feed dry pellets the vast majority of the time.

 

well the only other input i can think of is the age of the tank imo the tank must have some age to it, the more the better for sps acros

 

Maturity to the tank helps, but stability I think is #1.

How are you maintaining your levels of alk and cal.?

2 part or Cal reactor?

 

^^ What he said. Also, do you still have the CBB?

From your last picture and set-up and equipment, everything looks pretty good.