My SPS are growing at very fast speeds at the moment, but I will make sure by posting some progress shots and check time differences.

Monday 30 January 2006:

(If you notice just to the right of the MONTI you will see a smallish dark staghorn sticking straight up. Just lately it has grown 4 x small knobs out of the top and will be interesting to see its growth from here).

Dood u MUST pay me a visit to see what color that monti can be.

dude?

don't mention montis to me ...........

Bloody nudibranches, lost the capricornis, fighting hard a losing battle with the orange cup and purple...........

yeah mine got hammered by them too. bastards. still got a couple of small pieces left

I dont run Zeo Steve. Its about the only way to get pink Montis.

No it's not.

I like to have some nutrients........Its food.

Its about the only way to get pink Montis

Zeo free tank shot

Here is a pic of what it looks like. Its is almost a pink colour,.I have had it pure pink but hard to do with high fish load. one is turning pink again but cant get a good photo.

Another factor is the light .

If you use 10k bulbs then you have a good change of the monti going pink.

I like to have some nutrients........Its food.

If it's food, sps corals would suffer from massive obesity problems in our tanks ;-)

Imagine if you scraped all the living tissue of all the SPS corals in your tank and put it into a little vial. How much actual living tissue would you have? Now how much "food" does it take to support that?

Yet some people say that you can get phosphate down to levels which are too low to support sps corals, and the quote "ideal" levels which are actually a sign a eutrophication in nature. Something doesn't make sense.

You could try you absolute hardest to obtain an ultra "low" nutrient tank and it would still contain more than enough of the required "nutrients" to support corals. So saying that you like having some nutrients is a bit strange, as you are almost always guaranteed that you'll have enough of the nutrients people commonly talk of, in fact there is usually too much of them.

Layton

I have had my po4 and nitrate so low that i did notice that i had problems.

My corals started to go pale like many zeo tanks.

when i increased my nitrates they stated to go back the nice looking rich colours.

Zeolite alone does seem to pull much out as this has happen to many tanks that have added too much zeolite.

So i would say that you can go too low

Maybe the light was too high. Many people find they can drop their photoperiod when running lower nutrients, until the zooxanthellae readapt to the added light and lower water nutrients.

Layton

I agree with Alois.

I am running Vodka too and I have stripped out too many nutrients before. SPS colours become weak like some ZEO tanks.

I personally would rather have some DOCS in the Water Column.

My P04 is Zero and same with No3.

Plus I am running Stop parasite again at the moment and have no carbon in place.

In a couple of months I expect the montis to go a bit pinker with Vodka, but dont care either way......The orange/pink look is still nice.

I'm with Cracker & Alois on that also, there is a clear relationship between nutrient levels and color of sps. It is also beyond dispute that corals can be harmed by too low nutrient levels.

Dood u MUST pay me a visit to see what color that monti can be.

Steve, Ive seen Allistairs as Pink as...I know what they can go like!

Went & had a look at Crackers tank today I was IMPRESSED!

The growth of the sps since last time i was there is remarkable! Awesome PE on some of them as well.

He gave me two little frags of a blue sps that I don't have, looking forward to how they'll turn out

PE = Polyp Extension????

Keep going Cracker

What is sps/sp? Is it species?

frag - fragment?

PE = polyp extension

sps = small polyp stoney (often referred to as acros)

frag = fragment

Thanks Wasp

Have you got another pic of the coral now.

Colours washing out mirrors my experiment with Vodka also. It seemed to be improving things at first but by the time I stopped, a chocolate brown acro with purple tips had become light brown with pinkish tips and a tricolour acro with very dark brown flesh, red/purple coralites and green polyps had lost it's red/purple and the polyps had become a sort of greyish colour. 2 months later everything is pretty much back to normal.

Steve

Will do it on the 30th FEB.

Will do it on the 30th FEB.

The 30th of Feb doesn't exist.

Layton

OOooppps!!!

28th then!