Hi folks. This is Keith Brookline. We're from reef balm,
and I am really excited to be collaborating with Marine Depot to bring you
some educational content about reef keeping.
I've been keeping reef tanks for 25 plus years winning tank and the month honors
once from Reef2reef and twice from ReefCentral.
One of the few to do so on re central.
Yup. I love keeping reef tanks. Hey,
I even wrote a book on the topic more than five years ago.
I left Connecticut and moved to Vermont and started reefbum.com a site
dedicated to helping hobbyists create the reef tank of their dreams.
And later I launched the reefbum YouTube channel.
It certainly has been a great journey and I am really looking forward to the
future and this great partnership with Marine Depot. Okay.
Enough about me.
Let's get down to business and talk about SPS dominated reef tanks,
SPS or small polyps.
Stony corals are typically found in the shallow parts of our world's coral reefs
in areas with intense light and turbulent water.
These corals have calcium carbonate skeletons and a thin layer of living tissue
with polyps.
SPS can be very demanding corals to keep any captive rethink.
Not only do they require the strong lighting and flow they receive in nature,
but they also need proper calcium and alkalinity supplementation having
either a calcium reactor or a doser to replenish the calcium and alkalinity
sucked up by the SPS is vitally important to having success with these
corals. I have used both of these methods with a lot of success.
Two part alkalinity and calcium solutions such as the ESB bionic buffer
system are popular since they are readymade and can easily be adjusted to target
specific calcium and alkalinity levels.
Calcium reactors are also very popular.
One style in these units allow you to set it and forget it.
The pH of the effluent coming out of a calcium reactor is low.
So it can help to have a second chamber to absorb some of the excess CO2 that
can lower pH.
It may also be necessary to boost pH with a copper reactor concrete actors use
kalkwasser in conjunction with our RODI water that is either gravity fed or
force through the unit via a separate dosing pump.
The cock Wasser and rod water need to be mixed by either a pump or a store
inside the reactor.
Why is low pH not a good thing for SPS and other types of corals excessively
low pH will make it harder for these organisms to deposit calcium carbonate
skeletons.
So levels should be maintained in the 7.8 to 8.4 range.
Another thing to consider are nutrient levels,
which should be elevated to avoid starving SPS.
I recommend maintaining nitrates between two,
five to 10 parts per million and phosphates in the 0.03 to
0.07 parts per million range.
It is also critical to have stability for parameters such as salinity,
nitrate, magnesium, and calcium stable phosphate is important as well,
but perhaps most important for SPS is keeping alkalinity at a consistent
level. Any swings with this parameter over a short period of time,
usually spells trouble stable parameters equals happy
SPS.
Now let's circle back to lighting. As I mentioned in the beginning,
SPS requires strong lighting and we'll do best under T fives,
middle halide or LEDs when given the proper par par stands
for photosynthetically available radiation and represents the light intensity
produced by aquarium lighting.
A meter can be used to determine par levels at different depths inside of a
tank.
SPS will be happiest when pars into two 50 to three 50
range. In my years of experience and keeping SPS dominated reef tanks.
I've had a lot of success using metal halides with supplemental T five lighting,
but I am an old school reefer.
A lot of rivers rely solely on T fives and have had awesome looking tanks.
While many others use LEDs,
LEDs have gained popularity for a few reasons.
One plus is they do not emit a lot of heat making it less likely that you'll
need a chiller. And they typically use less electricity.
Led bulbs also have a very long lifespan versus the middle Haylight and T5
bulbs. So extra money will be saved on replacing bulbs down the line.
Additionally,
high output led lights now have the giddy-up to grow SPS for really well
led lighting also has less spillage with more of the light focused on corals
versus the back or sides of the tank,
although middle Haylight and T five users point to this as a disadvantage,
given the better light spread produced by reflectors in those light fixtures.
But LEDs have improved on this front with the advent of diffusers to help
spread light.
Additionally,
led lights are dimmable making it easy to adjust the output of LEDs to
reproduce different types of lighting conditions,
such as a bright or cloudy day.
Also you have the ability to easily change the color spectrum giving reef
keepers, many different options to play with their front.
Cause for led fixtures can be high,
but I know one old school reefer me was willing to give them a try.
Another key factor to keeping a thriving SPS dominated reef tank is having a lot
of water movement via strong circulation.
And there are a number of reasons why number one is to avoid dead spots and
to keep detritus dead, organic matter,
such as fragments of dead organisms or fish waste from collecting at the bottom,
which helps to keep nitrates and phosphates from building up in the tank
accumulation of these elements can lead to algae outbreaks.
Strong flow also helps to deliver food and nutrients to the corals.
Besides strong flow random flow is also beneficial and can be achieved by
using a pump such as the Vortech MP 40 from Ecotech.
The random flow from this sort of pump is great for SPS since it replicates
ways, moving across a natural reef.
Well, folks that will do it for this video. If you liked it,
please give it a thumbs up and hit that subscribe button.
I'll put links to Marine Depot and Reefbum and the video description below.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.