SPS getting a little pale

[Walker]

Over the course of a few months, my green slimer has gone from a darker green to a fairly light green. It's been doing very well (added about an inch of growth) and with great PE so I'm not worried about it dying. I don't think I have too much light with a 4x36w T5HO though. Params are:

 

0 nitrate

8.2 pH

1.025 sg

Ca 440

Mg 1250

 

From reading up on it, it's possible that the aquarium has entered an ultra-low nutrient state? I do skim quite wet, and run both purigen, carbon, and GFO in filter bags. I just changed my purigen a month ago and have been continuously running small amounts of GFO since December. I don't have a PO4 test kit so I have just been replacing the 2 tbsp of GFO every week. I've gone from having to scrape the glass 2-3x a week to barely 1x a week since I did that.

 

Other symptoms I've seen from other SPSes would be:

1. Red Planet frag went from dark green to light green with dark red highlights.

2. Red monti cap lost some of its colour and went to light red/orange.

3. Browned-out green birdsnest has started to get green growth tips.

 

Growth has been good otherwise, and the LPS don't seem to be fazed at all.

 

Is this something that I need to be worried about and correct, or should I just leave it be right now?

[Adrnalnrsh]

What size tank? How high is the Green Slimer? How high is the light off the water line? What bulbs? What Nitrate test kit - are you saying 0 nitrates or 0.00?

[Walker]

35g breeder (36x12.5x18). Green slimer is on the same level as the red planet, about 8" from the waterline and 12" from the lights. I am using a mix of 39w (not 36w) bulbs (1x Giesemann AquaBlue, 1xKZ Coral Light II, 2x ATI Blue+).

 

My nitrates are 0 with the Seachem nitrate kit. It's never even changed colour ever since I started running purigen 6 months ago. Tank is 8 months old.

 

3 fish in tank (2x occellaris and a tailspot blenny), fed 1-2x a day. Main meal is 1/4 cube of mysis and a pinch of cyclop-eeze. Other feedings are a few small pinches of NLS 0.5mm pellets.

[Adrnalnrsh]

ok thanks. I use the same nitrate kit as you. When I get no color that means 0.0 so thats not good. You wanna see atleast a tiny bit of pink. I had this problem in my last tank and was running biopellets and had like two fish. I ended up adding 4 fish (6 total) in a 25 gallon and all my corals turned to a deeper nice color. My green monti with purple polyps went from a grayish color to a deep green.

 

The lower the nutrients the less light you need as well as the opposite. Add in a couple more fish and wait a few weeks and see how things go. I had a 25 gallon tank with about a 10-15 gallon sump. 6 small fish were perfect. I had a couple of wrasse's, clowns, neon-dottyback and one green chromis. After adding this stock things improved quickly.

 

My green slimer was always yellow til now its getting a deeper green again just like when I bought it.

[markalot]

Also watch the light. ATI bulbs put out a lot of par. Did you recently change the bulbs or clean anything that might have allowed more light into the tank?

[Adrnalnrsh]

I also lowered my photo period down to 8 hours with my LEDs. Which put our way more par on that tank than the 8x54 tek light with ATI bulbs do on my 90 - same sps as the 90 was a replacement

[Adrnalnrsh]

Just re-read that your running GFO, Carbon and Purigen.

 

Stop the Purigen that overlaps with carbon

Cut back on carbon - either lower the dosage or run on a time

Keep the GFO since you have 0.0 nitrates your BP won't even work and there for Cyano will go crazy consuming the carbon and phosphates.

 

You need a bigger bioload in order to export that much nutrients

 

UNLS is N03 .2 and P04 .03 any lower and you'll have these types of issues.

 

Fall out of balance and you'll have these types if issues and worse.

[Nano sapiens]

Based on your description and setup it appears your corals are not getting enough nutrients. The skimming, the GAC and GFO are all designed to remove nutrients, so reducing or eliminating any of these will help raise nutrient levels with the fish load/feeding that you do. I have no mechanical or chemical filtration (just one clownfish in a 12g) with regular/aggressive detritus removal and I can still cause my corals to fade if I don't heavily feed my fish.

 

LPS often can look great while SPS fade out. May have something to do with the LPSs' much greater surface area being able to absorb more of the available nutrients as well as they tend to get fed nice big meaty chunks.

[Walker]

I do have a royal gramma in QT, so that will help once he gets out of it in 3 weeks or so. I'll set my skimmer to skim dryer (higher) and see if that helps as well. I think part of the reason is that I switched to a Vortech, which I notice sweeps up a lot of the uneaten food debris in the tank into the filtration. This colour change really just started happening once I switched to the Vortech and have been running more GFO.

 

(edit) and yes, I'll reduce my usage of carbon and GFO. I upped my usage to get rid of some cyano in December and never really reduced it.

[metrokat]

Based on your description and setup it appears your corals are not getting enough nutrients. The skimming, the GAC and GFO are all designed to remove nutrients, so reducing or eliminating any of these will help raise nutrient levels with the fish load/feeding that you do. I have no mechanical or chemical filtration (just one clownfish in a 12g) with regular/aggressive detritus removal and I can still cause my corals to fade if I don't heavily feed my fish.

 

LPS often can look great while SPS fade out. May have something to do with the LPSs' much greater surface area being able to absorb more of the available nutrients as well as they tend to get fed nice big meaty chunks.

I'm in agreement here. You can add coral foods to increase nutrients as well.

[Adrnalnrsh]

I beleive that you shouldn't need GFO if your running carbon. The reason why is if it gets all the nitrates and leaves a bit of phosphates, its because your running too much. Its still too new and needs to be tune according to bio-load nad test results, not total gallons as most of the directions state. With that said, I'd worry less about lowering GFO and more about lowering carbon. Try not to make too many changes at one either.

Good point about the Vortech, it probably helps keep things cleaned up.

I'm in agreement here. You can add coral foods to increase nutrients as well.

 

Yes - but becareful as too much uneaten food causes a whole other set of problems. He need nitrates more than phosphates.

[metrokat]

I beleive that you shouldn't need GFO if your running carbon. The reason why is if it gets all the nitrates and leaves a bit of phosphates, its because your running too much. Its still too new and needs to be tune according to bio-load nad test results, not total gallons as most of the directions state. With that said, I'd worry less about lowering GFO and more about lowering carbon. Try not to make too many changes at one either.

 

Good point about the Vortech, it probably helps keep things cleaned up.

 

 

Yes - but becareful as too much uneaten food causes a whole other set of problems. He need nitrates more than phosphates.

His GFO will take care of phosphates.

[Walker]

Damnit, now I figured out how close I was toeing the line to ULNS... the margin is razor thin. My sunset milli started RTN'ing and I was wondering why, considering I've started to feed oyster-feast. It's because I added 250mL of seachem matrix to seed for my quarantine tank. Within a week, the milli started getting even more pale and my skimmer was barely pulling anything out of the water. It probably took up all the remaining nitrogenous compounds in the water to start increasing the bacterial mass in the matrix.

 

I pulled out the matrix being seeded (and put it in the QT to cycle with ammonia), and things are now stable. The skimmer is now starting to pull out more DOCs and the RTN stopped. I lost one out of three branches of the frag but hopefully it stops there.

 

It's just weird that I set up everything to have as clean water as possible, and then now I have to add more food to make it dirtier.

[KuansReef]

I would take carbon out right away. In most cases, SPS bleaching is due to the use of carbon if alk is not too low. You should check if Alk. is too low. Mag. should be around 1350.

[Walker]

Alk's pretty high, actually, at 4 meq/L.

[Adrnalnrsh]

Recommended ALK is 7-8dKh when using carbon dosing. It has to do with being ULNS and water clarify and lighting intensity. There appears to be several factors involved as to why ALK should be lower yet, no one is 100% sure why that is.

 

Pale SPS need food. And your right theres a very thin line to reading 0.00/undectable where you are feeding enough and still being in undetectable status vs being undectable and not having enough food therefore your still undetectable and starving.

 

Think of it like this, 10 cheese burgers for 10 people and they all eat vs 9 CB and 10 people. In both cases the cheese burgers are undetectable after consumption. But in one example someone starves.

 

Finding this thin line is an artform.

[Walker]

I am scratching my head at the ULNS state of the system as I do feed quite a bit, and I don't even carbon dose. However, I do have an oversized skimmer (Reef Octopus BH1000 rated for 70g in a 35g) and have always run chemical filtration. I am upping my feeding even more now with oyster feast 2x a week and a bit of amino acid, and hoping that the milli will recover. There's been an excellent feeding response from the SPS for oyster-feast except for the milli that is STN'ing.

 

I am leery of removing GFO and carbon from the tank as I do have a mixed reef (concerned about allelopathy from a sarcophyton leather) but I have halved the amount in-system. I'll take both out completely and see if it helps.

[Adrnalnrsh]

Keep feeding, but your better off finding a balance with feeding fish (bioload) and maybe some light coral supplementation.

[Nano sapiens]

The trick to all this is not to do too many things at one time. If you constantly increase (or decrease) feedings while you change up your export methods then you will likely end up with an unstable see-saw effect. Stick with an export methodology that works for your tank.

 

When you start to see coral health and color improvement though additional food inputs, I find it best to slow down. You want to take a few weeks and observe the bio-markers (coral coloration, cyano and/or algae growth). With rapidly increasing food inputs its easy to swing too far the other way and end up fighting eutrophication, manifested by plagues of nuisance algae and cyano. There is a 'sweet-spot' that you will find when you ramp up feedings slowly while maintaining a consistent nutrient export strategy. It's a good place to be

 

The suggestion to lower alkalinity is a good one. I used to run around 10 dKh, but I found that around 8.0 dKh produces richer coloration for my system and 7-8 dKh is known to be safer for the corals when a system is run with very low nutrient levels.

[Walker]

Hmm... I guess I'll maintain the halved measures of GFO then for now, and see if the increased feeding helps over the next couple of weeks. My tank is pretty susceptible to cyano so I'll know pretty quickly if I'm going overboard.

 

I've actually been planning to change salts to Seachem Reef once I finish my bucket as IO has a very high alk, so that will be the next change in a couple of weeks.

[Walker]

Just an update... I've been feeding a tiny amount of oyster-feast every day (as opposed to more 2x a week) and I'm seeing some colour recovery already. I've lost 2/3's of the milli colony that STN'd, but it seems to have stopped. Now I'm just going to continue this regimen and try to figure out what's a good balance between feeding and filtration.

[Nano sapiens]

Great! Sounds like things are on the up-and-up. The Milli is now acquiring the nutrients it needs to maintain itself.

 

In the case of coral starvation, the animal will consume some of it's own tissue in an effort to keep some other part alive in the hope of better times ahead.

[Walker]

Ugh, is it typical for the undersides of coral to STN? My green slimer now has STN on the shadowed underside of its base. I thought that the feeding was improving its colouration but I think one of the hermits made its home right under it, which means it scrapes by the base every time it wakes up. The physical trauma probably started the STN event. Should I start planning to frag it or wait a week to see if the STN progresses? I don't know if STN typically stops or if it continues until the coral is dead.

[Nano sapiens]

If the localized issue is caused by a hermit crab, then I wouldn't try and frag the coral. But if the STN continues into other areas that aren't crab related, then you could frag a piece off to be on the safe side. STN can be a symptom of a coral not getting enough food (starvation), but can also be caused by other factors, too. Check that all your parameters are correct and stable.

[Walker]

I think the initial scrape initiated the STN, but I was away for four days and was not able to dose my usual daily 2-part and feed the corals. It looks to have slowed down (but not stop) once I came back, but I fragged a piece last night just to be sure. It's my fastest grower so hopefully it makes a recovery.

 

I do think it is starvation related, as the food I've been feeding has had an effect on the non-STN corals. Since I've been feeding oyster-feast, I can definitely tell that corals that have lightened up (and that I attributed to lights) have started to gain their colour back. Most striking is my rainbow monti, which had faded over a few months to a very very pale blue. It has regained its purple highlights and is renewing its encrusting growth. My firetruck monti cap, which had faded to a light orange-ish colour, is now starting to get darker orange again. I've also started to see mini brittle stars sneak out of their hidey-holes to feed (I've never even seen them before!). Some of the LPS seem to enjoy oyster-feast too, like the frogspawn and chalice.

 

Now I just hope that the situation has stabilized and I can go back to not worrying about STN...