How to improve color to be the opposite of tan?

I went through the exact thing, I added nitrates tested with api kit read 0 acros and monti all went brown from nitrate overdose. I ditched the api kit let the system catch up took out the toadstool and now everything is growing and colored up very nice . In short I bet it's the toad
 
I admit, I don't like this advice :(

The clowns are very happy being hosted by the toadstool. Toadstool is very cool, as it has some of the longest tenacles I have ever seen. It is amazing how it blows in the current. All the same, I can probably move a 15+ frogspawn to that location and the clowns will take to it instead. They seem easy going as they used to live in a frogspawn, then some rhodactis mushrooms, and then the toadstool. Anenome's are very cool creatures, but I haven't read enough on them to make a purchase. The three clowns are about 7 years old. It will be hard to ship out their home...
 
If you were happy with the time it took for your frags to encrust. (I think it was good growth). Give feeding a couple more cubes of food a try. I doubt you'll see anything negative from this. You have a mature tank with beefy nutrient export (reasons you mentioned) and low nutrient import.

I feel you on losing the toadstool. I was in the same boat. But after deciding which direction I wanted my tank to go (because of sps growth Not Color), I tried to sell the toadstool.

Check out this tank I found, and again I don't think toadstool for the color.
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70851&page=18


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
In a moment of reflection, I took a look at all the TOTM winners. Interestingly, all but two had a substantial leather of one form or another in the tank. None offered any hint that it was a problem to keep a leather in the tank with the SPS. I guess I am left to conclude that it is certainly possible to keep a toadstool and sps, but perhaps more difficult. jah-hoeva offered a very valid point - keep the toadstool and simply find the SPS that work. In the end, I appear to be complainning about 3-4 frags. There are more than a dozen in the tank that look really cool. I have to think I find can find others... I suppose this is why I buy small frags and go from there.

Thanks for the input everyone. I will report back in due course.
 
I'm in the alk swing crowd. You stated your alk was between 7-10. That's too big a swing to happen often. Frags can brown out from shipping which I believe most times is due to the alk swing that occurs. It's only been a month, get those dosers working and check your alk daily. Keep your po4 low and your nitrates a little higher. to eliminate the possibility of the toad releasing toxins, run some carbon.
 
4c6700cda4ddeaabe3e44909fcb198bc.jpg
I have a few big leathers in my tank. My sps and lps seem to have nice color but don't think they grow as fast as they should. But could have been the lights I just added t5 to my LEDs and already seems to be helping.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
 
*Two year follow up*

After the above posts, the tank took a serious turn for the worst. All SPS died, except for a purple digi that cannot be killed. I should frag that bad boy and call it Extreme Survivor All-Star acro - and make a fortune. Anyway, as things were dying, I continued to buy clean up crews and mexican snails, as the latter eat cotton candy algae (pink fluffy stuff). I replaced all bulbs and checked calibration of all tests. But the crews/snails weren't lasting a long time. Over the last 6 months, hair algae set in, which was a new twist. It appears that the frogspawn was suffering and zoanthids were closing up, either as a result of the hair algae or something else. I still made month carbon changes and monthly 15 gallon water changes.. Alk was at 8.0 and CA was 420ish. Phosphates would fluctuate from .06 to .00. I had been scrubbing HA with toothbrush, but it would reappear in a week.

So I made the drastic change of removing the toadstool leather. It had grown quite a bit and was very happy. The clowns were even spawning in the center of the leather. With the removal of the leather, I did some major cleaning. I aggressively removed all hair algae with a toothbrush. I put sock filters on the return and netted as much debris as possible. I also changed the carbon. And what do you know, all the hair algae is disappearing. After 2 weeks, things look really good.

Despite all this, I was dosing 200 ml of 2 part (alk and ca) via doser, plus 300 ml of saturated kalk...all each day. The coralean algae on the back glass must have been consuming this. In the clean up process, I scraped clean the back of the tank. I think coralean was growing on the back, but it also had a layer of other types of purpleish algae. In the end, numbers climbed and I had to back off on dosing, but only 10 ml.

Observations - The leather was starting to negatively affect (kill) more than SPS. The toxins were hurting the frog spawn and zoanthids. Plus, I think the mexican turbos and other turbos were suffering from the toxin too. As the snails died, hair algae set in.

The leather had a 1 foot diameter. Maybe someone future reefer will want to grow a toadstool leather mixed with SPS and think better of it. Really cool creature, but it will limit its tank mates one way or the other.
 
Upcoming Events

April 21, 2024
Paul B
Club Meeting

Back
Top