SPS Temp Question

[Dee]

What is the best temperature to keep SPS corals? And what kind of problems with water quality are usually present when they start to die? High nitrates, ammonia, etc.?

Thanks,
Dena

[Texreefer]

temp is a question of great debate,, I keep mine around 80. ANY water quality problem is going to stress SPS.. generally its a combination of several issue, like flow, lighting, high nitrates, high or low alk and cal, salinity to low, etc etc..

[BIGBIRD123]

and then sometimes stuff just dies...

S

[Dee]

I bought a couple from apedoza (sp), but I'm scared because I've got others that I've tried and they've all died. I know part of it was because we were moving and slacked off, but the tank is set up now and I still lost some new stuff. The only thing that seems off are the nitrates. Everything else is undectable...PH is a little low at 8.2, calcium is around 420, but I've been dosing every other day with B-Onics. I've got more flow than ever and even turned one power head off because a couple of soft things on the opposite side of the tank were stressing.

I've even had a couple of hammers die recently. My tank is 82 and I know that is pretty high so I've been trying different things to lower it without a chiller...can't afford one right now. We raise the light, but that didn't help so now I'll try to rig up a couple of small fans to see if that works.

Dena

[Texreefer]

if the salinity was different and you did not acclimate long enough that would do it,, they can't take a quick change in salinity.. if your nitrate are registering over 10ppm you will likely have problems with any sps

[jc]

My temps fluctuate between 75 and 80. Downgrading my sump pump did the most to reduce my temperature. I added some koralia's to keep the water flowing.

[Kristy]

On a related note, what SPS would you guys consider most forgiving? If there were such a thing as "beginner" SPS, what would it be?

Thanks... we have held off on SPS until everything seems super stable and I think we are beginning to approach that. We have a hydnopora that is happy and showing a bit of slow growth, but that's about the only SPS we've tried.

[Ping]

I have argued with many on the issue of temp. I believe 77 is the ideal avg temp. I have many (published) references to back this up for those of you who wish to jump on me.

I know you can keep a tank at a much higher temp and metabolism (growth rates) increase as temp increases. One of many reasons for a lower temp is: As temp increases, sea water's O2 saturation point decreases. What happens when a warmer (82-84) tank has the inevitable temp ****e, heat wave, AC or chillers malfunction etc.

A good beginner SPS is a "cheap" Montipora Digitata.

[DrMark]

Like everything in this hobby many opinions and some people think they are more right than others.
Need time to form your own.
Mine:
Lower nitrates the better, but dont have to be zero. Less than 5 at the least.
Temp: mine stays between 78-79.
Raising the lights may help a little with too high a temp, but SPS require more light and raising them reduces light.
mark

[LoneStar]

Another thing to keep in mind is to keep you temp at a consistant rate. You do not want high or low temp swings throughout the day. So depending on the temp you like to run at, make sure it stays within that level.

[jc]

My temps usually go from about 74 at night to about 78 in the day. Are there signs that an sps is suffering from stress? Otherwise everything seems to be growing fine.

[apedroza]

My temp usually hangs around the 77-80 degree range. My alk and calcium I try to keep at 450ppm and 8-10dkh. My salinity is usually around 1.0235 and all my other parameters read 0 (nitrates, amm, phosphates, etc.) My pH is 8.3. Lighting is 2-250 MH SE 20K bulbs. I run a skimmer for 4hrs everyday. I feed my corals reef roids and rotifeast (alternate). I dose B-ionic daily and Lugols once a week. I do water changes at least once a week (~10%). I hope this helps.

[Dee]

All of this is very helpful!!!!!!! We've been doing a lot of big water changes to get the nitrates down. Adding a little Tech M after the change, dosing every other day with B-onics and also with the green stuff LOL...can't think of the name.

Lights were moved up from the "feet" to hanging from the ceiling about twice as far from the tank. So it's maybe a foot from the top of the water. We have 2 96 watt actinic and 2 150 watt, 20K MH...and the night ones on at night.

I think one of the problems is that our skimmer wasn't in enough water in the other sump to work properly. We've moved to a larger one we finally got fixed up and the skimmer is on full cycle now. I'll be checking parameters tonight and we'll probably be making another batch of salt water as soon the salt arrives.

Heat from the pumps could be an issue...have two I think (one going into the refugium because we couldn't do it another way...not sure why, but I'm going to talk to hubby about trying to get it down to one somehow).

Dena

[ErikH]

Don't dose what you don't need. I would only dose the B-Ionic, the rest of the trace elements etc will be replaced by water changes. From here you should definitely find the source of the nitrate issue. Skimming efficiently is probably going to be a big help, but I would still be concerned as this may only end up helping, and not irradicating the problem. Your bioload in comparison to your biological filtration, including a clean up crew would be the best places to look for a root cause answer. I have 6 T5s and a 250w HQI in my canopy, and my return is a mag5. My temp stays at 78. Was your tank above 80 consistently? Running fans across the water of your sump will help decrease the temp, and is an inexpensive solution. I don't think your corals will like the fact that you changed their lighting around so drastically.... and if you move them back at the same rate, you could fry them.


edit: you could be going through a cycle since you just moved your entire tank...?

[Bill S]

A couple of notes, some already mentioned:

NEVER dose what you don't test for. Seriously.

Until I bought my chiller, my temps would go up to 83 every day. As folks who have seen my tank can attest, it didn't seem to affect my SPS...

My nitrates are NEVER below 15... Never above 25, but never as low as recommended, or as low as I'd like. Please don't misunderstand me: I'm NOT recommending high nitrates, I'm just saying I have them...

My pH runs 8.0-8.1. Again, not what I'd like, but it's hard to argue with my corals.

To a point, corals are very resilient when it comes to temperature. We've been on the reef before in Belize, when temps were above 90 in the water. Can't say they liked it, but they survive.

Run some small clip on fans blowing over the surface of the water. That makes a huge difference - but you will be adding fresh water regularly.

Salinity is a BIG issue. How are you testing your salinity. If it's with a swing-arm hydrometer, throw it away, and if it's with a refractometer, make SURE it was properly calibrated.

Easy SPS: Green cap, and green slimers. Both are good starters, and can be had inexpensively. Just ask...

[fjr_wertheimber]

There's a great article by Ronald Shimek, Ph.D. here (http://www.reefland.com/rho/1105/reefc7.php) that discusses real world temperatures and salinity of reefs and how different they are from what hobbyists think they are.

As far as temps go, the average temperature of a real world reef is 82 degrees.

[Bill S]

Good article. Reflects pretty much what I've seen in western hemisphere reefs.

[ErikH]

I like the article, and regardless of that evidence, I think striving to keep good water quality is best practice since our tanks are not the ocean. We don't have the constant influx of clean water/food and the like as what is shown in the ocean. While most corals may survive through this in the wild, not the same can be said about captive tanks. To me the constant comparison to the ocean and our tanks is completely inaccurate because nature has built in biological systems that are much more substantial than the systems we have built into our aquariums. I would not take the chance of losing all of my corals due to my sloppy care about salinity or temp. Keep in mind, I do agree with the article, but I don't agree with comparing any of it to aquariums.