Ford's 75gal Mixed Reef: UPS Came Today!!

Hello everyone! This is an update on my 75 gal display mixed reef. So far im proud of how far this tank has come after about a year but i am still hitting some snags, so some advice would be awesome.


About half of my sps pieces are very pale in color, and it seems to be slowly getting worse. They all have amazing polyp extension, and slow encrusting growth but nothing to write home about. My LPS all seem fine with decent color and slow growth, all of my soft coral looks okay but none of it has grown in a solid year. My xenia and green star polyps both slowly melted away. Zoas look no different then the day i put them in 12 months ago.

My params:

Temp: 78.8
pH: 7.86
sg: 1.026
cal: 420
alk: 164 ppm
all nitrates undectable

Tank Details:

I do weekly water changes of about 7-10 gallons. I run my skimmer full time and dose 10 mL of vinegar per day to keep nutrients in check, also 5 mangrove trees help. All cal,alk, and vinegar are dosed with a bubble magus and everything is very stable. 2 mp10's supply respectable flow in the display. I run a bare bottom display and sump to make siphoning detritus easy. tank is about 14 months old and approx 90 gal total. I run no carbon or gfo, i only have a slight algae issue. i get a small amount of cyano and even smaller amount of gha that's manageable every week during cleaning. I have a 6 bulb T5 light thats 4 feet. All ati bulbs (2 coral plus and 4 blue plus). total 324 watts. I run 2 bulbs for 11 hours and 6 for 4 hours. I feed my 3 fish once a day and also target feed reef chile once every 4 or 5 days. I also hand feed all my LPS once a week or more. I feed PE mysis and hykari pellets.

Any ideas? I feel bad cause i feel as though im doing everything right but everything is looking so ghostly if you will.

Okay now some pictures:

 

Your tank is beautiful.

Since your running it as an ULNS I am not surprised your sps are pale. Are you feeding them? It appears as though you also have a low fish load. You might consider adding more fish and try some of the sps feeding products like Reef Chili or similar.

 

Yeah beautiful tank and setup.

OP says he feeds reef chili once every 4 or 5 days. I'd increase to daily and increase water changes if you can.

I agree the ULNS style is probably causing your SPS to look pale, though your other corals look great.

How do you like the Bare bottom? I keep my tank bare bottom too.

 

yeah i feed reef chili every few days, but everyday is not overkill? Wont more water changes lower the bio load even more? i absolutely love bare bottom, i made the switch about 6 months ago. The cleaning takes half the time, and the algae is far less aggressive. i was thinking about maybe getting a bottle of this...

Korallen-Zucht Pohl

it seems to have great reviews and it says it fixes pale coloration for ULNS. i have a gift card for BRS so im thinking it might be a good time to try it. Any thoughts?

 

And thanks for the kind words!!

 

Perhaps try Coral Frenzy, or Reef Roids as well.
Never used the product but I would in a heart beat.
No personally I do not think you need to up the water changes.

 

Could you use the Red Sea Color Nutrition Program?

 

Got Some New Goodies In Today!!!!

 

Oh why not just keep going with the pics!?!

 

very, very nice!! Congrats on the new goodies!