why doesnt my tank do so hot?

[Chad Vossen]

im using RO water, reef crystal salt, regular water changes (50% on the 10 gal every other week) 80 watts PC over the 10 gallon. tank is barebottom. lots of live rock in the powerfilter and under my coral rack.

my hammer coral doesnt give me very good polyp extension.. neither did my frogspawn.

now my reason for complaining... today i went to my friends place. i had given him my frogspawn a few weeks ago. and today it was HUGE... it was at least 3 times larger than i have ever seen it. i have never seen MY frogspawn so huge... plus, i had split my colony of dragon eye zoanthids and gave him the smaller half. well now, his zoanthid colony is 4x larger than mine!!!
he runs 3 VHO and has the option of a halide but he doesnt use the halide ever... he also uses Red Sea Coral Pro Salt, which i am starting to think is his secret....

anyways, im really pissed off to see how good my corals COULD have been but which have never been under my care... makes me feel like a bad reefkeeper...

anyone have tips? stories? something to make me feel good?

[mtfatwork]

how much flow you got in there? Frogspawn will not open up fully if they are getting too much flow. As far as the zoas, are you running carbon? Are you watching your levels (alk, ca, mag, ph, salinity, etc.) Keeping your levels as steady as possible is a huge key to success

[wes]

my frogspawn started doing a hell of a lot better once I read this:

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/elegance.htm

do you feed your zoos? I have some zoos that split up when I aquascaped less than a month ago, one rocked I moved came off with 1 polyp and has 7 already, the other big colony has barely seemed to grow.

oh and fyi I use PC, too. I use Oceanic and do w/c every few days, 5-10%, buffered w/cut baking soda.

[spsick]

ten gallon tanks never seem to allow stuff to thrive, parameters fluctuate too much(unless they're plumbed into a main system) PC's arent the best, but w/ that many watts, you should get growth. you choice of salt plays little role in your success, so dont get stuck on that. It's all about stability.

[sea monkey]

IMHO lps like the water to have some nutrients in it . not dirty but not pristine either. Try feeding small amounts of anyone of the coral foods on the market.

[Chad Vossen]

the frogspawn in his tank is getting alot more flow than it did in my tank. but i did have it in alot of flow at one time and it still hated me.

hmm. i really dont know whats wrong sometimes lol.

i guess i need to keep saving up for the new T5s so i can move everything into the main tank.

[David Grigor]

For LPS, I've always preferred VHOs to PCs. If you can reduce your lights to half and see what happens, 10g being so little it may be place too high to your lights and won't expand. Less light will make most LPS more fluffy. Doesn't sound like you test or do anything besides water changes so theres lots of variables there to investigate. Do you have auto topoff to keep salinity stable ? Temp swings ?

[stuckey_t]

How big is your friends tank?

[epidemic]

could also be the fluctuations that occur with smalltank, salinity, temp and what not

[mattb]

Also, keep the hands outta the tank.... I know when things aren't going right, the tendency is to mess with stuff. (I'm guilty... )

[storrisch]

temp. was the toughest thing when I tried running a 10g w/ a 96w PC light