how fast?

does anyone have a method for speeding up the growth of corals?
ive been reading up on this a little bit and i know there are methods out there. what have you guys found to be effective?

 

Probably depends on the coral, some you can target feed to speed them up (mostly LPS I believe), some you can raise your alk level to speed them up a little bit (more SPS side I think), then there are some fancy methods using all kinds of crazy additives that I don't know a ton about.
Keep your nitrates and phosphates low.
If you happen to live in a country where human growth hormone is legal to buy/possess that will speed up SPS growth when used appropriately.

Sorry if that's sort of general/broad but your question was pretty broad too.

 

well to narrow it a little i have mostly lps... i spot feed fish roe and mysis all the time.

the redfield ratio is perfect conditions for nature but just wondering if there was a little something "better" to make corals grow faster than nature's conditions

 

you must have some cool frags that you wanna see huge.

Id say just take care of em with top quality conditions....lighting, good water flow, feed, and water chemistry.

I did poke around in some zeovit info...... Zeovit is supposed to be some high end additives for all types of corals.

 

hmm i wouldnt necessarily say that... but a few months ago i did have some outrageous growth on my frogspawn and favia, then they both just kinda slowed down :/

 

You can raise your Balanced elements (CA, Alk, MG) switch to 6500K Lights with higher PAR. But you run the risk of burning the corals. Forcing faster growth has you sitting on a fine line between growth and death. Also 6500K usually results in poorer colour

J

 

I actually just finished a cycle of Marc Weiss SPS Grow, he also has a soft coral grow. It says it works by nurishing the natural algae in the coral. It does work I did a 4 week cycle of it and saw noticeable results. You don't need to cycle it, but I noticed that my cyno problem was coming back a little, so I stopped dosing it for a few weeks. I might have been dosing too much. Also, if you use 10,000K bulbs, you should get faster growth.

 

Wow, you have been researching. I'm impressed. Karma to you.

I did want to clarify something for you. The Redfield Ratio was just a starting point and it applies to phytoplankton. There are ratios for other organisms and they won't necessarily be the same. In fact, some things have other limiting factors. It's also very important to understand that you can't lump all corals together as a group as an acropora is going to have different needs than a zoanthid.