How many have you lost???

[Adam]

Hi, in all your SPS keeping life ,how many acropora corals have you lost? I have lost many due to my mistakes(darnet!).

Have you lost...

0?

1-5?

6-10?

11-20?

orrr...

21+?


I myself am in the 11-20 range. Why? Because of heat issues and water quality issues? Wanna hear? OK.

When I had my 75 gallon in another location 1 and a half years ago, I had mabe 11 or more fish. Crazy, I know. I soon learned that that amount was wayyy too much. My nitrates were in the 80's range I beleive? Bye bye acro's! (dont worry, now i only have 4 fish)

Once, also when my 75 was in the other location, in the early years, I was like..."My tank doesnt feel warm...it should feel warm!" So wanna know what I did? I turned that heater up to 82 or something!! mistake. I got back from boy scout camp and guess what...my new wild cought expensive BEAUTIFUL acroporas(2) were bleached 100%!

one was neon orange, the other was cream with pink tips and super hairy polyps..my favorite. Now dead. (dont turn heater past 78 IME!)

Wanna hear more? mabe not...but here it goes

Most recently...a few months ago...

on my 75 I added a mag 9 pump for my new sea swirl and with the 175w MH's in a 6" tall hood 3 " above the waters surface with one tiny fan...just doesnt cut it. So my temps were in the 90's!!!!! Yes, you heard right...the 90's. so ofcourse things bleached....some died.

Now my temp reaches a miximum of 84ish. I still think thats too high. I am gonna have to do sumthin I have a huge fan blowing across the waters surface.... those new 250 XM's are HOT!

So were looking at 3-5 colonies and countless frags that I have lost...how about you???

[Todd March]

21+ range... A lot of those were from the early days, back in the ninties when we only had wild colonies and no domestic frags, and less than stellar skimmers and little information about Ca and ALK levels (let alone Mg!)...

I have finally learned that smaller tanks, <55g, and higher fish loads lead to just too many DO's to make Acros happy... Although with the newer and more effective skimmers around, this may change...

I've been bummed the last couple of weeks to lose a valuable frag and a couple of wild colonies that were doing fine. And I've dramatically lost color across the map; I let my ZEOvit go too long in between changes; it was a hard lesson, but I can see that once ZEOvit shapes your tank up, you need to pay attention to maintance, as things can go quickly if you don't...! The ZEOvit system had done wonders for my tank and corals for a couple of months, and I took that for granted—MISTAKE!

[Adam]

yeah...I guess that is one "bad" thing about zeovit...if you don't pay attention to dosing things go downhill. Yeah I think I have pretty high end equiptment now...I used to just have a remora pro hang on back of tank model, aquaclear 500 powerfilter(why the heck did I ever buy this???) and an assortment of powerheads(kinda still do) and 3 VHO's 2 aquasuns and 1 atentic, plus (2) 65w atentic PC's. and crushed coral! (death in a bag)

Now I have (2) 250w 10k XM's, and 2 110 watt atentic VHO's, a mag 9 with a seaswirl, some powerheads, a sump and overflow, with a much better protein skimmer(Pro clear aquatics one...works 3 times better than remora IME), and...

a calcium reactor! (used of course, leaked in about 5 different places.) now it dont leak :-)


back on topic...

[nyfireman3097]

knock on wood 1 as of now i only started sps like 4 months ago it was a birdsnest thata i got in a order that had bleached spots when i got it
Nick