ZephNYC Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 This is terribly sad Im glad you shut you alkalinity doser....just let kalk do its thing alone. I know you know all this, but ill say it again for the cheap seats. adding buffer lowers calcium, and vice versa. adding both cancels each other out to some degree, and you wind up having do dose large amounts of either one to keep the numbers right. I only use kalk on my large system and the dkh is 9.3 and calcium 440. And life is easy. Link to comment
jedimaster1138 Posted June 27, 2014 Author Share Posted June 27, 2014 The SPS crash continues. It's just peachy. Link to comment
jedimaster1138 Posted July 7, 2014 Author Share Posted July 7, 2014 3 Interceptor treatments with lots of carbon and water changes in between. I can only assume all the bugs are dead now. I took some macro photos, didn't see any bugs where I saw plenty before the Interceptor. Poly filter pad running now. New GFO, BRS HC and a moderate amount of ROX GAC.... but.... The crash continues to worsen and spread. ATL Montipora Setosa is now showing necrosis / browning. Most everything else SPS has at least something questionable going on. Warpaint scoly has lost half its flesh. I also, randomly have lost a small zoanthid colony, and i have no idea why. I don't think I can stomach listing everything I've throw in the trash. Continuing to do water changes as much as I can, which unfortunately is only about 10g twice a week. I've had other issues to deal with. Will try to do more in the coming week, as I have no other clue what to do. Link to comment
ZephNYC Posted July 7, 2014 Share Posted July 7, 2014 3 Interceptor treatments with lots of carbon and water changes in between. I can only assume all the bugs are dead now. I took some macro photos, didn't see any bugs where I saw plenty before the Interceptor. Poly filter pad running now. New GFO, BRS HC and a moderate amount of ROX GAC.... but.... The crash continues to worsen and spread. ATL Montipora Setosa is now showing necrosis / browning. Most everything else SPS has at least something questionable going on. Warpaint scoly has lost half its flesh. I also, randomly have lost a small zoanthid colony, and i have no idea why. I don't think I can stomach listing everything I've throw in the trash. Continuing to do water changes as much as I can, which unfortunately is only about 10g twice a week. I've had other issues to deal with. Will try to do more in the coming week, as I have no other clue what to do. Just let it ride itself out. There is nothing else to do unless they return. Don't you dare get anything new for a while. Link to comment
jedimaster1138 Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 Just let it ride itself out. There is nothing else to do unless they return. Don't you dare get anything new for a while. Hah. I might not get something new at all. If we're moving in a year or two...what's the point? I just spent an hour pulling out stuff that used to be coral. FML Link to comment
glennr1978 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Your tanks are crashing, Ben's is covered in some sort of immortal zombie algae (sounds like a good name for a coral, lol)....note to self, never use "jedi" in any part of my screen name. Jk man, sorry about your tanks. Link to comment
BattleAthletics Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Your my mentor to reef jinxes. Link to comment
SquishyFishy Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 It's soooo scary reading this thread because I consider you an expert! If it can happen to you, it can and probably will happen to me....eeeeeeeeeek! Came back from 6 days away and all is well...TG...but I'm getting spooked by all your troubles.....so sorry! Link to comment
jedimaster1138 Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 So I have noticed a fairly significant number of asterina stars... Might they be munching on my corals? Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 On algae and any dead parts of corals where algae is starting to form, the coral eaters are very very rare. Link to comment
jedimaster1138 Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 Well I bring it up because of the following: STN is not limited to any genus of SPS coral. I've lost and continue to lose Montipora, Acropora, Stylophora, Seriatopa ...I know I had red bugs, which only attack acropora (akaik/have read), but the simple fact that the die off involves so many kinds of corals proves there's at least some other factor here... A zoanthid colony died off on me. I have no clue why, but they just...melted away. I looked at the small rock they were on last night, and it's like they were never there, or something chewed them up. None of my fish or inverts have any history attacking zoanthids, and i have literally, a couple thousand more polyps. A quick search brings up a lot of incidences where the people complaining of coral eating stars cite the loss of zoanthids ... So I dunno. Link to comment
Tamberav Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 +1 most eat algae. I did find one eating the skirt off a healthy zoa before but it was a very large brown asternia. My smaller white ones just do a good job eating algae and I personally added them on purpose as part of the CUC. This is a good read on them: http://www.reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/current-issue/article/45-reefkeeping-101- Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Well I bring it up because of the following: STN is not limited to any genus of SPS coral. I've lost and continue to lose Montipora, Acropora, Stylophora, Seriatopa ...I know I had red bugs, which only attack acropora (akaik/have read), but the simple fact that the die off involves so many kinds of corals proves there's at least some other factor here... A zoanthid colony died off on me. I have no clue why, but they just...melted away. I looked at the small rock they were on last night, and it's like they were never there, or something chewed them up. None of my fish or inverts have any history attacking zoanthids, and i have literally, a couple thousand more polyps. A quick search brings up a lot of incidences where the people complaining of coral eating stars cite the loss of zoanthids ... So I dunno. That what happens when zoanthids melt - they leave behind no trace. I've got a small rock that had a colony on it that was shipped, and some of the hitchikers died in transit and over the next week every polyp on it melted away and the rock is now bare. Link to comment
jedimaster1138 Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 Yeah that reefkeeping blurb was nice. I've seen zoanthids melt away before, but my point is, in this case, it was very, very fast. That colony was fine a week or so ago. The event has triggered my "this doesn't seem right" alarm last night and then I slept on it, and started thinking about evil stars... Maybe I'm trying to over-rationalize and find something to fix. All I know is it's as far as I can tell, not chemical. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Yeah that reefkeeping blurb was nice. I've seen zoanthids melt away before, but my point is, in this case, it was very, very fast. That colony was fine a week or so ago. The event has triggered my "this doesn't seem right" alarm last night and then I slept on it, and started thinking about evil stars... Maybe I'm trying to over-rationalize and find something to fix. All I know is it's as far as I can tell, not chemical. This was the same thing as what you saw. I've not had any starfish besides my serpent stars in this tank. No asterinas. Link to comment
metrokat Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 HArlequin shrimp will make short work of the stars. Then you can find them a new home . Link to comment
DaveFason Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 Sorry to hear of all your troubles Ben. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 Sorry to hear of all your troubles Ben. Wrong jedi Link to comment
metrokat Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 So this is JediBear's monti missing some skin where the star has been hanging around. Link to comment
TJ_Burton Posted July 18, 2014 Share Posted July 18, 2014 Awe man, what a suckfest. Hang tight buddy, I feel your pain! Link to comment
jedimaster1138 Posted July 18, 2014 Author Share Posted July 18, 2014 That star died a forceps into the trash bag death a few minutes later as did 3 of his relatives. Too bad there's hundreds more. Harlequins hunt faster... Link to comment
markalot Posted November 6, 2014 Share Posted November 6, 2014 How is it going? I had subscribed a while ago and just reviewed and realized you had switched from the Razors to and ATI fixture, which is exactly what I am in the process of doing. We need updates please! Link to comment
jedimaster1138 Posted November 6, 2014 Author Share Posted November 6, 2014 Hey Mark. Yeah I don't post much because when I do it tends to be bad news, or inevitably turns into bad news. To say I had a run of bad luck is a bit of an overstatement. First things first though regarding my experience going from LED's to T5's - I'm 100% happy with the T5's. My only complaint about the entire process was that I should have gone with them from the start of this tank 2 years ago, not waited and beta-tested different lights for a year in an attempt to save a few $ on power, which I didn't (keep reading). I've had the T5's about 14 months now and they are fantastic. Took me a while to find a bulb combo I liked, but even during that experimentation process, they were and still are great lights. All the acropora that I could never keep alive have colored up, polyped up, and shown massive growth*. Clams, I killed a lot of them before the light change, they are living just fine now. Last October, right after I installed the T5's and noticed improvement across the board, I picked up a 4" derasa from the Doc. It's now an 8" derasa and I'm starting to get worried about it over growing my tank. Maximas have all done well too, both small to medium cultured guys and one wild caught 5+ incher. All from the Doc, of course. I see clam growth across the board. I remember vividly that just a couple days after I put up the T5's, overall tank pH started rising drastically higher during the day than it had ever done under the Razors. To me this screamed "more photosynthesis" where there had clearly previously been very little if the pH plots were to be believed. The graphs that were slightly rolling hills became daily vertical mountain faces nearly straight up. Maybe there was something else going on, but it was illuminating to see (pun intended) both the plots and the response from the corals themselves. The T5's are actually so powerful that I've had issues keeping some LPS alive, even on the sand bed 30+ inches from the tubes. I bleached out at least a few chalice frags and had some issues with acans and a few other LPS that escape me at the moment. So yeah, T5's are powerful, assuming you go with quality components - read ATI reflectors, ballasts and bulbs - so be sure to go slow with your corals in terms of placement and light duration. And shade your LPS early on. I'd also keep your fixture higher than its eventual permanent height for the first few weeks. I think I was almost 12" AWL early on and have since settled on something like 7" after several months of creeping down. I also slowly increased the 8 bulb burn time from as little as 4 hours to the 8 or 9 it is now. Heat wise, I have no complaints. The apartment has AC most of the time during the summer, so it's fine. Chiller really only fires off at the end of the 8 bulb cycle for at most 20 minutes, and even then only on the hottest and most humid days of the year - when the temp is pushing 100 outside the inside AC just isn't working.The heaters never turn on during the day, or at all from May to October, so the costs balance out against the chiller and higher wattage florescent vs somewhat lower wattage LEDs. Though not that much lower - two 160w Maxspect Razors still draw a non-trivial amount of power so when compared to 8x80w T5 it wasn't that much of a stretch. My monthly power bill might have gone up 5-10$. I have four 160mm Noctua PC fans sitting on top of the tank rim and blowing across the water when the temperature exceeds 78.5. Those fans are dead silent (go Austrian acoustics lab), use a pittance of power and remove the heat the lights put out before it can cook the water. I bolted a custom spectrum Build My LED bar to the front of my Sunpower. It adds a little more sparkle to the zoanthids and LPS and also gives me a cool blue/actinic period at sunrise and sunset and makes for fun photography. I'm a big, big believer that the future of lighting is hybrids. Halides + LEDs and/or T5 + LED's. I think that's the key. Going back in time again to 2 years ago when I set up my tank - I would have gone with the ATI LED/T5 hybrid. Yeah it's expensive, but I've blown that $ on the Razors and the Sunpower and the BML LED's. So there's that. Also, I don't want to sound like I'm bashming the Razors completely. They aren't an awful fixture, especially for an LPS/zoanthid tank. I think the new lenses are probably key to success with them too. If they had come with those out of the box, things might have been differently. Who knows. The bottom line is that I got tired of beta testing lights so I went with the best T5 fixture on the market which I know LOTS of people had success with for years when it came to acropora and just SPS in general. Sonny's tanks - the rimless reef - was one of and will always be my icon tank. His success with T5 were pretty much the the final straw for me when it came to switch or not switch. Anyway, TLDR - I'm happy with my T5's. * My tank sorta crashed in late June. I had been dealing with a cyano outbreak, which had gone on for a few months in the spring, then it died off nearly over night. I should have known that was a bad sign because around that time things went to poop. I was distracted by more important things like my dad's illness, so I wasn't doing much other than changing water with ESV when i could. I know for a fact that red bugs killed one big acro colony, one smaller one and butchered another (which has since done ok..) but then I lost a lot of other stuff from Montipora digitatas to birdnests to zoanthid colonies to acans to chalices...Yeah a lot of stuff. Clearly not just red bugs. Looking at the corals you'd think it was alkalinity burn, as lots of things had brown tips, but it couldn't have been as I was keeping alk below 8. Actually closer to 6. So I don't know what happened other than ... nothing good. I think it might have also been a contaminant or even a bad batch of salt or 2 part or I don't know what. Anyway, that went on for months. I trashed a lot of coral towards the end and it was depressing. Oh there was also the complete Walking Dead horde level asterina star invasion. That was weird. One morning I got up real early and there had to be 400 of them on the glass. It was weird. I removed what I could and dropped two Harley Quinns in. One died, but the other is fat and I don't see more than a few stars now. Anyway, things are better now. Corals have color and lots of growth. I still don't know what happened really. Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.