Going from LPS to mixed reef

[Klems]

Hello all, I am venturing from an LPS only tank (frogspawn, zoas and rics) to one with a few SPS (across) the wife liked . My parameters are currently: SG- 1.025, MG- 1380, PH- 8.0, DKH- 9.5 and Cal- 460.

Do I need to make adjustments to these figures or will they do well with these new additions?

 

[wpeterson]

Those all sound like a solid baseline. You will want to monitor your Alk/Calc more closely the first month after adding more SPS since they will likely increase the demand for Alk/Calc on the system and you'll want to slowly ramp up your dosing to match that demand.

The bigger difference with SPS vs. LPS are the amount of lighting and flow. We currently run a fairly successful mixed reef, but some of our LPS like our Euphyllia colonies have very slow growth, probably because there is too much flow for them. It can be a challenge to provide the right amount of high light/flow at the top levels of your tank to keep the SPS happy without overwhelming LPS on lower levels. However, with careful powerhead positioning and aquascaping you can make it happen. I've moved our two Vortech powerheads further up the glass to provide a layer of very high flow across the SPS without bothering the sandbed as much.

I was just thinking of moving our largest torch colony back out of the line of reflected flow from our return pump, as its getting battered a little bit. In my experience they like just enough flow to sway gently.

 

[Enderturtle]

You'll see some LPS do not like how much light Acropora like.

Gotta find that sweet spot and it will probably mean Acropora at the very highest point of your rocks. While your LPS and softies have to move down lower.

If your tank is very shallow, this will be hard because light intensity decreases with tank depth.

So an ideal Mixed Reef tank is a "tall tank" where you have enough height to allow for different levels of light intensity.

You can chase numbers with a PAR meter but I don't. I usually go with the trial and error. Your corals will tell you when they're getting too much light. Be sure to listen though

 

[Enderturtle]

I'd also like to add that, a good amount of Acroporas are grown under T5's and Metal Halides.

There's a lot of reefers who believe that instant transition from T5's/Metal halides to LED's is harmful to Acros. Personally (I use LEDs) if I bought an acro grown under T5's/Metals, I'll start it on the bottom for 2 days and then transition it up my rockwork.

 

[Vhuang168]

+1 on the transition from T5/Halides to LED. I've bought a few SPS frags from Neptune where they are under MH and I've bought some from CRC where there are under LEDs. The CRC frags can be placed almost right away up on top in my tank, will have excellent PE and adapts very well very fast. The Neptune frags need to be placed lower down and generally sulk for a few weeks before starting to perk up.

 

[ifarmer]

i've heard that some leather lcp coral can be bad to sps . i dont know, because I've never tried out any leather lps corals myself.

 

[tankguy]

Ive always been a fan of a mixed reef. Your gonna have to play with it as stated above and some corals may not adapt at all. Pretty much all your sps will be towards the top