I Suck at SPS. Help please. :(
 

My monti cap has completely browned out. My tricoloured valida has completely bleached out (these two corals sit side by side . . . too much light for the valida but not enough for the monti??? how does that happen?). My red convexa is bleached out and may have stn'd (I can't really tell). My pink birdsnest is growing nicely but is a touch on the brown side (sits on the other side of the bleached valida from the birdsnest). My green birdsnest is growing like crazing, but is partly browned and partly bleached (not sure how that actually happens!).

And, I'm so lame, that on top of all of that I succumbed to temptation and bought a pretty pink monti cap today. I just couldn't walk away from it with the price I was offered (shopping with my bestie, who we'll call "Double-D," seems to have advantages).

*sigh* Yes. I'm going to take photos and get them uploaded (of the corals, NOT my bestie). I'm just a little embarrassed about the state of them, especially since a couple of them were doing really well . . . then I switched lights . . . then I treated with Chemiclean . . . and I've done a couple of mild "blackouts" where I turned my lights off for three days.

:cry:

is this in the 40G you describe in your signature?

tell us about how you maintain your calcium and alkalinity?

and your protein skimmer and and lighting.

we will just assume you are using RO/DI if you are migrating to SPS :)

Switched lights, dumped in toxins, then turn lights out, then back on, not a good recipe for stable SPS :)
What lights went, which replaced them? Running carbon? I believe you do...water change schedule? Length of time between these events above?

Pics (for positioning info mostly):

http://i1035.photobucket.com/albums/...1027-00227.jpg

Sorry. Crummy photo as the lights are ramping down. The SPS are on the frag rack on the back wall. There is another frag rack that holds green birdsnest frags in the opposite corner of the tank.

http://i1035.photobucket.com/albums/...1027-00231.jpg

A bit of a zoomed in shot. Left to right: green bird, pink bird, valida, convexa, monti cap. The valida and convexa are a couple of inches apart front to back, so they're not quite as close to each other as they look in the photo.

Lovely pink monti that I don't want to kill . . .

http://i1035.photobucket.com/albums/...1027-00230.jpg

Maturity, stability, optimal chemistry, surging flow, and intense light. If any one of those does not exist you can expect SPS to brown, bleach or die.

Orginal lighting:
4x36" T5s, a couple of inches above the tank. ATi bulbs. 2-Blue+, 1-Coral+, 1-Purple+
12 hour light cycle (SPS required more light than a shorter cycle allowed)

New lighting:
2xSol Blues, 12" Above tank. Blue and Royal Blue at 25%, White at 18%. Lights ramp over the course of 2 hours. Blue and Royal Blue are on four ten hours, white for eight hours. This includes the ramping time.

Oh . . . the Convexa has *never* done well in this tank. The birds and monti did very well, while the valida did okay (nice polyp extension but washed out colour).

All this changed the day I added the Sols: they were 11" at first, with the same light cycle, at 40%. Cyano exploded. Chemiclean and blackouts followed.

Parameters (and yes, this is for my 40B). I dose for calcium and alkalinity manually, twice a week. I test my parameters on Sunday (and those are in my signature), but I don't dose until Monday (and Thursday). Salinity is usually at 1.026. Magnesium is dosed when it reaches around 1350. RO/DI is used.

I use Kent carbon (not a new batch: have been using it for months) and ROWAphos in fluid reactors (ROWA just changed when everything went down the toilet). Skimmer is an SWC 120 cone (which has been off since all of this started, due to insane microbubbles). I have a new biopellet reactor, but that isn't online yet.

The green bird and monti have been doing well in this system since I switched tanks three months ago. The pink bird has been in it for around 2 months. The valida and convexa were added the same time as the pink birdsnest.

Oops. Missed water changes. Water changes of approximately 10% of the total system volume (55 gallons) are done once a week.

Edit: I should also add the my hammer coral is not happy. All of my other corals (LPS and softies) and doing as well as they were before, and most of them are doing very, very nicely. The last couple of weeks have just hammered my SPS. This system has never been great for them. It has been a real challenge to balance their needs and the needs of my LPS. My contest entry tank is being designed more as an SPS tank.

At this point, I don't have any concerns about either of my birdsnest corals dying. If I don't mess with them I'm sure they'll come around. I'm worried about my completely browned out monti cap (which is a lovely green with purple rim), but I hope it will pull though. I'm not optimistic about the condition of my valida (completely bleached) or convexa (bleached and STN?).

Another thought about the lights . . . the T5s were placed to the back of the tank, the Sols are centered over the tank. They're the new Sols: 70 degree optics on the corners with 40 degree optics on the others. There is a lot of light that spills onto the floor around the tank.