SPS Dying

[PODPIMP]

I am curious, did you calibrate your refractometer using the 1.026 solution? If you were calibrating to 0, that can be very inaccurate.

[heifinator]

The refractomoter was calibrated to solution.

 

 

Still havent sovled the problem tank is just a softie tank for now. Everything but SPS grows wonderfully. All SPS will die within 2 weeks of introduction.

[markalot]

Hmmm,

 

did anyone cover redox? I never even considered this but now it's come up with O2 supplementation, the peroxide threads, and now the guy IIX posted with the 20K gallon tank talked about a weird redox issue the ended up solving itself after a few months.

[GrandLotus]

I am curious why people were telling you to pull the GFO and let your PO4 go up... I have a .5-1.0 PO4 atm and run a GFO.

I am lost as to why you would stop running GFO...

[heifinator]

I am curious why people were telling you to pull the GFO and let your PO4 go up... I have a .5-1.0 PO4 atm and run a GFO.

I am lost as to why you would stop running GFO...

 

Stripping the water. If you don't feed often and run lots of GFO you can actually strip the water of too many nutrients causing SPS to die. You can pretty easily use to much GFO so I pulled it for a few weeks.

 

Never helped.

 

I tested the ph of the tank water and then took a sample and let it sit outside for an hour or two and tested its PH which was the same. The ph would have differed if there was a o2 issue.

[tyuksel]

Hello,

I have exactly the same problem in my tank. so i was a little surprised to see this thread and i was even more surprised when i read it till the end. Unfortunately at this moment my problem is also unresolved.

 

I will give a short summary of my tank and share what i did..

 

My tank was a full zeovit tank and i had really good growth and colors. Then last September i had an outbreak of marine ich and velvet i had a tank crash due to my mistake. So I decided to start my tank this time with biopellets and live rock with whatever survived.

 

From November till Feburary i had awesome colors and growth. But at this point some things started to go wrong. The sps stopped growing and started to loose tissue from bottom up. Montioporas were not vibrant but not pale.. Acros started browning and dying. All other corals were fine. It only got worse by time despite my efforts and by time even acans also started dying. All soft corals , fish and clams are healty. Right now i have no sps in my tank and its frustrating.

 

Things i did :

• Changed RO/DI membrane , filters , resin. Output is 0 tds.
• Pellets : I suspected pellets first and pulled them out but nothing changed, except rising nutrients.
• GFO : Again this was a suspect , pulled it out nothing changed except rising PO4
• Checked for PO4 : it was 0.02 when problems started. Now i have no GFO and pellets only started again to prevent nuisance algae from gaining foothold. I haven hair algae on rocks here and there and glass gets green in 2 days. This was never an issue before with zeovit or pellets.
• Lights : I run an ati sunpower 6x39, on for 11 hours. One thing i realize is even when its totally plugged off at night the bulbs keep flashing very lightly. Its not recognizable if the room lights are on but only in total darkness. I don't know if this is normal.
• Equipment : I have checked all equipment , tunze pump magnets, Vortech Mp40s ,and jaebao return pump for rusty parts , stray voltage and any visible problem. Cant find any. I changed my RO/DI bucket to a glass reservoir to be sure.
• I removed sand substrate , nothing changed.
• I changed from balling dosing to Ca reactor to see if its impurities in balling salts, no result..
• I did massive water changes which only seemed to help for a day or two and then things were the same.
• I looked around the tank to see if there is a metal somewhere but i cant find or see any.
• My skimmer is a Bubble King DC 180 and performs well.
• I use active carbon change it frequently. I was suspicious of carbon for a while and took it offline but didnt change anything so i installed it back.
• Parameters : KH:8.5 Ca:420 Mg:1350 Salinity: 53ms/35ppt Redox: 360ish pH:8.3.
• Tested for copper in tank and ro water and its 0

 

Interestingly if the corals are taken out from the tank and moved to a friends tank they recover and start growing. Coralline grows fine. Softies grow fine , even better than before perhaps.

 

 

I just wanted to add my input. I cant find the reason but i suspect its caused by an element which is not over toxic to some animals while killing others...

[Thrassian Atoll]

Pretty much the same thing happening to my tank right now.  I think I stripped my nutrients too quickly and had my alk at 8.5, which is too high for basically a uln system.  I replaced 4 chemipure blue nano packs in my 25 Lagoon and things went downhill fast.  I pulled the chemi pure blue and am trying to raise my nutrients.

 

 All of my corals look terrible, burnt tips, stn.  I am slowly bringing my alk down to 7 ish and trying to raise my nutrients that are at 0 po4 and 1 nitrate.  Not sure what else to do.  Everything was going great and then crap.  

[Microbialhydra]

Have you tried using any live phytoplankton, I've stripped my tank a few times using no3po4x and I just dump a ton into my tank and let the skimmer off for 8 hours and my acros start looking better pretty quickly.

[Thrassian Atoll]

16 hours ago, Microbialhydra said:

Have you tried using any live phytoplankton, I've stripped my tank a few times using no3po4x and I just dump a ton into my tank and let the skimmer off for 8 hours and my acros start looking better pretty quickly.

 

I am using marine snow, phyto, reef roids, acro power.  To feed the fish I am switching between flake, rods, mysis.  I have reduced my alk to 7.5ish.  

 

One of my montis is starting to look better.  My po4 is up to .002 and nitrates up to 3.  Going to keep my media offline and let my nutrients raise some more and then slowly add 1 bag at a time to get around 5-10 nitrates and .005ish phohates and see how everything does.