i have been having a problem with growth. regardless of soft, lps, or sps. everything seems to stay alive and looks fine but nothing seems to be growing. im not expecting things to grow overnight but ive had some frags for literally close to a year with zero growth.
could there be any other factor aside from light, water chemistry, and feeding that i may be missing? i have been searching online and find little information here and there, am wondering if anyone here has any experience or suggestions. i am thinking of running without a skimmer for a while to see if it helps any. starting to think my tank has become a sterile environment..

here the specifics

40L aquarium
quiet one 1200 return pump, koralia 3, koralia 1
4x 54w t5s - 2 ati blue plus, 1 uv super actinic, 1 kz fiji purple, lights on 8 hours each day
tunze 9002 skimmer
carbon reactor with mj900
and a ton of chaeto in refugium

feeding mysis and reef chili and spectrum food pellets every other day or every day

have been dosing mb7 and vit. c, as well as seachem calcium and alk buffer

corals: zoanthids, ricordea, frogspawn, torch coral, toadstool leather, gsp, cloves, green hydnopora, mushrooms, acans, chalice, sun coral. acropora, montipora, birdsnest

here are my tanks parameters. it almost never fluctuates from this
ph: 8.1
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: ~0
cal: ~400
kh: 10
temp ~75-78 F

How old are the T5's? How often do you change the bulbs?

the bulbs are 6 months old

try raising cal to 460-500 i know 500s is high but my duncans explosed with heads when it was in the 480-500s.

temp is really low. min should be 76 or something like that. i have mine at 80F higher temp increases growth because it cause them to burn more energy. (high metabolism)

calcium means nothing without the right level of magnesium and alk.

thank you for the tips i will try these

do you have any growth at all in anything???? one day the slow groewer is liable to explode with growth.. i have some slow starters too.. driving up the wall but what can you do that wont affect the tank negativley?

i have a couple zoa frags that have grown a couple more polyps. buts thats really it. no noticeable growth in anything. maybe an "oh yeah theres one polyp of growth" on maybe one or two of the 15+ zoanthid frags.

Try putting some el cheapo mrs. wage's pickling lime into your ATO. You can start at a tablespoon for 5 gallons and work up from there depending on how the corals do. In my farm my ATO water looked like milk and my acros grew about 1/4" every week to week and a half. Corals eat more alk as you add it so adding in twice as much alk as before doesn't necessarily translate into that much higher a rise in alkalinity.

Also, if you have clean water you might wanna try zeovit's AAHC and coral vitalizer, great for increasing growth on most stony corals.

Going skimmerless would likely backfire since excess nutrients can slow down growth considerably.

get your alk between 8-9 dkh and get your calc to 500ppm no more than 550ppm or it will start causing issue's, put your magnesium around 1500ppm and then maybe add some Elo's amino acids once or twice a week a week

i do carbon dose but notice a lot better color and growth at an alk of 8-9 dkh, before dosing i had it up ar 10-12 for a long time though with no issue's but growth didn't seem as fast, i add amino's for growth not color my sps have always had decent color but IMO amino's keep sps from starving and seem to increase growth to some degree, i only add 2 drops of aminos and 2 drops of vodka to my system a week and have noticed great results without all the issue's of longterm carbon dosing, i do change around 5g a week and my tank is a BC29g with a 10g sump

i get around 3mm of growth about every 3-4 days which IMO is good and about the fastest growth has ever been in my tank

if i cut my sps and leave a 1 inch wound it is completely healed in 2 weeks and growing new coralites

there are pics of my tank on cincy reef and this site, but newest pics are up on cincy reef

Wow, that's not much vodka at all. With my solana 32 gallon I was up to like 2ml a day after the vodka got going, 1ml a day once it got to ULN levels... I think two drops of vodka a week probably doesn't do much of anything at all to be honest with you, even two drops a day is negligible.

Did you try just switching your salt brand? The corals must not be MAD though if they're not dying. They just need some...encouraging!

when i started Vodka dosing the first time i was dosing 1 drop a day everyday for a month, then i upped it to 2 drops a day everyday for another month and then started having issue's and problems with the Vodka,

believe me 1 drop isn't a lot but it's affects are there i can visually see that everyday i look at my tank, eventually i might do 3 drops a week of the Vodka and Up the amino's to 3 as well, but i will never go back to daily dosing it, it had great affects daily dosed but it also took my tank a long time to recover from the negatives as well, so this to me is a great solution to get the best of both worlds in having a system that is thriving and close to ULN, i had my tank get to ULN and lost about 3-4 acros during the 2 month period of Vodka dosing when i first started so this is me tweaking that system and regime to get the results without the issues

just go to my tank thread and see for yourself

look at the purple acro in the center on the main log, i've had that a long time and have fragged a good 3 branches off of it since the year+ it's been in the tank it looks nothing like it did when i first got it

J5c077 Do you have a pic of your tank?
What color are your acro and birdsnest? Which brand lighting system are you running? Do you have a lid on your tank? What are your phosphate levels and which kit are you using?

IME slow growth would occur in low light, high phosphate, or low cal, alk, and mg levels.

i have not. been using instant ocean since the beginning



the pictures are in the tank thread in my signature
the acro is bluish/greenish. there is never any polyp extension so i dont know the color of the polyps. the birdsnest is very pink.
light fixture brand is current.
there is no lid
phosphate is 0 with API

If your tank was sterile your chaeto would not grow or hardly grow. I would definitely continue skimming. I highly doubt you are starving your tank with a Tunze 9002 skimmer and normal feedings.

keep in mind all conventional phosphate teskits are useless at low range levels (.1 or less). Unless you have a hanna meter you can't get accurate test results. You can use diatom grow on the glass as a gauge. If you get a build up in less than 3 days your phosphate is probably higher than you want.

If you want to increase growth I would
- increase water changes to at least 25% bi-monthly.
-Place your SPS and more light demanding corals higher under light.
-Bump your calcium level to 450ppm
-begin using a small amount of GFO in a reactor
-Check calcification levels with salifert testkits (if you're not already doing so)

This will cure your slow growth problem

sorry, the pics arent recent
the chaeto doesnt grow. never has
the skimmer has never pulled any brown foam, only white. the only way i can get it to pull anything is by turning it up enough to wet skim and i get a light brown water skimmate
the sps are ~6" from the top of the water
i have managed to get the cal up from 400 to 450
i used to use gfo on the tank before this . i honestly believe i have seen a better overall appearance of corals when switching to carbon without gfo and have not had any nuisance algae
i will look into the salifert testkits

thanks

ive got a better heater on the way so i can keep the temp up, and a vortech mp20 too

i know someone that added a calcium reactor and everything just exploded. his SPS were huge in just a few weeks.

i just dose calcium daily to have similar effect.

if you arent seeing growth even in your chaeto, and no algae anywhere...? no skim.. sounds like your tank is nutrient poor.. if your tank is nutrient rich, any blue coral will start turning green. judgine from the parameters in your first post, youre running your tank a little on the cold side.. think metabolism.. metabolism is faster at higher temps. try picking the temp up to 80 over the next few days.. yes it is safe. mine runs at 81 sometimes 83. my sons tank runs at 84+ and he has explosive growth of zoas and mushrooms in his 1 month old 2.5 gallon thats never had a water change and only been fed twice. i have never seen what happens to sps at real elevated temps like that but it cant really hurt. they sit in the sun in fiji with no water on them for an hour when tide roles out. if you can , move some of your coral up a bit. i have some of mine 3 inches under the water surface under a 6x18 t5. i even have some that are sitting just below the water surface directly underneathe a 150 watt sunpod in my frag tank. read some articles on coral feeding and sand beds as well. sounds like your system is nutrient poor for the most part and its hard to find that balance. and another thing. pick up your light cycle a bit. 10 to 12 hours wont hurt. do that over time too especially with sps. if your running a filter floss at your refugium either remove it or start feeding the refugium every few days. you want your bugs breeding. when they are breeding and larvae are present in the water column, thats good food for your coral. in my experience, debrae in the water column means "phyto". at this point is when i notice growth. blooms every few weeks cause some of my coral to explode. if youre running a skimmer and a refugium, step your feedings up.. remember, sps wont grow in prestine water. they have to eat too. i dont care what anyone says. you dont want to nuke them with food but they do need to eat. also you may try (have not done this yet) amino acids. im hearing good things about it. your coral actually absorb it through their flesh not eat it. maybe someone will chime in and comment. remember, these are my experiences and what i would change..

thank you for the informative post. some good ideas here.

the only nuisance algae in the aquarium is a few spots of bryopsis left from when i had an outbreak in the previous aquarium. they dont grow at all but very small pieces still hanging on in a couple of spots. since having the bryopsis problem, after transferring everything into this aquarium ive been very particual about what goes into it, hoping to avoid any more nuisance algae.
hopefully my larger heater on the way will help me with the temp problem. i did just think of that idea the other day as well about the filter floss. i have a section in my refugium/sump that i keep stuffed full of filter floss (i seemed to be having a problem with cloudy water forever). i removed it all a few days ago and am leaving it out.