How old of a tank for SPS?

How old should your tank be before you venture into the SPS world? My tank is 8 months old, 2 months of cycling and 6 with fish and soft corals.

 

There's never a set amount of time for introducing anything really. No guideline that says "at 1 year, the tank is ready for SPS, at 1.5 years its ready for nems...etc etc"

IMO once you feel you've gotten the gist of how YOUR tank runs, ie when water changes are necessary, how to keep parameters stable, etc, then I'd say you're ready for some basic SPS, try a montipora or seriatopa frag, some of the the more forgiving SPS frags. HTH

 

I agree. Once you have a handle on keeping things stable, you're good to go.

 

You want to have the most stable environment you can for sps. They can be forgiving but are less forgiving than soft coral. You want temperature swings at a minimum and keeping consistent levels.

 

Agree with the rest-- stability is more important than age.

Equally important however, what are your parameters (including nitrate and phosphate), what type lighting and how much flow do you have? Inadequate light or water movement, insufficient cal, mag, and alk levels, or excess nutrients will have a major impact on color, growth, or even the survivability of SPS corals. Soft corals tend to be far more forgiving in those areas.

 

Temp is a steady 79F. My parameters are all good. phosphate is at 0. I do water changes with treated tap water so I run a phosphate absorption media.
I have the razor 1600K programmable LEDs at 50% and 1400gph flow divided between 2 powerheads at opposite ends of the 55g tank.
Never checked for cal, mag, and alk levels because I've never had the need. Guess I'll have to start
The only thing that is wrong is some stubborn brown algae on the sand won't go away. I'm thinking of an additional small powerhead to increase flow in the area.

 

With past tanks I had increased success adding sps when the coralline growth to rocks and walls started to take off. Also if you can keep LPS you should be fine.

And yup you got to start testing.

 

coralline is spotty, but seems to be increasing steadily.

 

I would not recommend adding sps corals until you get a ro/di filter, or find a reliable outlet to buy ro/di, or at the very least, distilled water. Tap water can contain a plethora of contaminants aside from nitrates and phosphates for which we can't even test. Do you know the TDS level of your water?

Also, 1400gph is only 25x. You'll need 50x flow or higher for most sps.

 

+1,000,000. Couldn't agree more with the tap water issue.

As for flow, I personally have about 100X (99.779) turnover, 50X is good, but I'd shoot for 75X or so, trying to make the flow itself as random as possible.