Starting in sps

[Gilbert]

Well tuesday my girlfriend and i went to B&B Aquatics and i got my first peice of sps, i dont remember what it was called but it was about a 2-3in. greenish frag. At the time when i picked it out none of the little ployp things where out and now last night i noticed them just poking out. So my question is, now that the little polyps are poking out of the sps am i ready and able to load the tank with sps, or should i wait some more to make sure the first peice is a success???
i was talking with the people there at B&B and they helped me get started as far as letting me know about the lighting, water movement, and calcium. They said i was ready.

[villjr]

you may want to watch that one for a day or two just to make sure it's ok. Then maybe start off with a few inexpensive frags and see how they do before you go out and buy large colonies.

[Texreefer]

if you know you have good enough lighting, you know your CA,ALK,MG levels, have a way of dosing and testing for those things,using good quality make up water, have a good system for nutrient export. then I would wait to see how this one does first.. SPS will decline over time if the general parameters or not top quality, I would say give it a few weeks before adding any other pieces

[coraline79]

MG test= Magnesium? I was asking the guys at AD about this and said it would be hard to find one of these locally. Any ideas?

[Joshua]

MG test= Magnesium? I was asking the guys at AD about this and said it would be hard to find one of these locally. Any ideas?

I can't say I'd bother testing for mag. I've done so over long periods of time and nothing I could ever do would cause it to be low, though I did raise it ridiculously high for some reason at some point... Killing bryopsis maybe??? I can't recall... Anyhow if your Ca and Alk are in check your mag should be OK IMO. If you've monitoring everything and your reef is aged properly I don't see any reason not to go ahead and load up on a few more inexpensive SPS frags but I'd wait a few months before buying anything expensive, like Tex said it can take a while to kill these things because they're pretty tough.

[Bill S]

I'd say be patient. I wouldn't spend any more $$ on anything until you are SURE they will grow.

[rz1a]

yeah be patient and try to learn what you can from the frag you have. i started off with cheap stuff like a digi and slimer, but was having the hardest time keeping the slimer. it browned out, then STN'ed and had to frag it. now the frags are growing fast and have color and doing well and had gotten more frags a few months ago

[Fish4life]

I try to space my sps additions 2 weeks apart (at least).