Quote:
Originally Posted by Ram3500
I must chime in 😀 sps coloration is based on keeping steady ideal parameters over months if not years. Lighting has little to do with coloration. Yes you can get coral pop with high k lighting but your corals will still be brown if your nitrate is to high and phosphates are detectable. If you can get coral pop under 10k led mh or t5 than you are approaching mastery.
My experience is with the 360we over two years now but on a smaller tank I am sure you will be surprised with you 160ew
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I've always maintained roughly the same parameters on our 600g SPS system.
Specific gravity: 1.025-1.026 (calibrated refractometer)
Calcium: 410-420ppm (Salifert)
Alkalinity: 8-9dKH (Hanna Checker)
Magnesium: 1350-1400 (Salifert)
Nitrate: 1ppm (Salifert)
Phosphate: 0-0.02ppm (Hanna Checker HI 736)
Potassium: 400ppm (Salifert)
Lighting made such a massive difference when I switched from LED to MH, it was downright shocking.
There are so many variables when it comes to LED like the color temps, and intensities that maybe I was never able to find the right settings.
I had the most success with EcoTech Radions but they were not very forgiving. The second I would make a mistake with water quality, I would loose color.
Recently, I experimented with dosing Potassium Nitrate to my system to see what would happen to my SPS with elevated levels of nitrates. I slowly brought it up to 25ppm and very little changed. My SPS got a little deeper in color but that was about it. The other side-effect was algae, even with ultra low levels of phosphates.