I Am Truly Baffled

[Kevin Tran]

You might want too remove most of your sand too and leave a little just enough to to cover the glass if you like to have sand

 

[harleymike]

IM running 1.022 is that too low do you think.

 

[Kevin Tran]

My is at 1.025

 

[harleymike]

I'll slowly raise it and see if that helps.

 

[reeferkeeper420]

1.022 is def to low imho. I run at 1.026.

 

[reeferkeeper420]

Thatll prolly be one of the main reasons u cant keep sps i bet.

 

[sunnykita]

those floating arms aren't reliable LOL, love the refractometer ! and they aren't expensive and sometimes available here used, I thought I saw one recently in one of the ads

 

[reeferkeeper420]

And def agree with what everyone said. Hydrometers are horrible lol, i had my fair share of problems when i first started, and the hydrometer was my first, and i believe that it caused a domino effect lol.

 

[spyd]

1.034 to 1.026 is the norm for corals so I would definitely bump that up. Also, try dipping one of your coral colonies that are dying from the base. Always got to watch for AEFW, etc. You would never notice them by visual inspection. Might be worth it just for peace of mind.

 

[Kevin Tran]

HarleyMike you have caught attention of a couple sps freak including myself here. salinity is one reason, but there could be more. we need a little more information on ya tank. how thick sand bed, what kind of fish you have, how often you feed it, tank temperature and what reactor are you running. also how often ya to water change. give us this info. and more so we can do a surgery on ya tank

 

[reeferkeeper420]

Im willing to bet thats its probably your salinity killing off your coral. I had the same issue when i started, i browned out, and killed almost every sps i bought, till i found out about how bad hydrometers and got my water checked by a lfs.

 

[Kevin Tran]

he said that he will give sps another try, there fore i want him to post the above mention so every one could see if there is other factor than just salinity. it couldn't hurt right.

 

[matti2uude]

I'm following as I'm having a similar problem.

 

[EricTMah]

Honestly Mike. You're asking a very broad question.

There are so many factors that can affect the health of SPS. Lighting, water parameters, temp, salinity and swings in anything. The trick I found with SPS is consistency. If you have everything bang on one day and don't dose for a week, then start dosing again. That alone can kill sps. Stability is key.

This is my first go at SPS as well. I've lost my fair share of frags. Weather it be my error or possibly shipping or fragging techniques from the seller. It's always a gamble. The one thing I've found to help with my success in keeping SPS is stability. Now that I'm on daily dosing and monitoring temp and salinity swings daily. I'm finding that my SPS are doing much better. Growth and color. Even though I've had my tank "stable" for at least the past three months. I still seem to lose SPS from time to time. Which says it can be more than what I mentioned above. Could be water flow, fish causing stress on the coral, inverts disturbing it, and the list goes on.

All SPS guys will tell you SPS are always a gamble.

Good luck with your future attempts.

Also posting more info about your tank may help us pin point a problem. But like I said, it could be a number of different things.

 

[scubasteve]

agree with eric keeping everything stable is key and if you keep lps and softies with your sps like i do you absolutely need to run carbon either bagged or reactor the chemical warfare lps use is deadly to sps because the sps world revolves with stings main things i watch are salinity and calcium levels i find are the main 2 followed by ph. i also get water tested by an lfs once every couple months just to make sure nothing is buggy if no lfs im sure another member could ensure readings match or are off i also measure ph late at night to make sure swings from day to night arent too great and if you have algae buildup you will be getting false nitrate and phosphate readings as they are consuming them

 

[BIGSHOW]

Those of you that are using a refractometer make sure you calibrate using a 1.026 saline solution or your accuracy is probably worse then the thing with the floaty arm

 

[EricTMah]

Those of you that are using a refractometer make sure you calibrate using a 1.026 saline solution or your accuracy is probably worse then the thing with the floaty arm

^Very true!!!

I calibrate mine every week

 

[BIGSHOW]

I think the best purchase I made equipment wise in the past few months is one of those digital refractometers. I was calibrating the standard "look through" one and it turns out my calibration fluid was off due to evaporation caused by the crappy seal on the bottles. (also something to watch out for)

 

[EricTMah]

Ya I plan to make my own calibration fluid so I can refresh with new fluid every so often

Sent from my Z30 using Tapatalk 2