so everything is going cool...

[harbingerofthefish]

Then I go about my usual water change. I start the siphon back into the tank, and go about getting ready for work. I take one last peek at the tank before I leave and DOH! Everything is closed up, the LPS in the tank are shriveled, etc...

 

I get home at lunch and no change, that night I make a WC and anothe rthe next morning. Today stuff is looking better but not great. I run some tests and:

 

ammonia 0

trites .15

trates 0

ph 8.2

alk 4 meq/l

but calcium has dropped in 3 weeks from 460 to 320!

 

I used the same salt the same water the same wc regiment as always. No clue on the fall of cal.

[tinyreef]

bump

 

more info is needed i think. the 3-week comment puzzled me. is this an isolated incident from 3-weeks prior or the final straw that broke the dam (whatever).

 

what were your temps? any changes recently? (winter to spring ambient change may give you a slight boost in growth rates, i.e. calcium depletion)

 

was the wc fresh or overnited? (altho i used to always just dump fresh myself )

[harbingerofthefish]

The 3 weeks thing...I'll admit I'm kind of lazy on my testing. I've supplemented my calcium up to 450-460 and my alk is been pretty steady at 4 meq/L. Nothing precipitating in the water so the last time I had either checked was 3 weeks prior to the drop.

 

My tank temp runs 80-81 the out side temp where I live has been 70-80 for a month now. The tank stays steady. I siphon my water in and out during water changes, so slow actually that my heater doesn't usually even click on during a WC.

 

My only new LPS addition in the last month was a candy cane, I'm thinking that with a blasto, frogspawn, and now a candy, my calcium might be being used up faster than before.

 

I'm pretty lazy on the wcs too, not about doing them but how I go about doing them. There fresh, not sitting overnight. I've never had any problems so far doing this. I do airate before hand though, and when I siphon I drain back into the tank directly over th power head to help mix everything in.

 

This all happened Thursday. Friday a lot of stuff started perking back up, and since things are looking better. 3 of the 5 heads on the candy are looking good, the spawn puffed back up first, the blassto seems to be doing better. The gsp and yellow polyps seem to have taken the brunt of the shock. One colony of gsp opens but now their tentacles or just nubs.

 

I'm starting to use a 2 part cal/alk supplement, to maybe help keep in in better check.