SPS Polyp Extension Questions

DanSreef

DanSreef

Premium member
So... as the title states I have some questions about SPS Polyp Extension....

My 92 gal corner bow is about 7 months old at this point. I am running LED lighting with good par readings through out the tank. My water parameters are all excellent. I will list them below. The flow is really pretty good with an MP40 creating waves and random surges. I have recently gone through a period where apparently I went too low of nutrients in my system. I have since corrected that by feeding about 4x as much voth food for the fish and the corals. I also am dosing Aquavitro Fuel as well as Amino's via SeaChem Reef Plus.

I purchased some SPS frags this weekend and after acclimating them to the tank...I placed them where they would get good lighting and water flow. Since I placed them.... I have had little to no polyp extension. In fact, some of the SPS in my tank I have not ever really had polyp extension. I have plenty of growth and nice color... but really no polyp extension. A great example is a red planet coral I got from FishBeard. The coral had nice polyp extnesion in George's tank. When I moved it to mine.... nothing.....or very little. The coral has grown.... the color has really intensified....

So I am at a loss. ETR and I picked up some frags this week from Adam at Battlecorals.... again...my frags...no polyp extension.... Erics in comparison are fully extended.

I am looking for ideas and help.
 
Forgot the water parameters.

CA -500
Alk - 9
Phosphates - 0
Nitrates - 0
PH 8.3-8.4
Temp - 78
SG - 1.025
 
This might be crazy and just a thought.... Bring your temp to 80

This shouldn't hurt nothing IMO and can always be turned down.
 
Herbie said:
are you saying it might be "shrinkage"? :)
Click to expand...

I WAS IN THE POOL!!!

I thought some theories that polyp extension was sometimes due to the SPS being "hungry" and reaching out more, but since you've increased the nutrients, maybe this is the cause? maybe try googling SPS polyp extension and low nutrients.
 
My first ORA Red Planet had little to no PE for the last 2 months. This weekend, it finally came out. My other ORA Red Planet has always had good PE but it too went nuts this weekend and is really out there. I increased the flow to a crazy amount. I should also mention that it is in my coral QT tank with no sand and only live rock and coral.
 
I've really always have had the same issue with PE... My SPS grows FAST at this point but they just have little PE... They have good PE at night but can't figure out what's wrong during the day... the flow is good in my tank. Only my birdsnests have good PE... I can see the polyps on those flow back and forth very well so I don't think it's flow...
 
do you have zoas in there? I am hearing more and more about zoas stunting SPS because of their competing growth patterns. I wonder if PE can be related to Aleopathy.
 
Yea I have zoas in my tank... but they're on the complete other side of the tank. All my sps are pretty much only on the right side of the tank.

Aleopathy... big word... no clue what it means. lol
 
This is very interesting. The only other variable is the LED lighting. I've read from many hard core SPS peeps that they did not like LEDs over their SPS tanks. Lemme see if I can find more info for ya.
 
helitaiwan963 said:
hmm... My tank is under 2x250w DE HQI's with 2 110w super actinic vho's.
Click to expand...

I was replying to Dan specifically based on his equipment and tank specs.

Helitaiwan & Dan, do you run carbon 24/7? If you don't, you should to take the "chemical warfare" out of the water column.
 
helitaiwan963 said:
Anyway, I do run BRS Rox Carbon 24/7. No reactor though, it's in a media bag in the sump.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, it will help, not as effective but should pull "some" of the toxin out... not all if not ran through a reactor. Just thinking on what the variables are. What is your flow like? Sorry Dan... not to de-rail.
 
poidog said:
Hmmm, it will help, not as effective but should pull "some" of the toxin out... not all if not ran through a reactor. Just thinking on what the variables are. What is your flow like? Sorry Dan... not to de-rail.
Click to expand...

Yea, sorry to the OP as well. Been wanting to make a thread on the same issue you're having and saw this today. Figured it might be better to not crowd the forum with the same exact question.

My flow is pretty good. about 3800gph in a 75gallon tank. The SPS have good, indirect, random flow around them.

-Eric
 
Great conversation here. I appreciate it.

I do have some zoas in the tank. They are on a rock onto themselves and at the bottom of the tank. So I would not expect that there would be chemical warfare going on. But...that us easy to solve for. i can just move the rock out to another tank. I do not run carbon at this point. I had been running carbon and GFO in a dual BRS reactor. I shut that down because I am convinced I was stripping too much of the nutrients out of the tank.

As for flow... I run an MP40 with Nutrient Transpot Mode. I get great wave action and random flow... I would have thought that would be plenty for this tank.

I do run LEDs. I am kind of stuck with that as an option because the tanks depth is 30 inches deep. I am not too happy with the spectrum the light is providing...but the par values seem pretty good! I guess I could look into other options....but since I share my home office with this tank... I am not really looking at creating a MH sauna.

Keep the ideas rolling in. It has gotten me thinking about a bunch of different things I have not thought of!
 
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