[ATJ]

Those that know me know how much I hate the terms "SPS" and "LPS". Partly because they are pretty meaningless, but mostly because of all the generalisations that are often present in sentences containing one or both terms.

So called "SPS" are found over a wide range of depths, not just in shallow water/high light. Paradoxically, corals with smaller polyps are more dependent on light for energy and this has led to them being better able to acclimatise to varying conditions of light, including low light. For example, Stylophora pistillata probably has the widest vertical distribution of any coral living in conditions spread over 2 orders of magnitude of lighting.

Here are some photographs from my dives on the reef showing the "SPS" corals at depth:

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/Tr...lty_Ancho.html
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/Tr...orth_Horn.html
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/Tr...ralty_Anc.html

Some of the colonies at 20 to 30 metres depth are quite colourful, despite the fact that there is less than 20% surface irradiation at these depths. This suggest to me that intensity isn't the only factor in colouration - and may not be much of a factor at all.

One of my tanks is only lit by four 36/40W and I've had some very colourful corals:







Note these are the actual colours and there was no manipulation of the colours in post processing.

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.

	LPS Large Polyped Stony corals – In the aquarium hobby this is a common division of the species of stony corals based upon the visual assessment of the size of the polyps. Corals in this category were among the first stony corals to be kept successfully in captivity and include many very beautiful species. Commonly kept Genera include Euphyllia (hammer/frogspawn coral), Favia (brain coral), Plerogyra (bubble coral), Lobophyllia (meat/tooth coral), and Caulastrea (candycane coral). LPS corals also include the popular solitary non-colonial stony corals such as Fungia (plate coral), Cynarina (button coral), Trachyphyllia (open brain coral), and Herpolitha (tongue coral). Like their SPS counterparts, LPS corals require good water quality, intense lighting of the appropriate spectrum, adequate water movement and regular supplementation of calcium.

[2Sunny]

Andrew,

I am ecstatic to have stumbled across your post and your website. I am sorry to say I had never picked up on your Reefkeeping articles previously, but I will look for them now. All I can say is thank-you for taking the time and effort to share all those underwater photographs. Your site is a wealth of visual information for those interested in seeing coral in their natural surroundings.

Thanks again for sharing!


Joe

As for the true topic of this thread forgive me if this 2 bit advice has been said before (I admit I did not read through the whole thread), but for me I found when I picked a system I admired and tried to mimic it, lo and behold I was blessed with colorful corals just like in the tank I was mimicing . . .

[duuce25]

I agree that as little you can mess with your tank the better.I often will see my sps go thru changes day by day.I also think lighting is very important as i have seen the same coral from my tank in 3 different tanks with 3 different looks to the coral sometimes unrecognizable.

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.

[jhale]

bump, for a still interesting topic.

I've lowered my po4 still, and changed all my MH bulbs about 2 months ago, that combo has given me some colorful corals.

	MH Metal Halide Lighting, typically used for high intensity light demanding corals such as SPS. Bulbs come in varieties of spectrums (7k, 10k,20k), and intensity (175W, 250W, 400W).

[Pedro]

What's your hanna testing at right now?

[Tonyscoots84]

my colors are really looking great as well after drastically lowering my phosphates from .4 to .07 tested with a hanna meter... and im still not done lowering them yet...

[tosiek]

whats the price on the hanna meter?

as per coloring up sps. Two of my sps colonies started to color up recently in the past month. Here is one that went from white to brown and is now turning a deep purple and just started to turn baby blue at the tips closest to the light. The other went from brown and coloring up like the purple bonsai =0)







Stopped overfeeding, started to skim a little dryer, stopped adding stupid things that raised my Po4 and raised my flow alot. Showing no reading on my Po4 test kit but i'm sure some is still there (instant ocean test kit i think). Also have been using the Fauna marine stuff and so far am liking it although i dunno what its doing .

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.

[gnatp2]

so jealous.

[spskibitzer]

I still believe that one of the best things you can do for your system than rely on the latest bells and whistles is to do frequent water changes. Sure skimmers are great for polishing the water and lowering nutrients but at the same time they strip the water column of micro fauna and plankton which is beneficial to our aquariums ecosystem. We all get caught up in the latest gadgets and try to mimic the latest fads in reef keeping when we should really be falling back on basics IME

1) Lighting

2) Flow

3) good husbandry

[NYreefNoob]

ok after reading all of this ill put in my 2 cent's. i have horribly husbandry compared to most. my tank total water volume is about 70g. i constantly have hand's in my tank. and im a smoker. i run phos and carbon reactor a asm 3 skimmer modded. 6 36" t5's lights are approx 12" above corals i 2 part evs dose. i have way to many fish in my tank. i overfeed. and i only do a 5g water change a week. i have a water turn over of about 2300gph andi am getting great growth rates and pretty good color. only thing that color isnt as dark as it was is my purple nana. all same equip and before i started 2 part dosing i couldnt hardly keep any sps. do my sps look as good color wise as the tank they came from ? no they dont. or atleast on the bluish and purple stuff, but everything else does. this is a mixed reef.

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.