High Tide Aquatics

Acropora slowly turning brown

It’s a nuvo40 running a gen5 Radion XR30 blue, mounted At 8” AB+ spectrum at 65% intensity. According to BRS this should put the first 6-8” of the tank in the 300ish par range
 
Jonathan Chia said:
my tank is about 8 months old, bare bottom. Coraline has covered the bare bottom and like 75% of the back wall
ive never heard of RSCP causing browning so I’ll be sure to check out the videos. I’ve tried dosing brightwell amino in the past but end up with Dino’s after a week or so
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No one is saying the salt is causing the browning..at least not directly.
The red sea pro, is elevated ca and alk dalt. Their blue one is the regular ca and alk salt.
At the end of the day you should choose the salt that first your system. If you are intentionally targeting high alk, then this is the salt for you..
What users here are suspecting includ9mg myself is that the browning is either from the high alk, or the high alk and high nutrients. If your test results are accurate, look like your nutrients is not high, hence, we suspect the alk..
No wrong are right here, it's about the target paramaters you want to run. Based on the look of your coral you can adjust and settle on a target..
 
Jonathan Chia said:
It’s a nuvo40 running a gen5 Radion XR30 blue, mounted At 8” AB+ spectrum at 65% intensity. According to BRS this should put the first 6-8” of the tank in the 300ish par range
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So first, assuming that their 300 is accurate (and there's lot of factors that could reduce their estimates including flow, water clarity, etc) a 300 reading on top wouldn't translate to anymore than 150 in the bottom third of the tank -- if even that. The falloff is fast. So you are in no danger of cooking LPS or softies. I would suspect that around the edges you may not even be hitting 80. This is just a guess -- you really should find out for sure. I haven't run Radions by I don't they are more narrow beamed than Kessil's or Orpheks and I know what the fall-off at depths is with those. For example, I'm running for Orphek V4 over my tank which is also 20" deep. 6-8 inches below the surface I hit 500-550. Near the bottom I'm at 150. At the edges even less.

Second, an 8 month old tank isn't established well enough from a biological standpoint to simply assume that it's stable enough for SPS. It may be why your P04 is running high for SPS. This is especially true if you went with a quick cycle. I know well established SPS fiends who cycle for 6 months, and still won't put SPS in until the end of the first year.
 
I advice you to watch the 5 short videos that read sea did about their supplements. It will help you understand couple of high level relationships of supplement and coral growth and colorations
 
depending on what you want to do, keep in mind that MANY reefers with incredible colors dont dose anything (other than ALK/CA/Mag via two part or a CARX), or use wild parameters like super high alk, to get there. They just run roughly NSW numbers, and keep things stable, with a decent nutrient level. TGC? Triton? WWC? TSA? all running numbers close to NSW and if anything the only elevated item are nutrients from so much feeding.

So I would suggest maybe dial back some of the numbers, and then concentrate on maintenance, and feeding as much as your tank will handle without sky high nitrate and phosphate.

That is just my two cents though, every reefer finds their own path!
Good luck!
 
I'm probably the worst person to give advice here but just sharing my experience as another data point / point of view. While most folks tend to be very methodical in approach to SPS, I take a bit of a haphazard approach in that I don't really dose, rarely test (except now with trident) and don't really do water changes. I have however put in a skimmer recently... if that counts. What I do instead is I throw in a few blocks of sea lab no 28 for Ca+, and every night I throw in a spoon of baking soda before bed to keep alk between 9.8 - 10.25 (not exact since I eye ball my scoop).

That said, despite my haphazard ways, my tank is fairly stable since I am repeating my same bad habits regularly... :)

Light wise, I was running Radion XR30W G3 Pros at 90% for a 24" high tank -- just swapped them out for G4s Pro and a non-pro (cuz I didn't read the add.. doh and wound up buying a non-pro...sigh), running at about the same setting. My frags are located at the bottom of the tank so probably only get about 180 PAR or so as a guess... haven't had enough motivational energy to remeasure yet. But, they have been growing fast and coloring nicely.

Given this, I think 300PAR is way too high, esp if your frags are recently introduced... I would always start lower to acclimate and slowly raise it up... esp since you're running a G5. try running the AB+ program at maybe 40% for awhile... too much light can cause zoox explosion and brown out coral.

here's a pic of relative positions of most of my frags for grow out. have some higher near the surface as well but the ones lower perform better in my opinion:

1587760135156.png
 
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