coral growth rates

[Beignet]

Hi Bar,

I'm still a pretty new reefer so I don't have much experience to draw from for setting coral growth expectations. So far, I've had pretty good luck keeping sps, lps and softies alive, but I'm not convinced that they are growing at a 'good' rate. A couple of questions:

In general, how long would it take for your average sps frag to encrust the plug nicely, move onto your rockwork, and finally become a nice specimen? My birdsnest really take off quickly but others seem slow.

How about acans? I've got a couple with four heads but when should I expect that to double?

Zoa?

In general, I'm not very patient, but this hobby is starting to teach me some - maybe?

Best wishes,
Beignet

 

[Kmooresf]

That's a tough question.

I have decided that if the coral looks healthy, good coloration, polyp extension, etc......then it WILL grow. However some of my coral starts to grow immediately, and others seem to do NOTHING for a month or so and then.......BOOM! Others grow great and then seem to slow down again. Sometimes it might be that there is too much flow for it, or not enough.......too much light, or not enough, etc, etc. I try to find a spot the coral likes, but I think the best thing is to let it adjust to the new surroundings and it will eventually kick into gear.

This is of coarse assuming your calcium, alk, nitrates, etc, etc, etc......are all within normal limits.

I realize this does NOT answer your question, sorry. But I think there are just too many variables to really say.

 

[tankguy]

This hobby needs a ton of patience. Some corals grow slow and some grow even slower. As long as they are heathy they will eventually grow

 

[tr1gger]

Photo logs of each coral are a good way to monitor growth. I take a photo of each one of my corals on Sunday each week. Then again, I do have a small tank and a small amount of coral, but, It's an idea to literally monitor growth.

 

[zeroinverse]

I have heard of people weighing corals as a way to measure coral growth rate (at least for SPS). Of course, that means your frags/colonies have to be removable. Then at least you can figure out about how much calcium carbonate growth there is.

Definitely keeping parameters stable (i.e. large ALK swings of 2 points can cause SPS to RTN quickly). And dosing calcium, alk, (and magnesium) may be necessary unless you are on top of your water changes.

That said, the salt you use will make a difference. Different salt have different mixes and some may not have the right balance for optimal growth. Whether it is too much/too little of calcium, alk, magnesium (or not enough other ions like iodine, strontium, etc.).

I use Aquavitro Salinity salt but since I am lazy, I don't change water as often.
But I do have a calcium reactor which helps to dissolve coral skeletons which should add back in "most" of the building blocks my new coral growth need.

Oh, and depending on the coral, the color spectrum may have an impact as well as simply giving them more light (i.e. more food for coral from photosynthetic plankton in their tissues). Note: corals need to be acclimated to higher light output and some corals may not like high light either. But most can tolerate it if you acclimate properly.

Also, feeding the corals the right size and type of food is important. Reef Nutrition phytoplankton and oyster feast are my "go-to's" for my tank.

As for keeping nitrates higher than average... (I keep mine a bit dirtier since it helps zoas grow, but my SPS have acclimated to the slightly higher nitrate levels).

 

[CookieJar]

Good question, it's not one that can be easily answered as there are many variables as mentioned already. One thing you can do is find out what other people with the same coral types get for their growth rate. For encrusting monti's they almost grow too fast for me, birdsnest also grows like a weed. Acans don't grow so fast, but I don't consistently spot feed them. Some zoas spread fast, others are slow growers. It really comes down to if you provide the right habitat, i.e. environment, they will give you their max growth rate, whatever it may be.

 

[Beignet]

Thanks everyone. This exchange is very helpful. I really like the weekly photo idea. I've been shooting monitoring photos on my iphone but looking at them today to try to estimate growth over the last two months made me realize how crappy they are. Crappy pic attached, shot last week. The tanks been running since mid March.

I'm going to start a proper tank journal this week, promise, and lay out all my equipment, water quality monitoring and adjustments, and livestock soon so you guys can evaluate my procedures and offer suggestions. My parameters have been pretty stable (I do have to dose two/three part as my alk and CA drop too much for weekly water changes to keep up), but I have been messing with the lights a bit (a radion that is a bit hard to estimate if you have no experience). I've been running these on one of the presets for 7-8 hours a day at about 55% intensity. I try to watch the corals and most seem fine in their original placements, but some have need to go higher (if they started to lose a bit of color toward brown) or lower (if they started to lose color towards white). I've experienced the loss of color with a green slimmer, a cyphastrea (meteor shower) and my first acro (a tenius I think). Otherwise, most things are holding steady (acans, joker favia, another unknown favia, a fancy mummy eye chalice (and other assorted chalices), a red planet acro, plate corals, a goniopora). Things that grow well have been a rainbow monti (tripled in size in about 3 months and is my absolute favorite), a green monti with white polyps, birds nests of 4 or so types, pink tip frogspawn, and a hollywood stunner than has also tripled. I actually find zoas a bit challenging. Most do fine in most places, but some tend to get stringy and reach (a sign they need more light?) and occasionally a zoa plug will just sort of whither away. This happens more in my small tank (14g), but for whatever reason I seem to be better at sps and lsp than zoas.

zeroinverse: I never have detectable nitrate or phosphate, so sometimes I wonder if my water is too clean for zoas or too clean in general? I do feed pe mysis, phytofeast, rod's food, rotifeast, and cyclopeee but not consistently (maybe 2-3 times a week) and I'm not at all sure what the dosing should be so I'm hoping to learn a bit more about feeding here with BAR. If I were to crudely estimate - maybe a couple of drops of each per feeding? I target feed the meaty stuff to the aggressive corals and give the liquid and cyclopeeze to the sps, goniopora and phytofeast particularly to the new clam. what sort of nitrate levels do you consider 'high' but maybe ok in your system?

I think one of my 'problems' is flow so I'm working to improve that. I have a mp 10 running at about half speed but I have dead spots and also have diatoms on my sanded in those dead spots in particular (which I really don't like and need to address). Maybe some of my feeding is fueling the diatoms too, but I'm unsure.

I also just got an ORA maxima clam. I found a spot midway up in my rock work, left the clam for a week, it didn't attach and only opened up a bit during the day. I moved it to a cup of large crushed coral on my sanded today. This location is deeper, but I think the light will be a bit more direct. Any tips for settling a new clam? What should I be looking for as an index of 'happy'? He is gorgeous, but he's of the size that does need supplemental feeding and I was told to give phytofeast 3 times per week.

I know I peppered in quite a few questions, and I'd appreciate any tips. I learn a ton here at BAR and even though I can't often make meetings (I live in DAvis) I really appreciate everyone's help.

BEst wishes,
Beignet






Attached files /attachments/sites/default/files/IMG_1436.jpg

 

[gaberosenfield]

Corals growth rates vary tremendously between tanks. My old tank had an Acropora validia colony in it that nearly doubled in size in 6 months, while at the same time my acans grew only one mouth and most of my zoas just disintegrated. As CookieJar said, encrusting sps grew extremely quickly for me, but it depends upon the species and your setup.

I never had a maxima clam, but I did have a crocea clam for the last 9 or 10 months before I tore down my old tank (I was moving, they tank was doing very well). I found the clam very easy to keep. It didn't open up much for the first 2 or 3 weeks, but after that it was open all the time. It liked strong indirect flow (I put it just underneath the strong part of the flow from an mp10). I found it was extremely sensitive to fluctuations in light intensity. If a shadow moved over it from a fish or your hand, it would close immediately but open up again in a few seconds. I also fed it phytoplankton (home grown nannochloropsis), but spot feeding it didn't really work. The plankton was so dense that it cast a shadow when I squirted it over the clam, and that caused the clam to close and blow the plankton away. So I just started dosing the tank with a bit of phyto whenever I fed and hoped that the clam would get some. I turned off my skimmer for 2 hours after I fed so the phyto wouldn't get skimmed out before the clam got any. It grew close to 1.3x as big as it was when I bought it in just the 9 months I owned it, so it must have been happy.

Not that it was a problem for me, but I have heard that tridacna clams (including maxima, crocea, deresa, gigas, etc) like water that is a little bit dirtier than "ideal" sps conditions. Apparently these clams can absorb nitrates directly from the water to fuel the growth of their algal symbionts. I read a long thread on reefcentral about an NYC reefer who has tanks full of tridacnas and targets 1 to 3 ppm nitrates cause he has found they grow best at those levels. He even had an old gigas that weighed 250 lbs, so I figure he must know what he's doing! My nitrates were undetectable and the clam did just fine, but it is food for thought. I would also bet that these clams would do better in a system that was cleaned by an algae scrubber rather than a skimmer; they're filter feeders, so the more tiny food particles in the water, the more they have to eat.

 

[BAYMAC]

Thanks everyone. This exchange is very helpful. I really like the weekly photo idea. I've been shooting monitoring photos on my iphone but looking at them today to try to estimate growth over the last two months made me realize how crappy they are. Crappy pic attached, shot last week. The tanks been running since mid March.

I'm going to start a proper tank journal this week, promise, and lay out all my equipment, water quality monitoring and adjustments, and livestock soon so you guys can evaluate my procedures and offer suggestions. My parameters have been pretty stable (I do have to dose two/three part as my alk and CA drop too much for weekly water changes to keep up), but I have been messing with the lights a bit (a radion that is a bit hard to estimate if you have no experience). I've been running these on one of the presets for 7-8 hours a day at about 55% intensity. I try to watch the corals and most seem fine in their original placements, but some have need to go higher (if they started to lose a bit of color toward brown) or lower (if they started to lose color towards white). I've experienced the loss of color with a green slimmer, a cyphastrea (meteor shower) and my first acro (a tenius I think). Otherwise, most things are holding steady (acans, joker favia, another unknown favia, a fancy mummy eye chalice (and other assorted chalices), a red planet acro, plate corals, a goniopora). Things that grow well have been a rainbow monti (tripled in size in about 3 months and is my absolute favorite), a green monti with white polyps, birds nests of 4 or so types, pink tip frogspawn, and a hollywood stunner than has also tripled. I actually find zoas a bit challenging. Most do fine in most places, but some tend to get stringy and reach (a sign they need more light?) and occasionally a zoa plug will just sort of whither away. This happens more in my small tank (14g), but for whatever reason I seem to be better at sps and lsp than zoas.

zeroinverse: I never have detectable nitrate or phosphate, so sometimes I wonder if my water is too clean for zoas or too clean in general? I do feed pe mysis, phytofeast, rod's food, rotifeast, and cyclopeee but not consistently (maybe 2-3 times a week) and I'm not at all sure what the dosing should be so I'm hoping to learn a bit more about feeding here with BAR. If I were to crudely estimate - maybe a couple of drops of each per feeding? I target feed the meaty stuff to the aggressive corals and give the liquid and cyclopeeze to the sps, goniopora and phytofeast particularly to the new clam. what sort of nitrate levels do you consider 'high' but maybe ok in your system?

I think one of my 'problems' is flow so I'm working to improve that. I have a mp 10 running at about half speed but I have dead spots and also have diatoms on my sanded in those dead spots in particular (which I really don't like and need to address). Maybe some of my feeding is fueling the diatoms too, but I'm unsure.

I also just got an ORA maxima clam. I found a spot midway up in my rock work, left the clam for a week, it didn't attach and only opened up a bit during the day. I moved it to a cup of large crushed coral on my sanded today. This location is deeper, but I think the light will be a bit more direct. Any tips for settling a new clam? What should I be looking for as an index of 'happy'? He is gorgeous, but he's of the size that does need supplemental feeding and I was told to give phytofeast 3 times per week.

I know I peppered in quite a few questions, and I'd appreciate any tips. I learn a ton here at BAR and even though I can't often make meetings (I live in DAvis) I really appreciate everyone's help.

BEst wishes,
Beignet






Attached files /attachments/sites/default/files/IMG_1436.jpg

You don't need to worry about shutting off the skimmer when feeding Phyto-Feast or any other Reef Nutrition product. One side benefit of our media is the fact it will shut down skimmate production for an hour or so, which is plenty of time for corals and filter feeders to feed.

Diatoms are normal in newer systems. Diatoms are unsightly, may take over corals, but, are a very healthy meal for many filter feeders and grazers.

Feeding less more often is far better for what it worth. I suggest multiple feedings daily. A few drops of the RN products you have is just a drop in the bucket in terms of feeding your tank. I developed the feeding protocols for all Reef Nutrition products. The dosing is pretty accurate, but one thing I should mention is.. if you use multiple RN zooplankton products of similar size, cut down the amount of each by how ever many you are using. Using 3, cut the dosing instructions in 1/3. Feel free to email me if you want me to work with you on a good feeding schedule that will work for both you and the tank... gresham@reedmariculture.com

When feeding clams, don't over do it. Too much and they'll spit it out, which is a net negative on their energy budget. Ditto with feeding the wrong algae, etc as that will be spit out as pseudo-feces, which is as well a net negative on their energy budget.

 

[BAYMAC]

I have heard of people weighing corals as a way to measure coral growth rate (at least for SPS). Of course, that means your frags/colonies have to be removable. Then at least you can figure out about how much calcium carbonate growth there is.

Definitely keeping parameters stable (i.e. large ALK swings of 2 points can cause SPS to RTN quickly). And dosing calcium, alk, (and magnesium) may be necessary unless you are on top of your water changes.

That said, the salt you use will make a difference. Different salt have different mixes and some may not have the right balance for optimal growth. Whether it is too much/too little of calcium, alk, magnesium (or not enough other ions like iodine, strontium, etc.).

I use Aquavitro Salinity salt but since I am lazy, I don't change water as often.
But I do have a calcium reactor which helps to dissolve coral skeletons which should add back in "most" of the building blocks my new coral growth need.

Oh, and depending on the coral, the color spectrum may have an impact as well as simply giving them more light (i.e. more food for coral from photosynthetic plankton in their tissues). Note: corals need to be acclimated to higher light output and some corals may not like high light either. But most can tolerate it if you acclimate properly.

Also, feeding the corals the right size and type of food is important. Reef Nutrition phytoplankton and oyster feast are my "go-to's" for my tank.

As for keeping nitrates higher than average... (I keep mine a bit dirtier since it helps zoas grow, but my SPS have acclimated to the slightly higher nitrate levels).

Displacement is the best method for determining coral growth.