I<3SPS Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 To make a long story short, I walked in to find most of my corals with retracted polyps and bleaching of my Pocillopora and Montipora spongodes. Everything was fine yesterday. I did a 20% WC with RSCP last night. Checked my params today and the only things that seemed out of whack were the KH: 7; Ca: 380; and Mg: 1700+. I don't dose anything. I only perform water changes with RSCP biweekly. I have since remedied the KH and Ca problem...but how do you go about decreasing Mg? More water changes? I have a feeling my salt is doing this....and I don't want to stress the corals more than they already are. Any suggestions? New salt? Other things to note is that I have a 20H mixed reef: LPS, SPS, softies, etc. Filtration: AC50 w/ BRS Carbon, GFO, polyfilter and an Aquatic Life Mini skimmer. Since increasing both the Ca and KH some things seems better (more polyp extension), but I might end up losing the Pocillopora... I was also battling some diatoms or brownish algae on my sandbed and those seem to have decreased over night which leads me to believe it's the high Mg as the culprit for this rapid change...but I can't be too sure... Link to comment
tennis20 Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 You should definitely try a new salt. Maybe your batch is a messed up one. I would contact red sea and ask them. Test the newly made RSCP salt for ca mg and alk and see what you get Link to comment
ps2cho Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 Dont rule out a bad test kit... Test a fresh batch or salt, then test it again, then test the tank again. Then buy a small bag of salt and test that. By then you should know if its the salt, or the test kit. I still don't get accurate tests from my Red Sea Mg kit. I redo it and it comes out a different result...still can't figure out why. Maybe if the drops from A come out not quite full, it throws it way off. Link to comment
Arkayology Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 Make sure you mix up the salt before you make your next batch. Salt will settle and needs to be mixed in order to make sure it is mixing to spec. Link to comment
I<3SPS Posted March 20, 2014 Author Share Posted March 20, 2014 The thing that puzzles me is that I am over halfway through the bag of RCSP with no repercussions. This morning everything still looks very shi++y. I did another WC and took out my GFO...not sure that could be the culprit or not, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to take it out. I replaced my carbon with fresh media just in case some of the softies/LPS slime coats have any potential effects. They seem to be sloughing off some of the slime coats as we speak (especially my Fungia). I'm REALLY getting pissed at the fact that when everything seems to be going fairly well something terrible happens.... Thank you for all of the replies/support. If everything starts to take a poop, I'm definitely going to switch salts...I might have gotten slower growth with IO, but never had any problems with WCs.... Link to comment
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