Growing out corals.
 

I'm pulling my hair out. Bought frags & they are starting to die off/turning brown & I don't know why. ALK 8.5 CAL 430 MAG 1300 PH 8.0 phos .2

I'm using LED which I slowly ramped up to 80% but it's not bleaching them the coral are turning brown. Any thoughts?


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Detectable phosphate is too much phosphate and will certainly effect the colour and health of your coral.

Here is a little light reading:
Phosphate and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes Farley
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-09/rhf/index.php

Are you changing your Ro filters. How old is the membrane how old and what type of carbon blocks are you using. What kind of water does your city use. you might have added chlorine to the system.
What are you checking your salinity with
something clearly happened

So many variables.

What kind of frags?

Could be a million reasons. Need way more information. Like how long has the tank been setup. how long you have had the corals, what are the corals, , what is the temperature, what are the nitrates (0 nitrates can cause loss of colour), what else is in the tank ( corals) what are their colours like etc.

Often it is just the stress of cutting a frag and moving to a completely new tank will cause a coral to go brown. The good news is fix the problem and the colour will come back. If the problem is just stress sometimes it takes 6 months to a year for a coral to recover. Higher end corals are more temperamental which is why they are higher priced.

You mentioned phosphate but not nitrates. Its sounds to me an excess nutrient thing possibly? But like they said it could be many things. You mentioned ramping leds but where did you get the corals and how was their water and light in comparison to yours?

I would guess that it's the LEDs.Or it's your phosphate or it's your frags miss the ocean. My vote is they miss the Ocean.

Ok so I'm running a RODI unit and my TDS is 0, my refractometer has been checked & accurate. A fellow member & new friend reached out to me a suggested that I use a turkey baster to blast the corals to see if the film would blow off. To my surprise most of it did. It blew off as a dust cloud not as a sheet of algae.

So yesterday my phos was 2.0 after adding 250ml of gfo it went down to .13/.14 & watching closely to make sure it doesn't drop to rapid. I'm not going to feed for a couple of days & reduce my HYDRAS to 50% @ 20k.

Any other suggestions. I just did a 30% water change a couple of days ago.



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I'm assuming your phosphate is .2 not 2.0
If it were 2.0 then thats your answer to the browning. That would confirm my estimate that your nutrients were too high. But lets assume they were .2 which is not horrible by any stretch.
I dont know what size your tank is so i cant say if 250ml of gfo is too much but you gotta kinda watch that. Extreme quick changes can cause even more trouble.
As far as your leds, i dont think you'd need to turn them down. If you had too much light to what they were used to, they would likely bleach. Try to inspect the corals for any signs of bugs or pests just as a general precaution, but browning is usually nutrients related, not too much light.
By the way, what test kits are you using and are they fresh? ( Not expired )

How much flow do you have?

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or in this case a hundred forum questions/posts.