SPS loves flow

mmm33732

mmm33732

Member
i mainly have softies right now as i'm only about 5 months into corals. however, my first one was actually a yellow/green pagoda cup. its been doing okay since i got it. no real growth. did turn from yellow to green. the polyps were never really out. maybe once a month at night. about a week ago i redirected a jet straight into it. ever since, the polyps are always always out. day and night. i take that as its very happy now.
this is prob common knowledge to most of you, but to me it was a surprise. so the point of this thread is really to ask if theres any other little things that are common knowledge out there about coral, or even just sps in general that may be helpful to me. i plan to gradually graduate into more and more sps, but for now its pretty much only softies. on a 55g, i have about 300w of compact fluorescents, so i figure thats may not be enough for more sps, thus why i'm sticking to softies for now. so any tips and or your total thoughts on my setup for more sps?
 
wangotango

wangotango

Active Member
Flow, lighting, and water quality are the most important (in that order imo). What could be considered too high of flow for lps may not be strong enough for sps. You also can't just point a powerhead at them and call it "high flow." If you look at a tree when it's windy outside you'll notice that the branches move up, down, left, right, sometimes there is a big gust, sometimes it's calm. This is the type of flow that sps do best in (random).
On my 55 I'm running the Aquactinics 48" TX5 fixture. Most of my sps are growing like crazy. Very happy with it.
-Justin
 
thangbom

thangbom

Active Member
imo in the order of importance for sps are: water chem, lighting, flow..... most important in chem is alk then calk, then everything els is even... ( i would get 4 54 watt t5ho w/ SLR for a 55 gal... no need to overdrive)
YzGyz
 
nycbob

nycbob

Active Member
hv a t5 too on my 72 reef. and my sps r growing like mad. i soon willl hv to frag a few branches off b4 it touches other corals. monti sps r easy, so u can start w those.
 
mmm33732

mmm33732

Member
gotcha. so would t'5 really be a huge step up from what i have? say 4x54w? i currently have 260w of pc's and a 40w standard tube.
 
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