Heartbreak hotel

[Salmon King]

I have ventured into a few sps .Some do good/some turn brown some die.Asked Jaws about this and said luck of the draw so I dont think it is anything you do.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

A few potential causes (I fought off sleep and read through several gargantuan threads on RC!):

1) High (organic) phosphates?
2) New house, new area, new water source/water treatment plant? Some use Chloramine?
3) Salt mix. Did you switch salt mixes? I just read that some salt brands are using many times the natural amount of Borate in order to keep the mix in solution. As I understood/read it, high levels of Borate skew test readings for Alkalinity (ie. the true dKH will be much lower).

[spikehs]

Try adding some poly-filter... supposed to absorb a wide variety of stuff. Might help...

[Delphinus]

The water thought occured to me too. But wouldn't RO/DI deal with chloramine if it was present?

Interesting about the borate/alkalinity connection .. hmmmm, will have to do some reading on that one. I'm right now using a bucket of Kent, was using IO before that. I've sort of bounced between IO and Kent over the years.

I have run carbon off and on. When I do run it, I have a small amount in a Phosban reactor and try to change it out every week or two. Also, same with the Phosban, I do have some on right now. I'm not sure how to tell when it's time to change it out. People say they change it out when their phosphate levels start going up, I have yet to detect an upward trend when I test PO4. I'm never sure if this means PO4 is OK, or just if my test methods are inadequate. Maybe it's time to buck up and pay a lab to do a chemical workup, if for no other reason than I can maybe express some confidence in the #'s I do come up with.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

The water thought occured to me too. But wouldn't RO/DI deal with chloramine if it was present?

It should deal with it.....but how old are your filters? And what type of carbon filter do you have on there? I've read about the difference between catalytic carbon vs. granular activated carbon (the former being better for chloramine removal).

Just some thoughts....maybe it's your RO/DI filters?

[marie]

Are you sure its not allelopathy (sp?).With so many people having trouble growing sps I think chemical warfare is a bigger problem then people realize.
In my old 75g tank, I put a cabbage leather into the tank, within a few hours my turbinara closed up and stayed that way for 4 days no matter where in the tank I put it. After doing a large water change and running carbon with no success I removed the leather and the next morning the polyps were all back out on the cup coral. Too big of a coincidence to not blame the cabbage leather.

We tell beginners to start with the easy soft corals before moving on to sps. I wonder how many fail at having an sps tank of their dreams because of our advice. Maybe we should be telling them if they are planning on having an sps tank, to start with montipora.

[Jason McK]

That's exactly what I was thinking Marie.

I know when I started with SPS I still had a cabbage coral and a toadstool Leather. I could not get any SPS to survive in my tank. I finally removed and softies and boom success.

J

[digital-audiophile]

I'm no expert, not even close, but it really blows my mind that you can keep some really nice clams happy and healthy but you have problems with SPS. Is that little cube you have with the carpets plumbed into the same tank?

[Delphinus]

Hi Greg, it is plumbed together.

This coral in particular though went into my ritteri tank which isn't plumbed into that system. But there's enough transfer back and forth (feeding, or moving a coral over from one tank to another) that if it was, say a pathogen such as a protozoa or a bacteria that it couldn't just hitchhike over and "infect" the other tank. (I hope I'm way off base on this theory though.)