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asylumdown
02-10-2014, 09:52 PM
Most of my SPS is doing stellar, but I've got a couple of pieces that have shut down growth over the past couple of months, and I noticed today that a couple of them have what appears to be burnt tips.

Parameters:
Calcium - between 390-400ppm
alk - 8.3
mag - 1400

No idea oh phosphate and nitrate. I run pellets and GFO, and the tests always come out 0.

I dealt with a bout of cyano a while back and dosed with chemo-clean, after that I got SUPER aggressive with GFO changes and started dosing MB7. The bacterial production in my BP reactor basically fried it (as detailed in another thread so I won't rehash it here), and I've now got the modified reactor chugging away, but there was a window of about a week where there were no biopellets, and it's efficiency was all over the place from December until a couple of weeks ago.

would fluctuating nutrient levels cause burnt tips on some species? Or assuming my nutrients have just been driven way down low again with the reactor finally working properly, would an alk of 8.3 be high enough to cause tip burning?

LoJack
02-10-2014, 09:56 PM
Burnt tips is almost always alkalinity fluctuation.

Going aggressive with GFO is almost certainly to blame. GFO can have a temporary affect on Alkalinity where it lowers it. There is actually a pretty current thread in the SPS forum of ReefCentral right now that discusses it.

That drop of usually almost 2 dKh, negatively affects SPS. It is recommended to slowly increase the amount of GFO due to the fact that it can strip water so fast of nutrients, which has a negative impact on your corals.

Myka
02-10-2014, 10:24 PM
Ditto what Jack said, that's exactly what I was thinking as I read through your description.

Sent from my Dungeon using mad Ninja Skillz.

asylumdown
02-11-2014, 05:20 AM
Hmmm, I also just switched GFO brands. So once it's happened, what's the best way to arrest the damage? Snip the burnt tips?

asylumdown
02-11-2014, 05:23 AM
Also I'm losing faith in my Hannah checker for alk. It keeps telling me I'm over 8, but if you guys think this is low alk, then do I have a testing problem, or are those GFO related issues super temporary? I've never tested it immediately after changing GFO, I always test before I drain for a water change (and thus before I change GFO) so I can get a sense of where my tank is at after 7-10 days of no human intervention.

LoJack
02-11-2014, 05:32 AM
It has a temporary effect, so depending on when you test, it could definitely be back to normal. Its not low alk that causes the issue, its a rapid fluctuation in alkalinity that the corals have a hard time adapting to.

I personally would snip the burnt tips, I find this to be a faster solution than waiting for the coral to recover and then regrow its tips. I find that freshly cut tips tend to grow fairly quickly.

I also do not like the Hanna checkers. I have phosphate, alkalinity, and calcium but I only use the phosphate tester anymore. I found the others unreliable and had huge fluctuations testing the same water 2 or 3 different times.

I have since switched to ELOS kits and doubt I'll ever use anything else again … so much easier, and I find the results consistent

neoh
02-11-2014, 07:01 AM
enlightening! I didn't know GFO made significant alk swings. This is good to know. Whenever I see my corals acting up, I'll turn my GFO off for a few days. That would be 'splainin it!

Hope it works out for the best, asylum.

Proteus
02-11-2014, 11:59 AM
Overdose of potassium can look like burnt tips

iceman86
02-11-2014, 12:24 PM
If your running an ulns keep the alk between 7-8 and as stable as possible. I keep mine at 7.5 so it can still move up or down and be fine. I get burnt tips on anything over 8. I recently ran into the same problem not knowing about the gfo lowering your alk and got rtn overnight and then slowly continued for a week.

Myka
02-11-2014, 01:49 PM
Also I'm losing faith in my Hannah checker for alk. It keeps telling me I'm over 8, but if you guys think this is low alk, then do I have a testing problem, or are those GFO related issues super temporary? I've never tested it immediately after changing GFO, I always test before I drain for a water change (and thus before I change GFO) so I can get a sense of where my tank is at after 7-10 days of no human intervention.

Start doing some checking a few hours after changing GFO, a few hours after doing a water change, just before a waterchange, etc. These are good numbers to know about.

As Jack said, it's the fluctuation in alkalinity, not the actual number. Although alkalinity over 8 dKH combined with biopellets can also cause burned tips, RTN, and STN. With biopellets and any other form of carbon dosing (whether you've achieved ULNS or not) you should keep alkalinity between 7-8 dKH if you're keeping SPS.

Reef Pilot
02-11-2014, 02:39 PM
Which acros did you get burnt tips on? I haven't had that with alk swings, but have seen that for two other reasons. And it only affected "skinny" acros, like birdsnest, red dragons, and some others.

One is lighting, if acros were moved to an area where the light was too bright too quickly, tips were bleached. Moving them down, or to a partially shaded area solved that.

And the other is leaving them out of the water too long. My frag rack is out of the water during water changes, and if I leave it too long without bathing them occasionally, the tips can be burnt (birdsnest are most vulnerable to this). Also, has happened when I left them on the table too long while fragging. Clipping off the tips helps with faster regrowth.

I run bio pellets, and my alk runs between 7 and 9, most of the time. Fluctuations happen due to doser adjustments and sometimes water changes. Have hit 10 a few times, but mostly it is around 8. SPS is doing very well. The only time (last summer, and fall) that my SPS got hit, is when my phosphates got too high (when I combined sumps). But that again only affected some of them (like the more delicate deepwaters), with slower growth and some color loss. Once the phosphates were down, growth and color returned.

asylumdown
02-14-2014, 10:17 PM
Ugh, well I cut way way back on my dosing of alk but the problem has continued. and today my alk measured by hanna is 8.96 and my alk measured by red sea is 9.2. I'm afraid that this has caused my corals to shut down and now even a reduced amount of dosing is causing the levels to creep up.

Reef pilot - the affected corals haven't been moved in 1-2 years and I've been running the same lights since I set up the tank.

It's affected about 60% of my acros at this point, a few of my montis, and I have another colony of SPS that looks like an Acro but I think is in a different genus that is one of my largest pieces that I think I'm going to lose completely. Mostly it's just the tips, but it's also causing the tissue around the polyp cups on a few species to swell, making them look like they're smooth. I'm afraid I might start losing entire colonies.

The other thing I've noticed since I fixed my BP reactor (which is still a PITA for maintenance BTW) and switched to the high capacity GFO is that I'm no longer getting any film algae on my glass and the light dusting of dinos that's waxed and waned on my sand bed for well over a year has completely and totally disappeared. My sand is as white as the day I put it in again.

Can damage this severe alone be caused by alk over 8 in a low nutrient, BP run tank, or could a sudden and precipitous drop in nutrients by itself have caused these issues?

I'm not sure what else to do now. I don't want to do a water change because the salt I'm using at the moment mixes up to around 9dKH, and I'm afraid to cause any more sudden shocks by taking either the GFO or the BP offline. Other than cutting the amount of bicarbonate I dose back even further, is there anything else I should do?