this may be sort of a long and complicated post but please bare with me.
Before Hurricane sandy i had a beautiful 90 gallon mixed reef tank with great success with acros. it was a 90 aga with a 20 gal sump, asm g1 skimmer, mag drive 3, 4 bulb tek with a vortech and a 15w aqua ultra violet sterilizer. Being in college i could not afford luxurious dosers or ro filters so i added manually and used tap(i know not the best thing you can do) but it worked with great success so i was happy. In the disaster that followed hurricane sandy i recovered and saw a chance to upgrade in pretty much every aspect, so i found the perfect tank for me which was a 120 gal oceanic tech tank. started out simple on it, 30 gal sump, 1 vortech, reef octopus diablo xs 160 skimmer, 6 bulb tek instead of the 4 bulb tek fixture and manually dosed like before because i had good results with it. after several months of the tank being up and good, having fish and some starter corals i decided to try acros again. they would not die but only encrust like crazy and loose their color. after this happening to 1 or 2 pieces i tested a little further and found a phosphate issue which i soon corrected and have never had an issue since about a year and a half ago. solving that problem i thought the acros would take off but have not. over time i have upgraded to having 2 vortechs, i got a vertex omega 150 skimmer and got rid of the pos diablo, put in new bulbs to my t5, got rid of the kz fiji pink because i heard it had red in it which stunted growth. upgraded my magdrive 7 to a sicce syncra 4, got a biopellet reactor, got a doser dosing alk, cal(both from brs powder which i mix myself), mag and acro power daily keeping everything extremely stable. i add strontium and iodide weekly manually. my paramaters are as follows:
temp:78-79
alk8.5-9
cal 430 every time
nitrate: i have the red sea kit and its lower than their lowest color but not 0
phosphates: .05
salinity: 1.0024
mag 1400
I have 10 fish in the tank so it definitely gets fed enough, change my filter socks weekly, and have 2 bags of carbon which cumulatively add up to what i need for my tank and i alternate changing them so i dont do too much at once, i feed reef pearls and oyster feast at least 2x a week. all water on the tank is ro water and my cartridges dont even touch 6 months of use. before in the 90 i used tap water and had better success than im having now. Its not only one acro, i keep getting new ones hoping that the things would have resolved themselves after every little upgrade but they have not. out of over 20 pieces i will say i have vertical growth out of 2-3 of them and they are not growing as fast as they should. they are all pieces out of peoples tanks or aquacultured pieces and they are placed sporadically around the tank so its not just that one spot you cant keep anything. i have messed with my photo period lengthening and shortening my light period but no use. no matter what i seem to do nothing works. i have talked to experts and people far smarter than me but no one can seem to come up with anything, im actually about several monts away from actually trying tap water or just going lps and softies because its bs and im just fed up. I have great growth and color on lps zoas its just acros for some reason refuse to grow
Before Hurricane sandy i had a beautiful 90 gallon mixed reef tank with great success with acros. it was a 90 aga with a 20 gal sump, asm g1 skimmer, mag drive 3, 4 bulb tek with a vortech and a 15w aqua ultra violet sterilizer. Being in college i could not afford luxurious dosers or ro filters so i added manually and used tap(i know not the best thing you can do) but it worked with great success so i was happy. In the disaster that followed hurricane sandy i recovered and saw a chance to upgrade in pretty much every aspect, so i found the perfect tank for me which was a 120 gal oceanic tech tank. started out simple on it, 30 gal sump, 1 vortech, reef octopus diablo xs 160 skimmer, 6 bulb tek instead of the 4 bulb tek fixture and manually dosed like before because i had good results with it. after several months of the tank being up and good, having fish and some starter corals i decided to try acros again. they would not die but only encrust like crazy and loose their color. after this happening to 1 or 2 pieces i tested a little further and found a phosphate issue which i soon corrected and have never had an issue since about a year and a half ago. solving that problem i thought the acros would take off but have not. over time i have upgraded to having 2 vortechs, i got a vertex omega 150 skimmer and got rid of the pos diablo, put in new bulbs to my t5, got rid of the kz fiji pink because i heard it had red in it which stunted growth. upgraded my magdrive 7 to a sicce syncra 4, got a biopellet reactor, got a doser dosing alk, cal(both from brs powder which i mix myself), mag and acro power daily keeping everything extremely stable. i add strontium and iodide weekly manually. my paramaters are as follows:
temp:78-79
alk8.5-9
cal 430 every time
nitrate: i have the red sea kit and its lower than their lowest color but not 0
phosphates: .05
salinity: 1.0024
mag 1400
I have 10 fish in the tank so it definitely gets fed enough, change my filter socks weekly, and have 2 bags of carbon which cumulatively add up to what i need for my tank and i alternate changing them so i dont do too much at once, i feed reef pearls and oyster feast at least 2x a week. all water on the tank is ro water and my cartridges dont even touch 6 months of use. before in the 90 i used tap water and had better success than im having now. Its not only one acro, i keep getting new ones hoping that the things would have resolved themselves after every little upgrade but they have not. out of over 20 pieces i will say i have vertical growth out of 2-3 of them and they are not growing as fast as they should. they are all pieces out of peoples tanks or aquacultured pieces and they are placed sporadically around the tank so its not just that one spot you cant keep anything. i have messed with my photo period lengthening and shortening my light period but no use. no matter what i seem to do nothing works. i have talked to experts and people far smarter than me but no one can seem to come up with anything, im actually about several monts away from actually trying tap water or just going lps and softies because its bs and im just fed up. I have great growth and color on lps zoas its just acros for some reason refuse to grow
