Jedi's Science Reef

[markalot]

Holy shit. I'm on mobile so short reply but the same damn thing with my pH! Now that I have a sloppy mix of T5 and bml strips my pH has not dropped below 8 where before I struggled to keep it above 7.8.

 

 

[jedimaster1138]

Yup. I'm not at all surprised really. Low pH = a lot of CO2. A lot of CO2 = not a lot of photosynthesis going on. (or just too much CO2, but yeah)

 

Two other things I forgot to mention:

 

You will probably see an increase in algae with the new lights. See above. More light = more fuel for hungry algae. I'm not sure what, if anything you can do about that other than mind your nutrients.

 

I meant to post my current bulb combo, back to front:

 

Blue+

Coral+

Blue+

Blue+

Coral+

Blue+

Purple+

Blue+

BML LED 2x 450nm : 1x 405nm bar

[RollaJase]

Sorry to hear about all the issues you have been having. I have been combating serious issues myself since about April. Finding it hard to keep anything alive right now.

[jedimaster1138]

Some signs of tissue recession and browning on half a dozen SPS and LPS colonies now after a few months of major improvement.

 

Joe the Coral had fully encrusted the stupid ORA plug...now I see some of the black plastic showing. A couple other small frags have a few tips showing brown algae, as does the little bit of my Forest Fire Digi that survived the last crash. Small favia frag showing the same.

 

Sure looks like alk burn...but dKH is 7.4.

 

Changed carbon, gfo, and poly pad tonight. Guess I'll change water a lot over the weekend.

 

sigh

 

I guess all I earned was 2 or 3 months of goodness.

 

/wrists

[markalot]

Sorry to hear it.

 

For everything to be suffering equally there must be something up with the water. Could it be lack of nutrients rather than too many?

[metrokat]

Low nutrients or clearer water could mean increased PAR into the tank, and could explain the burn. If alk did not spike for any reason this is the only thing I can come up with.

[jedimaster1138]

Nutrients are far from low. Nitrate is around 4 ppm or more. Phosphate is actually high, .24 on the Hanna meter. It hasn't been a problem so I didn't really care. Just a little bit of algae on the glass. I find it hard to believe that either of those are the root of SPS tissue recession though. Lack of growth and color, sure. Necrosis?

 

Salinity crept up on me, sitting around specific gravity 1.028 right now. I've been slowly bringing it down.

 

I guess there's a few things then that aren't ideal. I can see them ticking off the SPS, namely the acropora. The LPS? The montipora? I find that difficult to believe. I remain convinced as I was during the summer that there is a contaminant. I have no other explanation.

 

I'll fix what I can fix and what dies, dies. I'm over losing sleep about it. The tank is cursed.

[markalot]

Phosphates high enough can stop calcification but I think it depends on a bunch of things including Alk, Calcium, and of course Phosphate levels. There are tanks that crash when phosphates hit .2 and tanks that look great and thrive on high phosphates. We're missing a key piece of the puzzle, but when something goes bad it pays to try and bring params closer to "ideal" and see what happens.

 

IMO.

 

I think the Hanna meter is crap those reagents have been show to vary wildly from batch to batch. I would try a Salifert test and use the high res instructions to see if you get a similar or higher number. At .24 you should be getting significant daily algae on the glass.

 

/shrug

[metrokat]

Phosphate that high should show somewhere. SPS is still colorful, little algae to be seen, doesn't seem high when you look at visual clues.

Did you try cuprisorb back in the summer when the tank was crashing? Or polyfilter?

[jedimasterben]

Phosphate that high should show somewhere.

http://www.reefsmagazine.com/forum/reefs-magazine/159813-skeptical-reefkeeping-ix-test-kits-chasing-numbers-phosphate.html

 

Wish I could find the link to his discussion of that on RC.

[markalot]

http://www.reefsmagazine.com/forum/reefs-magazine/159813-skeptical-reefkeeping-ix-test-kits-chasing-numbers-phosphate.html

 

Wish I could find the link to his discussion of that on RC.

 

 

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2366953

 

I still think we are missing puzzle pieces. Mature tanks can handle high phosphate levels, younger tanks can't seem to handle it, though some do.

[jedimaster1138]

Yeah there's a bag of (new) Cuprisorb mixed with a little (new) Purigen and some (mostly new) GAC in the sump along with an old hunk of Polyfilter and as of the other day, a new hunk too.

 

I'm virtually certain it's not phosphate related anyway.

 

Insert sighing here.

[jedimaster1138]

I performed the "how much phosphate is in ESV salt mix" test last night. This has been a hot topic on the various forums recently.

 

New batch of RO/DI water, circulating for a day: PO4 = 0.00, as expected from 0 TDS water.

 

Mixed up ESV salt, as per instructions, in the above tested mixing container, with the above water. PO4 = 0.17

 

Interesting.

 

I used mix for 10g worth of saltwater, but probably used around 11g - 11.5g of water. I intentionally wanted a softer batch to combat salinity creep in my reef. So if one were to use ESV mix and go for the full 1.026 / 335 ppt, expect an even higher PO4 reading.

 

As far as I know ESV has yet to comment on this issue. I'd be interested to know what people with other brands of salt see in their mixing jugs (and before the salt is added, so as to have a control #)

 

I just ordered 160g worth of hw-MarineMix. Go Germans! Go massive BRS doorbuster sale. I'll report back next week.

[markalot]

How long did it mix. Since the meter reads loss of light a fresh mix still cloudy might give a false reading???

 

Not sure.

[jedimaster1138]

A few hours...maybe 3 or 4.

 

I can re-test it again tonight when I get home. It's been mixing since last night. I mean yeah that could be a factor, but with this already being reported by other people, I'm not exactly surprised, though I sort of am with the measurement.

[jedimaster1138]

Repeated the test .... 0.23 ppm. Weeee.

[markalot]

IMO is shows how damn inaccurate the Hanna's are.

 

Cheap salt is the best salt.

[jedimasterben]

IMO is shows how damn inaccurate the Hanna's are.

 

Cheap salt is the best salt.

#markforpresident

[jedimaster1138]

All the acropora and montipora that survived (sorta) the summer crash, recovered, and grew some, are now crashing like they did in the summer along with some new acropora that felt left out. I wonder how far this one will go.

[markalot]

Dammit man, what is going on?

[jedimaster1138]

Growth seems to have completely stopped. dKH rose to 9. It had been between 6 and 7 with the same dose so I can only surmise that things stopped absorbing it. So that's fun. PE on some colonies sucks.

 

I checked for red bugs, negative on that.

 

Oh and I have cyano on the sand and some rocks in addition to the brown algae growing on random acropora, LPS and m. digitata tips.

 

I'm going to just blame the yummy phosphate salt. I have no other clue. The new salt arrives tomorrow. I'll start changing 10g at a time as often as I can starting tomorrow night. If I can accomplish 3-4 changes a week I'll be happy.

 

My nano has cyano too, interesting. What's more interesting, I have...well had a softball sized purple stylophora colony in there that I grew out from a frag off my big tank colony. It's dumping all its flesh now. I'm going to put it in the trash tonight. Only grew it out from a 1" frag to a softball over two years.

 

The common thread between tanks is the water, and thus, the salt. It must be tainted. What else could it be? RO/DI output is 0. I changed the sediment and carbon stages the other day too.

[markalot]

I was never able to harm my purple stylo, even during my worst crashes in my 40 gallon, so I must assume something really really bad is going on. It might be time to test your RO/DI for other killers that can make it through even at 0 TDS (hobby grade meter). I know Greg, the anti refugium guy from ReefTank lost an entire tank due to something in the water that got through the RO/DI.

 

Use cheap salt, I lost track, but I would use either IO or RC right now.

 

You know I've been going through a brownout RTN/STN event due to something but as always my green slimer and purple stylo showed no adverse effects.

 

It could be the salt but I hate blaming salt, everyone blames salt from time to time. The only legitimate contamination I know of was Kent carbon a few years ago, it nuked a lot of tanks. Other issues are brass/copper contamination, copper wires in cultivated SPS frags (Veng found one), using a silicone with anti mold crap mixed in, or bad magnets (maybe) leaking bad stuff.

 

My rules (that I'm not very good at following) are to simplify the hell out of everything when things go bad. Use a salt everyone else uses, make sure the skimmer is running well, and this time around go ahead and add GFO since most use it, but make sure I'm still feeding heavily to avoid starving the corals. I'm also backing off carbon dosing (vinegar) that i was adding with Kalk and cutting out the AcroPower since it brought back some cyano almost immediately after I started using it again.

 

Probably none of that helps, sorry.

[metrokat]

Mark, do you remember what Decoz found in his source water that was peeling the flesh off his SPS? he had to get a special filter on the RODI to deal with it and would never have known that his water had it till he called the municipality or whatever. Maybe Benny remembers.

[Arkayology]

IMO is shows how damn inaccurate the Hanna's are.

 

Cheap salt is the best salt.

I sold mine and don't bother testing for P04 anymore.

 

 

Mark, do you remember what Decoz found in his source water that was peeling the flesh off his SPS? he had to get a special filter on the RODI to deal with it and would never have known that his water had it till he called the municipality or whatever. Maybe Benny remembers.

 

 

I was thinking the same thing.

[metrokat]

 

 

 

I was thinking the same thing.

Chloramines maybe?