25 Gallon Box of Water

[Tbowser]

I started a 25 gallon tank about two months ago. I would like it to be an SPS dominant tank and but am having some trouble getting them to hold their color. I'll post some stats and pictures here, any help would be appreciated.

-25 gallon lagoon tank from Innovative Marine
-1 Kessil a360x Tuna blue - runs it's max for 4 hours between 80 - 90%max
-2 vortech MP10's
-Medium reactor running 3 tbs of ROWA Phos
-Apex wis DOS running a 10% weekly auto water change
-ATO running with 2tbs of Kalkwasser per gallon

Parameters
Salt 35
ORP 304
PH 7.95 - 8.03
Temp 77.9 - 79.4
Alkalinity 8.75
Calcium 530 - I was having trouble getting it about 400 and now it seems to be stable and slowly dropping 8ppm per day
Phosphate - .025

I feed the fish twice a day with bio-pure frozen mysis shrimp and a little bit of reef roids for the corals.
I change filter socks every three days
I change ROWA Phos as Phosphates start to creep up

Livestock

4 snails
1 Anthias
Frag of TSA Dan Aykroyd
Frag of TSA Raspberry Limeade
Frag of TSA Fruity Pebbles

 

[reef lover]

Hows your nitrates? Might be hungry.

 

[Tbowser]

That was one thing I was not testing so I just bought a test kit the other night. Looks like they were a little high so I upped the volume of my auto water change and I am going to reduce my feeding a little. I'll try to post some progress picks of them "hopefully" coloring up.

 

[Tbowser]

Here are the two brown beauties that are easiest to see. The smaller frag is a TSA Dan Akroyd and the larger one is a TSA Raspberry Lime Aid.

 

[NightManCometh]

It sounds like youre very early for sps. Your phosphates are so high because you feed reef roids too often for 3 frags.

 

[Tbowser]

I can agree with that. But I think my nitrates are too high more so than the Phosphates, the Phosphates are at .02. But I am going to stop the reef roids for a while along with upping the auto water changes. One of the frags was starting to show some color back today so hopefully they will start looking better each week.

 

[NightManCometh]

I would try to do too much now, just stick with the basics. Monitor your parameters, add fish (corals eat fish poop). Sps are the some of the most difficut coral to keep because they are vey finicky.

 

[Tbowser]

Yeah, I am going to wait for these guys to color up before I add anything else. I do have a small tank at work with SPS in it but I have had it for so long I just know what it needs by the look of things. I'm sure I will get things stable on this tank and start to see some nice color and growth. Thanks for the advice and encouraging words.

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

Any update?

Love your aquascape. Nice looking sps. Off to a great collection. I’ve got a 25 lagoon now and looking into getting rid of some of my zoas and shrooms and going more towards sps.

 

[Tbowser]

Any update?

Love your aquascape. Nice looking sps. Off to a great collection. I’ve got a 25 lagoon now and looking into getting rid of some of my zoas and shrooms and going more towards sps.

I got a couple zoas added on some rock islands. I will try to grab some picks this weekend and post an update.