Some SPS Growth Pictures

penelty · #1 07-29-2009, 11:00 PM

Im new to SPS and some of you may recognize some of these corals as many of them I got as frags from fellow members. I got a crappy camera but here are some of my corals when I got them and today. I take pictures every couple months to be able to go through and see the growth.

A.Selago (Coralmaster)

Pink Digitatus

Green Monti Cap (I got the frag for free because the owner found it under the sand and thought it would die giving it to me :P SO free coral turned out hott)

Teal Stag

Rainbow Styro (Coralmaster)

A. Convexa (Coralmaster)

Garden of Eden (Coralmaster)

Crazy Green Milli

Purple Birdsnest

UNKNOWN - Please help me identify this coral please. The person I got the frag from never replied when I asked for the names of the frags so if someone has the name of this one gimmie a shout, the picture does not do its bright green and white justice.

-Pink with Blue Polyp Styro- I did not enhance the color and it is not an actinics picture, the one on the left is when I got it at JL it was labled Pink Styro but as it grew it got a very vibrant blue color. The main picture is an over the water shot with flash on, the one on the right is from the front with no flash. It is that color blue regularly it looks no different from the photo

scherzo · #2 07-29-2009, 11:06 PM

Cool! Nice to see the progress..

What kind of lighting and tank do you have these in?

penelty · #3 07-30-2009, 01:05 AM

I have a 75 gallon with 50 gallon barrel sump. I am using duel 250W 20k metal halides with 1 65W actinic. I have had softies forever but a couple months ago got the great idea to convert my whole system to SPS oriented. So kinda started from scratch with no real colonies. Been alot of ups and downs in the tank learning zeovit and that SPS require alot more attention to thrive. But within the last 2 months I think I've mastered it and now the corals are booming

mark · #4 07-30-2009, 01:27 AM

love growth pictures.

When did you start the frags?

penelty · #5 07-30-2009, 05:39 AM

I started getting some of my frags in nov last year and got odds and ends added over the next couple months. I had an issue and my tank nearly crashed a few months ago which put alot of stress on the frags and set back alot of the progress. But since then everything is growing like mad. I can sit and look at my tank everyday and something looks alittle different. I took pictures of stuff at the beginning of july and now end of july and there has been a huge change. So the only real growth has been in the last couple months, everything before that was my learning process

Heres an example of what I mean, within one month it has grown much more drasticly then the rest of the time I have had them. It is really a shame I did not figure out the things I did in the beginning as I know now. So hopefully they will keep growing like this

penelty · #6 07-30-2009, 05:45 AM

Here is another picture of the coral I dont have a name for if it helps with identifying it

Flash was used for this photo though

Van-rookie · #7 07-30-2009, 05:53 AM

Mind sharing what you've done to get the rapid growth ? I am new to sps

Quote:

Originally Posted by penelty

I started getting some of my frags in nov last year and got odds and ends added over the next couple months. I had an issue and my tank nearly crashed a few months ago which put alot of stress on the frags and set back alot of the progress. But since then everything is growing like mad. I can sit and look at my tank everyday and something looks alittle different. I took pictures of stuff at the beginning of july and now end of july and there has been a huge change. So the only real growth has been in the last couple months, everything before that was my learning process

Heres an example of what I mean, within one month it has grown much more drasticly then the rest of the time I have had them. It is really a shame I did not figure out the things I did in the beginning as I know now. So hopefully they will keep growing like this

lastlight · #8 07-30-2009, 07:13 AM

That's some speedy growth! Have a FTS?

penelty · #9 07-30-2009, 11:32 AM

I am sorry whats a FTS?

But as to what I changed in my tank recently was 2 main things I guess that I realized all at once.

#1 is the way I was doing my water changes. I had only 3 water jugs so max 2 jug water change at a time, so I was doing 2 jug change every 2-3 days to make up the % a week. I have an R/O unit that I had not changed the filters in for probably 2 years and realized it was doing more damage then good. So I finially went out and bought 3 more 5g jugs to do a large water change once a week with r/o water from a refill outlet. That was the first thing I changed and I saw an improvement in the color of the rocks and algae along with the overall health of my corals.

#2 was the way I was doing my zeovit. I started zeovit in March, which I saw all my corals grow more polyps and get a bit better but never thrived. Well I was bored one day and looked up the zeo manual from their website and it had much more detailed instructions then what you find on the bottles. Such as to split the daily dosing of additives to twice a day. Also how they work and overall better usage of them. I am still no expert at the zeovit but as soon as I split up the dosages to twice a day thats when the corals really took off. They didnt get stressed from the load of a whole dose all at once they love it gradual over the whole day. Also the Coral Snow additive which when it clears the water, it can make the water too clear and your lights can burn the corals. So doing my dosing in the morning and night after lights are done is doing the trick.

So between the 2 changes I have made in the last month I am getting much better growth from my SPS but I still have alot to master :P Hope this helps

Van-rookie · #10 07-30-2009, 12:21 PM

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Does this mean you do 25G (5x 5jugs) water change weekly ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by penelty

#1 is the way I was doing my water changes. I had only 3 water jugs so max 2 jug water change at a time, so I was doing 2 jug change every 2-3 days to make up the % a week. I have an R/O unit that I had not changed the filters in for probably 2 years and realized it was doing more damage then good. So I finially went out and bought 3 more 5g jugs to do a large water change once a week with r/o water from a refill outlet. That was the first thing I changed and I saw an improvement in the color of the rocks and algae along with the overall health of my corals.