why are all my sps getting lighter?

[Jimbo]

jimbo ! you're running a 400 watt m.h. on a 40 gal ! maybe you can save even more on electrical cost and just go with a 250 ! i would think the 400 is overkill !

Yeah and I would need a new ballast and light . That's why I went with a lower par bulb when it was time to upgrade, it was really bright with the xm bulb. But it does not look too bright now.

[Spanky]

Jim, if you see them still burning up, either raise your bulb a lot higher or start feeding more or just get more fish. If you get more fish, watch your fish food. Most of it is so high in phosphate that it's off the chart. Or again, just make your own fish food.

[Casey]

Use less light and more poop in the water thats the darkening ticket

[Jimbo]

Here's a pic of the new frags and the green slimer on the left that is almost dead. If others post pics and things they try would help to make sure we are doing the right thing. All my parameters are in line other than the bleaching.

[Spanky]

The only time I had good luck with a slimer is when I put it in a system that was so dirty the algae didn't even like it.
Jim, try this (don't blame me if it doesn't work, I'm guessing here), try dialing your skimmer back to a drier foam for a while. Tweek and play with it until you find the sweet spot to where you are keeping enough in the system, but not having algae problems.

[Jimbo]

Thanks spanky, I did not mean to hijack this thread I think I'll leave things alone for a week to see how the new frags do. I will remove the carbon though. I went from a FOT to reef tank. I use ozone in the skimmer, but cut it way back thinking that might have been the problem. Redox is about 350 or so at the moment. I did several major water changes but that just seemed to make things worse.
I would like to add more fish....

[Casey]

your water is to clean I would stop the ozone and wc for a while.

[trueblackpercula]

This really stinks............. How do i feed the tank more if i do not have fish? I really did not want more than two fish in the tank( centropyge interuptius) from RCT will be here in November But thats it. I was never told that to run a BB tank that you need fish lots of them anyways. Is there another way to adding food to the tank if Not than I have no choice but to add 4" of sand to the bottom and by the way I love my crystal clean tank....................but what good is it if the corals will die? Please help me out here as I do not want a sand bed and want to keep a running BB.
Yours truly a dedicated BB follower.
Michael

[Spanky]

Michael, try dialing your skimmer back drier. Raising your lights - more light compensates for dirtier water - or use a shorter period of time that the lights are on. I settled on VHO for 8 hours and the MH only on for two hours in the middle of their day. When I stopped running the MH, they grew even better. But the corals I kept were used to less light. You might have corals that need a few hours of MH, tinker with it.

[trueblackpercula]

wait a second now I have to run the skimmer dry? I was told a wile back that it was to be run wet. Raising the lights will cuase the corals to get less light ? how will this add nutrients? I think I am not undestand this any more.........everything that was talked about on how to run a bb tank now is being changed. I am not being disrespectful but sounds like I followed everything to the letter and now I am being told to do some else.I am thinkning maybe I should add a school of cardinals and see if that works. Or is there anything else i can do?
can you please post a picture of your tank so that i can see what your system looks like?
Michael

[Gmoney]

I think Spanky is suggesting to raise your light for now because with a BB tank, your corals are getting a lot more light than with a sand bed tank, so they arent used to this added amount of light and need to be acclimated to it.. you can do that by highering the light and gradually bringing it back down...or maybe shorter light periods and gradually work them up.

The skimmer things is the same ....with a BB tank you have less nutrients...skimming wet leads to faster clearance of nutrients... if you dial the skimmer to skim dry, you'll remove the nutrients slower and thus your corals will have more time to get food, AND maybe the water will be a lil dirtier so the light wont be as strong and hurt the corals.

At least that is my take.

What I have done is made sure I buy my corals from guys with BB tanks and similar lighting paradigm

[Leonardo's Reef]

woow Casey and Spankey, I really needed that input... Now I'm back on track. (OMG I was thinking of putting sand in )

Is a remote DSB still a good idea? I don't like a ton of fish to be honest. Can this compensate a bit?

Thanks, Leonardo

[Spanky]

Michael, nothing about running a BB system has changed.

I didn't say run it dry, I said try running it a little drier. A skimmer is a tool. Some skimmers are made to be run only one way, some are not. You seem to be wanting to run your system one way too. If you will think of your system and the equipment you have as tools, use them to get the results you want.

Raising the light will not add nutrients, of course not.

Stay with me here.

Light is used to compensate for high nutrients. "usually" when you keep corals in high nutrients, they tend to lose their bright colors and do what some people call brown out. So you blast them with more light, which causes them to shed some of the zoox that are making them brown, and lets some of the other colors come through.
The problem with high nutrients in closed systems is high phosphates.
When you run systems cleaner to reduce phosphates, you no longer need the high light to compensate.

So try raising your lights, shorten your light periods, something to reduce the amount of light on them.

Nothing has changed about running BB systems. If you are thinking that there is some set formula, the closest to that is to use the equipment you have - all of it - like tools.

[Spanky]

Originally Posted by Leonardo's Reef

Is a remote DSB still a good idea? I don't like a ton of fish to be honest. Can this compensate a bit?

Thanks, Leonardo

That's a loaded question - since both of you are determined to do that.

Remember something that seems to have been passed over a lot. DSB can take a good year to get fully established. In the mean time, it's going to flux and go through cycles of working, not working, cyano blooms, stripping the water column, loading the water column, etc etc. In other words, they can be very unstable for quite a while. And when they are unstable, there's nothing you can do but wait it out. There are no fast changes or corrections you can do.

I prefer to just use a skimmer and watch my glass and animals.

[Leonardo's Reef]

Ok, thanx. I was thinking about this: besides the feeding of the corals by bioload (fish), to feed them by adding amino-acids (Salifert) Can this be beneficial?

I have absolutely no algae, but after 2 days my glass is covered by a grey film, I think it's a bacteria film. Certainly no algae. Is this a good or a bad sign?

Thanx, Leonardo