School me on SPS please!

also start with some easier and cheaper SPS just to get the feel for it. and make sure you have plenty of calcium, magnesium and alk to dose. good luck SPS is my favorite of all corals. and i LOVE the scape btw

 

Yeah I was going to mention water changes. Using Reef Crystals and RO, I plan on bi-weekly changes.

I still have a fair amount of Kent Marine products left over from my 75g for dosing, so that shouldn't be a problem. One problem I have always had though is how much to dose while factoring in evaporation. Is their a method you all use to calculate this?

 

4phish

evaporation takes water out of the tank- the ions are left in solution thus evaporation, requires only the addition of freshwater

dosing
the method I use for calculating dosing was to test on a weekly basis
whilst performing weekly water changes
and when I noted that the levels where starting to decline

example - my salt mix was delivering 460 ca, 9.5 dkh and 1430 Mag when mixed at 1.025
all the time those levels or very similar where recorded each week
until eventually I noted the Ca was down at 440 and the DKH at 8.6

this told me, my weekly water changes where no longer keeping up with demand, thus when I 1st started dosing, I was dosing manually to replace
1.5 DKH and 20 ppm Calcium during 1 week

as the corals grew, numbers increased whilst still testing weekly and continuing to perform the water changes . I have needed to periodically increase the amount of amount of Ca and ALk I am adding
currently replacing approx 6ppm Calcium and approx 3/4 dkh on a daily basis

test results determine what and how much needs to be dosed and how frequently

magnesium - very low demand for me, thus replacing 20ppm on a monthly basis, which I still do manually

Steve

 

I have a 4 bulb T5 fixture w/ ATI bulbs over my breeder, and the sps frags I have are doing great and showing some good growth. I just place them in the top half of the tank, and in an area with some direct flow.

 

Thanks Steve and aw1447.

 

x2 on that... I always watch to see if the sps polyps are sticking out, if there not then usally their's a problem with some water parms.. after testing usally it is the case..