LPS corals receding

[gmann]

so ive noticed that a couple of my scolies have started to recede (some more than others) and pretty much all my euphyllia are now dead. i have increased gyre output from 40% to about 50-60% to combat algea, which i assume is why my euphyllia are now done, but i dont get why the scolies are dying.

Here are my paramters. I have noticed that they have risen since i switched from AF reef salt to Salinity.

Salinity: 37ppt
Cal: 440 - salifert
KH: 8.8 - salifert
nitrate:0 - api
phos: 0.04 - hanna
water changes: every 4 weeks, about 60 gallons (25%) using Canadian Springs bottles

based on web searches, all seem to be fine except my phos, but even when i had a phos reading of 0, i still had algea issues, so im not quite sure what im to do anymore.

i've been dosing phosdown every 2 days to combat the algea issue. zeobak 12 drops every wed & sat, and upped my skimmer to fill up every 2-3 days. I don't dose any alk or ca and my parameters stay steady. Feeding has been cut back to once per day.

Is there somthing i am missing or not doing that is causing this?

[Myka]

Po4 at 0.04 ppm is great. Po4 at 0.00 ppm is not good. If you had more it rate in your tank you'd probably be able to keep PO4 down without the PhosDown.

What do you have for clean up crew? What type of lights and what is the light schedule?

When you do a waterchange do you clean off the rocks with a baster and vacuum the sand or do you just take water ot and out water back in?

[gmann]

"If you had more it rate in your tank you'd probably be able to keep PO4 down without the PhosDown."
- more what?

"What do you have for clean up crew? What type of lights and what is the light schedule?"
- CUC: couple of trochus snails, there should be some nassarius in there, and 4-5 zebra hermits
- lights: 3 x kessil 360, running from 2pm to 9pm
- supplement with 2 x t5 (coral plus & blue plus) from 4pm-8pm

"When you do a waterchange do you clean off the rocks with a baster and vacuum the sand or do you just take water ot and out water back in?"
-vacuum gravel yes, basting rocks, not so much

[adam84]

Maybe something in the water, I would make the switch to ro/di if possible.

[warriorcookie]

"If you had more it rate in your tank you'd probably be able to keep PO4 down without the PhosDown."
- more what?


"When you do a waterchange do you clean off the rocks with a baster and vacuum the sand or do you just take water ot and out water back in?"
-vacuum gravel yes, basting rocks, not so much

If you had more NO3 you're PO4 will come down.

Myka's advice was meant as "Po4 at 0.04 ppm is great. NO3 at 0.00 ppm is not good." She typo'd.

You're bacteria is NO3 limited right now. Get your NO3 up and PO4 will come down. Carbon dosing helps.

Also, blow off your rocks before you do a water change every time. :thumb:

[Wheelman76]

Salinity is pretty high at 1.028 , I would buy a Salifert nitrate test to get a better idea where it's at for sure. If the nitrates are truly 0 then your LPS are not going to be happy , and as someone already mentioned will make your tank no3 limited and not allow bacteria to consume po4.

I also agree with investing in an rodi system. How often does the film algae regrow on the glass after cleaning ?

[Ryan7]

If you had more NO3 you're PO4 will come down.

Myka's advice was meant as "Po4 at 0.04 ppm is great. NO3 at 0.00 ppm is not good." She typo'd.

You're bacteria is NO3 limited right now. Get your NO3 up and PO4 will come down. Carbon dosing helps.

Also, blow off your rocks before you do a water change every time. :thumb:

Look up redfields ratio, but based off your parameters i dont think that is your issue..

It would be unusual for for cal and alk to "stay steady" without dosing and and doing water changes every 4 weeks... but if your levels are acurrate and stay steady i would think it may be some contaminant..

[Ryan7]

Are you filling 12 canadian springs bottles to do water changes?

How do you get your water?

[Myka]

more what?

Sorry, more nitrate...auto correct typo. Get a better NO3 kit to conform your testing - I like Salifert or Red Sea Pro.

CUC: couple of trochus snails, there should be some nassarius in there, and 4-5 zebra hermits
- lights: 3 x kessil 360, running from 2pm to 9pm
- supplement with 2 x t5 (coral plus & blue plus) from 4pm-8pm

Lighting looks fine. Your CUC is sadly lacking. I'm betting if you added a bunch of CUC the algae would get eaten and not come back as long as the CUC is alive still.

You said 60 gallons is about 25% wc, so your tank is probably a 180 or 230 depending on sump?? If so, I'd suggest 10 Trochus (15 if they are small) and 20 Scarlet Hermits (not other types) to start. See where that gets you - you may need quite a bit more.

vacuum gravel yes, basting rocks, not so much

Basting is one of the best ways to help combat an algae problem.

I missed that 37 ppt...that's walking the edge of safety and if your calibration is off this could easily become 30 ppt which could cerainly kill your corals on its own. Natural seawater is typically 35 ppt and there is no reason to aim for any other number in a reef tank. Make sure you calibrate with a SEAWATER calibration solution (not sodium chloride solution, not ro water).

[gmann]

If you had more NO3 you're PO4 will come down.

Myka's advice was meant as "Po4 at 0.04 ppm is great. NO3 at 0.00 ppm is not good." She typo'd.

You're bacteria is NO3 limited right now. Get your NO3 up and PO4 will come down. Carbon dosing helps.

Also, blow off your rocks before you do a water change every time. :thumb:

gotcha. I picked up a bottle of NO3PO4 so will start dosing that this week. thanks

[gmann]

Salinity is pretty high at 1.028 , I would buy a Salifert nitrate test to get a better idea where it's at for sure. If the nitrates are truly 0 then your LPS are not going to be happy , and as someone already mentioned will make your tank no3 limited and not allow bacteria to consume po4.

I also agree with investing in an rodi system. How often does the film algae regrow on the glass after cleaning ?

I had one Jess, but it took forever to get to the level of water I needed so I decided to just start buying 5 gallon cdn spring jugs. Glass gets dirty ever 4 days or so.

[gmann]

Are you filling 12 canadian springs bottles to do water changes?

How do you get your water?

They deliver once a month, but for my weekly top offs I pick up from this place in steveston or a crappy tire. I eventually plan to switch over to the steveston shop for my monthly water changes also.

[gmann]

Sorry, more nitrate...auto correct typo. Get a better NO3 kit to conform your testing - I like Salifert or Red Sea Pro.



Lighting looks fine. Your CUC is sadly lacking. I'm betting if you added a bunch of CUC the algae would get eaten and not come back as long as the CUC is alive still.

You said 60 gallons is about 25% wc, so your tank is probably a 180 or 230 depending on sump?? If so, I'd suggest 10 Trochus (15 if they are small) and 20 Scarlet Hermits (not other types) to start. See where that gets you - you may need quite a bit more.



Basting is one of the best ways to help combat an algae problem.

I missed that 37 ppt...that's walking the edge of safety and if your calibration is off this could easily become 30 ppt which could cerainly kill your corals on its own. Natural seawater is typically 35 ppt and there is no reason to aim for any other number in a reef tank. Make sure you calibrate with a SEAWATER calibration solution (not sodium chloride solution, not ro water).

I already calibrate with solution, so I believe it is pretty accurate. as for the clean up crew, I will grab more along with a new test kit this week. Thanks for your feedback.

[dino]

I used to use the spring water until I started to measure the tds in it and would sometimes get 15-25 tds so I switched to r.o and never looked back. cleared up a lot of algae issues and corals are happier

[H2o2]

Just a thought stray voltage

[Animal-Chin]

Personally I'd stop dosing foz down or any other chemical that you're using that isn't just the basic alk, cal and mg. I find if I use any "reef safe" treatment for anything I'm gonna loose a coral or two.

Are your Scoly's under direct light? maybe shade them a bit.

I'd suggest a big water change or two but I know thats hard with your volume of water especially if you aren't making RODI at home. Still when things go buggy I like a couple of big water changes to remove anything that may be in your water.


Are all your other coral totally fine? What else do you have? Do you have a lot of coral and its just a couple that are going bad but everything else is fine?

[gmann]

Personally I'd stop dosing foz down or any other chemical that you're using that isn't just the basic alk, cal and mg. I find if I use any "reef safe" treatment for anything I'm gonna loose a coral or two.

Are your Scoly's under direct light? maybe shade them a bit.

I'd suggest a big water change or two but I know thats hard with your volume of water especially if you aren't making RODI at home. Still when things go buggy I like a couple of big water changes to remove anything that may be in your water.


Are all your other coral totally fine? What else do you have? Do you have a lot of coral and its just a couple that are going bad but everything else is fine?

I just did a 90g water change last month due to a cyano outbreak. I have scheduled a WC this week as the cyano is back and I am about to put in chemiclean.

As for my other corals, zoas, doughnuts, and acans are fine, as are some of my scolies.

as for adding stuff, I am going to stop dosing zeobak and fozdown going forward, and try this carbon dosing that some others have suggested. although I still plan on using prodibio bio digest every 2 weeks.

[gmann]

thanks again everyone for your feedback. really appreciate your advice and tips.

[Animal-Chin]

Just remember that stopping 2 things, starting up a major thing and also adding chemiclean is a lot on your system. Coral hate that...lol

Chemi clean tells you to turn off your skimmer for 2 days, don't do it! just take the collection cup off and let the skimmer just overflow back into the tank. Cutting off the skimmer really reduces the oxygen in your water. This will make your fish and coral very unhappy......trust me......been there....

If your nitrates are already reading 0 why start carbon dosing? When I started using NOPOX as a carbon source my tank went a little wonky and I lost a couple of big sps colonies.

Oh and carbon dosing usually ends up in a cyano bloom when you first start out, a lot of people report this. I had it happen.

I really like bio pellets. They start off slow and sort of gradually ramp up giving your system time to adjust then you just forget about it and re fill the reactor when needed. Pretty stable way of carbon dosing IMO. My nitrates were at 80 when I started and now they are down to 5 but it took 3 months. Nice and slow.

Just some stuff to think about. I can't tell you how many tank crash stories I've heard from reefers trying to quickly fix an issue with dosing or adding chemicals.

Lastly, if you're worried about your scoly's, feel free to give them to me. I'll take them!!! lol ;)

[gmann]

[QUOTE=Animal-Chin;1001760]
If your nitrates are already reading 0 why start carbon dosing? When I started using NOPOX as a carbon source my tank went a little wonky and I lost a couple of big sps colonies.
QUOTE]

im not sure tbh, ive been trying to research this topic all morning at work. it seems to me that nopox will reduce my nitrates, but I need the opposite it seems, and need to introduce nitrates into my system

[warriorcookie]

[QUOTE=Animal-Chin;1001760]
If your nitrates are already reading 0 why start carbon dosing? When I started using NOPOX as a carbon source my tank went a little wonky and I lost a couple of big sps colonies.
QUOTE]

im not sure tbh, ive been trying to research this topic all morning at work. it seems to me that nopox will reduce my nitrates, but I need the opposite it seems, and need to introduce nitrates into my system

I think dosing nopox is putting the cart before the horse at this point.

The bacteria you do have in the tank right now are starved for Nitrate. Dosing nopox at this point will just remove whatever trace amounts of Nitrates are left and not do much if anything to reduce phosphates. This will no doubt make your cyano issue worse.

Hold off on the chemiclean for now. Get your nitrates up first. I struggled with this and in the end dosed NaNO3. Other ways of doing it, but worked for me and has worked for others. You can feed more, feed corals more, get more fish, etc. But be careful what you do doesn't also increase phosphates.

After your nitrates come up, then slowly introduce nopox.

[Myka]

I already calibrate with solution, so I believe it is pretty accurate. as for the clean up crew, I will grab more along with a new test kit this week. Thanks for your feedback.

You're welcome. :)

Regarding the RO water, it does take a long time. The most convenient way to do it is to either tap into a line or hook it up to a laundry tub. Then have two containers - one for RO/DI and one for saltwater mixing/storage. For a tank your size, I'd recommend the RO tub be around 20 gallons, and the saltwater tub be about 60-80 gallons or more if you want to store a few waterchanges at a time. Then you tee off the output of your RO, at a float valve to each tub, and a ball valve going to each tub. Then you just open the ball valve of the tub you want to fill and let it run overnight or while you're at work and they will shut off auto-magically. :D Works great.

You can buy faster membranes too - I use a 150 GPD membrane, so I can fill up a 60 gallon tub in about 10 hours. A 75 GPD membrane would take twice as long. I got the membrane from Bulk Reef Supply, and 6 years later I'm still getting 2-3 ppm TDS out of the membrane, so they are very good quality.

[iamfrontosa]

Did you change your lights or bulbs; or altered photoperiod ? When my acans and chalices are out in the open, they either bleached or melted....

[gmann]

Did you change your lights or bulbs; or altered photoperiod ? When my acans and chalices are out in the open, they either bleached or melted....

no if anything I added back the t5's. Only thing I have been playing with is gyre location. Trying to get better flow to combat the cyano.

[gmann]

Hey all, does this make sense given my situation

plan of action:

#1 - dose chemiclean, I know someone said not to, but cyano is creeping up on my corals.

#2 - water change to remove chemi clean stuff

#3 - stop dosing fozdown & zeobak

#4 - remove filter socks, and up the feeding in hopes of raising nitrates. should I remove the hydroton too?

#5 - once I see nitrates, start dosing nopox and try and maintain a reading of 1 for nitrates.

Did I miss anything? Should I lower the amount of my monthly water changes?

[warriorcookie]

i would use chemiclean as a last resort.

if you do, suck out all the cyano first and make sure to use an airstone.

as you start increasing nitrates slowly reduce the other phosphate removal you're doing. you're looking for a balance. things are going to seesaw back and forth for a couple weeks until the bacteria catches up.

One thing at a time though. and make changes slowly.

[tang daddy]

Don't use chemiclean, it's only a band aid for an infection...not the cure.

We know why you are getting cyano, the simple answer is your tank is off balance. Kessils are strong so be aware that LEDs can burn Lps.

A few things you can do.

Remove filter socks, skim wetter, suck out as much cyano during water changes, do more frequent but smaller water changes and siphon cyano. For WC turn off return and gyre. Blast corals with a maxijet or hydro koralia to get cyano off when the cyano settles on the sand bed siphon it out. Keep repeating these steps. It's better to do. 10g wc every day than a 90g one day.

Corals like Lps need to be fed, I feed mine every other day when the lights are out. Especially scollies and other meaty corals like symphyllia, Tracy, fungia and donuts.

You can get a head mounted led and go in when lights are off to feed the Lps, just get some krill or larger mysis, shut off flow if you have to and feed 2-3 times per week. If you are feeding krill cut them into smaller pieces. Your corals will love you and after they regurgitate the food the shrimps and maybe even fish will have some food. Just make sure the Lps coral consume the food and expel before you feed more. When I fed my scollies by hand before sometimes they would keep it for a day and a half before spitting it out. Make sure they have empty stomach before feeding more as they can gut rot themselves to death. Whatever you do just take your time and do it slow. This hobby can be rewarding and sometimes a chore... after all we are trying to replicate god creation but we are not immortals more like slaves to our tanks. Anyhow try feeding and blowing the cyano and smaller wc. I bet in a months time the tank will perk back up. Also try to run your lights bluer with less white from the kessils. This will give your corals a chance to open up more and not fuel the cyano as much.

Keep us updated on how it goes!

[gmann]

We know why you are getting cyano, the simple answer is your tank is off balance. Kessils are strong so be aware that LEDs can burn Lps.

Also try to run your lights bluer with less white from the kessils. This will give your corals a chance to open up more and not fuel the cyano as much.

Keep us updated on how it goes!

Thank you for the tips. for my lights, I run max color at 60%, and max intensity at 85 for a couple of hours only. I guess i'll drop intensity down to 70-75 or so.

[iamfrontosa]

Reducing your light level is the right step, IMO.
How deep is your sand bed? If cyno keeps coming back, maybe you want to remove some sands, go bare bottom or just keep a very thin layer of it for decorative.

You don't really need to dose all those chemicals. Turn off the light for a few days while cyno is making a come back is better.

Once that's under control, hopefully LPS receding will stop.

My two cents.

[gmann]

Reducing your light level is the right step, IMO.
How deep is your sand bed? If cyno keeps coming back, maybe you want to remove some sands, go bare bottom or just keep a very thin layer of it for decorative.

You don't really need to dose all those chemicals. Turn off the light for a few days while cyno is making a come back is better.

Once that's under control, hopefully LPS receding will stop.

My two cents.

I believe my sand was at an inch to 1.5 tops. I have been removing some during water changes.

as for the lights, I did try that for 3 days, but after the water change the cyano came back.

[iamfrontosa]

I used to have cyno. Whenever i got it, my sandbed was the first to go. It was only 0.5" deep. Now that I only keep just barely enough to cover the bottom, I no longer get cyno. And I didn't have to dose anything.

Just my experience.