Help: SPS bleaching and STN

Originally Posted by gregzz4

Besides Myka's good thoughts, I'll add my similar issues from the last few months (or maybe a bit longer)

It sounds like you may be having similar issues to mine and your tank is 'too' clean. I found out our corals need food, or they will bleach

My corals were bleaching pretty badly
I had zero nitrates and phosphates, so some fellow reefers helped me out
Our thoughts are that I wasn't feeding my fish enough, and not feeding my corals, so the corals expelled their zooxanthellae. Once the zoox are gone, there's nothing to protect the corals from my 8x54w light, so bleach away

I turned off half my lights, started feeding the fish double-time, and also started using coral frenzy, phyto plan and coral vitalizer
A couple of weeks and the corals were coming back
Now all are looking much better, and I'm getting the new algae under control
I've also started playing with my lights to get a happy medium between the corals and our viewing times

I see your lights are a total of 15 hours for 3 pairs
I knocked mine down from 27 hours for 4 pairs, to 19 hours for 2 pairs for a couple months. This worked very well for me and I don't think your lights are on too much

I'm currently running a total of (I think) 20 hours total with 4 pairs and all is looking good. It's been many months since I started making changes, so don't expect a quick fix

Thanks Greg. I'll set the timers to turn the lights on for another 30 minutes this week and perhaps bump it up to a total of 6 hours next week. Dependent on how things go that is.

Originally Posted by gregzz4

I also see you wash your socks daily. Do they plug up this fast, or are you just cleaning them 'cause ? I wash mine once a week. Maybe you're removing more nutrients here than you need to

They plug up every 8 hours. I find that I need to clean it once in the morning and then at night. Depending on how often I turkey baster blast the live rock, it could gunk up every 6 hours.

Originally Posted by gregzz4

And you run your skimmer very wet. Maybe it's of no consequence, but I run mine dry and only remove a few hundred ml/week, and the nog is very dark

Hope this helps some

I have the stupid Bubble Magus skimmer open all the way and the water level is overflowing. I'll try lowering the water level in the sump to less than 9" to see if that helps a difference. It's a HOB protein skimmer that I adapted to use a in sump.

[gregzz4]

Originally Posted by ChizerBunoi

and perhaps bump it up to a total of 6 hours next week

I didn't mean for you to boost your lighting at this point. I'm just pointing out that it's not as extreme as mine was. I'd suggest you leave it be for now, or even turn them down a bit until things recover
Then slowly, and I mean over weeks, turn them back up to where you want them. All the while watch for new signs of bleaching/color changes etc

Originally Posted by ChizerBunoi

They plug up every 8 hours

Are they poly, or felt ? I had the poly ones and had the same problem as you
Since I've switched to felt they last longer than I need before washing

Originally Posted by ChizerBunoi

I'll try lowering the water level in the sump to less than 9" to see if that helps

Perhaps you could find a way to lift the skimmer a bit, rather than remove water from the sump ? Either way, sounds like you get the idea