Approaching total coral wipe-out

[Spyd]

Time to go old school and keep things simple as you try to get through this. Take the pellets off line completely. Run carbon and do plenty of water changes.

The ALK spike can definitely hit corals hard. Really watch your levels in the mean time. I would check for ammonia as well. When things rapidly die off nitrates and ammonia can spike. Only way to fix these levels are through large water changes.

[asylumdown]

Thanks for the responses guys.

Since I posted the last message I've pulled 4, 19 hours work days trying to get a paper finished and ready for publication, and I'm giving a talk at a conference on Friday, so my tank has had to sit there slowly dying while I try to attend to the busiest time in my life so far. Murphy's law I suppose. 6 months ago I had all the time in the world to deal with something like this.

My phosphate levels were 0.06ppm last time I measured as checked by the hanna ULR test, which was last Tuesday.

The other thing that I did shortly before this carnage began was switch salt brands to a cheaper option. I started using the fluval brand of reef salt because it was $25 cheaper.

One of the things that I've been terrified of is that I'm not 100% confident on my alk readings. Many a moon ago when I had my first tank and I knew nothing about reef chemistry, I was stupidly using seachem reef buffer without understanding what the product was or what it really did. At the time I kept getting 'normal' alk readings for a high nutrient tank of around 9, and I dosed accordingly. What I didn't realize was that 'reef buffer' is a borate salt, which contributes to total alkalinity, but is effectively useless from a coral's point of view. I had similar SPS problems then, and when I bought the Seachem test kit that allowed you to test for borate alk vs. total alk, I discovered that my carbonate alk (the only alk corals care about) was 4.5.

As far as I know, seachem doesn't make that test kit anymore. Part of me has been wondering if the fluval brand of salt has a high percentage of borate salts in it, which has been making me think my alk is normal, as the only test kits I have access to now test total alkalinity.

I went back to H2Ocean because I figure it's one less variable.

Myka - as to your question, it's not sliming, it's burnt tips one day (as in I wake up and all the tissue on the growth tips is just gone), then over the following days, more and more tissue just sloughs off. My worst hit coral now has one piece of one branch left living, the rest of the previously dinner plate sized colony is a white skeleton, with cyano starting to take hold in places. In one case a coral that never even had burnt tips looked fine, with normal polyp extension one day, then the next day literally half it's tissue was hanging off it in sheets. Other corals that have a different colour growth tip from the main body have turned monochromatic over the course of a couple of weeks, and once the whole piece is exhibiting zero signs of growth, the tissue closest to the tips starts to slough off.

Water is clear, fish are fine, snails and crabs are fine.

What I'm considering doing is taking every piece of equipment except the skimmer and water pumps offline and doing a 100% water change using H2Ocean salt. The other thing that's making me think there's some sort of contaminant in this tank (or disastrously lower alk levels than what my test kits are showing me) is that I have a 4 gallon pico tank. It has been doing fantastic with 100% water changes, but I've been using my display tank water as it's water change water. Shortly before I went out of town, as a test, I did a 'normal' 100% water change on the pico using my display tank water. 9 days later every single coral in that tank is exhibiting serious tissue recession, I'm going to lose one acan frag for sure, and probably a medium sized open brain. There's prolific brown 'slime algae' (the kind your snails would normally eat, but the mantis shrimp that tank was set up for eats all the snails) growing, so I know it's not a nutrient problem.

Ugh. The worst. I didn't even have time to type this reply.

Does anyone in calgary have rubber maid bins totalling 300 gallons that I can borrow? I don't have that much water holding capacity and I'd like to have all the new water mixed in advance.

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

One of the things that I've been terrified of is that I'm not 100% confident on my alk readings. Many a moon ago when I had my first tank and I knew nothing about reef chemistry, I was stupidly using seachem reef buffer without understanding what the product was or what it really did. At the time I kept getting 'normal' alk readings for a high nutrient tank of around 9, and I dosed accordingly. What I didn't realize was that 'reef buffer' is a borate salt, which contributes to total alkalinity, but is effectively useless from a coral's point of view. I had similar SPS problems then, and when I bought the Seachem test kit that allowed you to test for borate alk vs. total alk, I discovered that my carbonate alk (the only alk corals care about) was 4.5.

As far as I know, seachem doesn't make that test kit anymore. Part of me has been wondering if the fluval brand of salt has a high percentage of borate salts in it, which has been making me think my alk is normal, as the only test kits I have access to now test total alkalinity.

With all your chemical mixing and dosing, are you sure you are ending up with the correct ionic balances?

Also, your comments re Seachem Reef Buffer are a surprise to me! I have been using that all along for my alk dosing, and the Seachem Advantage Calcium. My only complaints have been they are expensive and am looking for a replacement. But my SPS growth and colour couldn't be better.

Seachem also has/had Marine Buffer and Reef Builder, which I don't use.

And I just use Instant Ocean salt. Cheap, and seems to work well for me. I did use H2Ocean salt a long time ago (before I had SPS), but didn't like the expense.

From what you've said so far, can't say what your problem might be. Sounds almost like they are being poisoned by something. So would certainly confirm all your chemical parameters.

[Reef Pilot]

Also, what brand carbon are you using? I remember people having corals dying a year or two ago, because of some impurities that got into the supply. I think Kent carbon was one example, with copper.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

My phosphate levels were 0.06ppm last time I measured as checked by the hanna ULR test, which was last Tuesday.

I want to drill a little into this. I can't remember if you mentioned this already, so if you did sorry for asking again, but ... apart from the readings, what are you doing for PO4 control? Are you using GFO, if so, how much, and how often are you changing it out?

The reason I ask is that I use the same Hanna tester for PO4. The tested results always show nominal values for PO4 in the end (the Hanna ULR tester reports in ppb of P, to convert to PO4 you have to divide the reading by 1000 and then multiply by 3.0666) but even so, I notice problems with SPS when I let my GFO get too old.

As far as PO4 goes, I am absolutely convinced of 2 things:
1) Most SPS problems we see and especially those that we can't easily rationalize away to something else .... are usually PO4 related.
2) Testing for PO4 is just something we do to make ourselves busy but the results are meaningless. You might as well dip your finger in the tank, taste it, then emphatically state the first random number that comes to your mind. (It's important that you state it emphatically, otherwise you have to do the test again.)

It might not be THAT bad but OTOH, I think it's closer to the truth than we'd care to admit. I think it's getting into the territory of inorganic phosphate versus organic phosphate and how our test kits and testers can only give you readings of one of those (I forget which), but the SPS are inhibited by the one we can't test (we just hope that if we test for one, that the other is going to be reasonably close).

I notice a definite correlation in how well my corals are doing if I change out my GFO every week, versus at slower change out intervals. Unfortunately the cost of GFO and especially at my tank size (280g) it is quite cost prohibitive to be changing it out every week, so this is something I tend to get an "opportunity" to observe repeatedly. If I get all gung-ho and change it out every week, my SPS grows well. If I don't then .. not only do they not grow well, many will recede or let go altogether. It can be as little as letting it go one or two extra weeks between changing out my GFO.

And yet, the Hanna tester will repeatedly tell me that PO4 is not a concern because it will be 0.02 or something so low that it's in the "it can't be PO4 that is the problem" category. But like I said, I'm convinced that it probably is to blame for a large majority of otherwise-unexplainable SPS problems seen in the hobby.

[kien]

Sorry to hear of your issues Adam. I feel for ya. Been there, done that, got the (wet) t-shirt, a couple of times over even. Other than another shoulder to cry on, I don't have much more to offer that hasn't already been mentioned.

At the end of the day, we are all trying to recreate a very very very very (did I mention very?) delicate natural balance that even Mother Nature herself struggles with at times.