Still Can’t help corals from dying

[Lizbeth90]

Can someone please tell me what’s wrong. I was doing well for a few months until I started noticing some corals closing up my phosphates were up too high .34. And my alk has dropped to 6.8 I think. This was about a month ago. I eventually got everything back to where I want it except alk slowly getting up there. All of my coral  was fully open and looked great. My phosphates been dropping with water changes. I’ve done quite a few in a month. They went from .34, .26, .18,13,9. Today I tested like I do weekly and these are my readings. 

Ph-8.3

Ammonia-0

Nitrite-0

Nitrates-2ish

Calcium-435

Alk-7.85

Salinity -1.025 

Temp 78-80

Phosphates-.10

While some corals look great some are still dying. My pipe organ, polys, toadstool are not opening and 1 head of my torch is dying

 

 

 

This is is one of my old threads

[Lizbeth90]

Could it just be the aftermath of getting my parameters in check. Ultimately the weaker links didn’t make it?

[Ranjib]

What was your earlier water change schedule. Can you share a bit more about the tank? like water volume and % wc. Any other chores? dosing etc? ATO?

[Lizbeth90]

im still doing 4.5 gal water changes, i run filter floss, chemi pure, gfo, i have marine spheres, a nano skimmer, i have an ato, no dosing. i clean my walls and blow off my rocks  every time i do a water change and siphon my sand as well. i feed my tank once a day. tank holds about 15 gal of water

[Aurortpa]

Why the prior alk drop? Is your mag up to ideal levels?  

 

With lower nutrients, alk, and flow you may see slower growth and recovery.  How is the turnover and flow in your tank.

[Lizbeth90]

1 minute ago, Aurortpa said:

Why the prior alk drop? Is your mag up to ideal levels?  

 

With lower nutrients, alk, and flow you may see slower growth and recovery.  How is the turnover and flow in your tank.

my alk dropped because i was mixing my water wrong causing precipitation, i have not test mag. and i have a turnover rate of 25x

[Aurortpa]

34 minutes ago, Lizbeth90 said:

my alk dropped because i was mixing my water wrong causing precipitation, i have not test mag. and i have a turnover rate of 25x

Ideal mag levels will help alleviate precipitation issues.  Your params are pretty good acutually. Not changing lighting levels consistently?  

 

Not familiar with pipe organs, but I do know polyps can be temperamental, toadstools can look grim right before shedding, and torches are one of the more challenging euphyllia to keep.

 

At this point, if everything is on track, and you don’t see any disease or parasites, it’s probably just time for some patience and making sure things stay stable.

[seabass]

Running GFO will cause alkalinity depletion.  Your corals need stable alkalinity.  Phosguard would be a better phosphate media as it doesn't deplete alk.  However, dropping phosphate too quickly can also have a negative effect on coral (since the symbiotic algae in corals use it to create energy).

 

My question is what are the levels of a newly mixed batch of saltwater, so we can compare.  Your parameters are in flux and that will affect coral health.

 

It's important to stabilize your water parameters.  However, there are other factors that affect coral health besides water chemistry (like lighting, flow, placement, chemical warfare, feeding, etc.).  There are a lot of factors at play.  Start by stabilizing water chemistry, then we might have to look at some of the other factors.

[Clown79]

We discussed this in the original thread.

 

The alk issues and phos are the most likely cause.

 

Gfo causes alk to drop

Gfo causes phos to drop rapidly

 

These are causes for corals to decline in health.

 

 

Did you ever test newly mixed water as suggested in the original thread? 

 

What was your alk st before using gfo?

 

Did you and do you dose to maintain parameters?

 

Corals are not going to bounce back quickly. It can take months if ever for them to recover from high phos, to a large phos drop, to all drops.

[Lizbeth90]

1 minute ago, Clown79 said:

We discussed this in the original thread.

 

The alk issues and phos are the most likely cause.

 

Gfo causes alk to drop

Gfo causes phos to drop rapidly

 

These are causes for corals to decline in health.

 

 

Did you ever test newly mixed water as suggested in the original thread? 

 

What was your alk st before using gfo?

 

Did you and do you dose to maintain parameters?

 

Corals are not going to bounce back quickly. It can take months if ever for them to recover from high phos, to a large phos drop, to all drops.

Okay. Yes exactly I’m thinking it just might be an aftershock of all the swings. Just want to make sure. After mixing my water correctly I got alk at 8.9 and calcium at 450 have not tested mag

[Clown79]

41 minutes ago, Lizbeth90 said:

Okay. Yes exactly I’m thinking it just might be an aftershock of all the swings. Just want to make sure. After mixing my water correctly I got alk at 8.9 and calcium at 450 have not tested mag

Is that the newly mixed waters results or your tanks results?

[Lizbeth90]

43 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

We discussed this in the original thread.

 

The alk issues and phos are the most likely cause.

 

Gfo causes alk to drop

Gfo causes phos to drop rapidly

 

These are causes for corals to decline in health.

 

 

Did you ever test newly mixed water as suggested in the original thread? 

 

What was your alk st before using gfo?

 

Did you and do you dose to maintain parameters?

 

Corals are not going to bounce back quickly. It can take months if ever for them to recover from high phos, to a large phos drop, to all drops.

Okay. Yes exactly I’m thinking it just might be an aftershock of all the swings. Just want to make sure. After mixing my water correctly I got alk at 8.9 and calcium at 450 have not tested mag

 

9 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

Is that the newly mixed waters results or your tanks results?

Sorry I should have been clearer. That was my new water mix. 

[Clown79]

2 minutes ago, Lizbeth90 said:

Okay. Yes exactly I’m thinking it just might be an aftershock of all the swings. Just want to make sure. After mixing my water correctly I got alk at 8.9 and calcium at 450 have not tested mag

 

Sorry I should have been clearer. That was my new water mix. 

Those are your target numbers to maintain.

[markalot]

I don't believe your PO4 was that high, regardless think about what happened.

 

Did your corals tell you there was something wrong or did your tests tell you there was something wrong?  Answer this carefully because it may very well be that you tested something high, reacted, corals started to decline, and you assumed it was because of the tested value, and not the reaction you made.

[Lizbeth90]

27 minutes ago, markalot said:

I don't believe your PO4 was that high, regardless think about what happened.

 

Did your corals tell you there was something wrong or did your tests tell you there was something wrong?  Answer this carefully because it may very well be that you tested something high, reacted, corals started to decline, and you assumed it was because of the tested value, and not the reaction you made.

Alot of people told me to not chase numbers and I had not. Everything is my tank was doing great. My purple tip torch was opened so big maybe 5 inches wide and it had been like that since I received it( like two months) then one day I started seeing it opening half way. And then it barley came out. Along with my other frogspawn and zoes. So I decided to test my parameters. And everything was in check except my alk 6.8 and phosphates which were at .36.

so I added bare minimum of gfo along with a wc. My torch is now opening up but not nearly as big as before after like 6 hours it just deflates and tucks in 

38 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

Those are your target numbers to maintain.

Yes that is close to what I had before and would like to keep it around that

[Clown79]

The one parameter I feel is really important and usually is the culprit for coral decline(sps and lps mostly) is alk.

 

You should test your tank after a waterchange to see where the tanks alk sits at because that's what you want to maintain.

 

So if you do a waterchange and the alk is 8.2 (ex) that's the number you want to keep stable.

Trying to dose to reach a "magic" number will lead to more fluctuations.

 

You will need to test everyday to determine the consumption of the alk to properly dose if you plan on dosing.

 

Blindly dosing leads to more problems than not dosing at all.

 

 

Chasing parameters isn't advised(especially ph) but with new tanks and new hobbiests, weekly testing is advisable. It allows you to get an idea of what's going on in the tank.

 

 

 

 

[Lizbeth90]

3 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

The one parameter I feel is really important and usually is the culprit for coral decline(sps and lps mostly) is alk.

 

You should test your tank after a waterchange to see where the tanks alk sits at because that's what you want to maintain.

 

So if you do a waterchange and the alk is 8.2 (ex) that's the number you want to keep stable.

Trying to dose to reach a "magic" number will lead to more fluctuations.

 

You will need to test everyday to determine the consumption of the alk to properly dose if you plan on dosing.

 

Blindly dosing leads to more problems than not dosing at all.

 

 

Chasing parameters isn't advised(especially ph) but with new tanks and new hobbiests, weekly testing is advisable. It allows you to get an idea of what's going on in the tank.

 

 

 

 

Will definitely keep that in mind. I’m not chasing number but ideally I want to keep it around 8.5 because that’s where it’s was before for months it had been stable. Right now it’s at 7.85 I’m doing it slowly. The way I had mixed water in the past month was not the best way. And I haven’t even thought about dosing and don’t plan to.

[markalot]

If you like corals and let them grow eventually you must think about dosing because water changes won't keep up, or you will be doing 100% water changes to keep up.  Alk can drop quickly, especially in a smaller tank.  

[Lizbeth90]

27 minutes ago, markalot said:

If you like corals and let them grow eventually you must think about dosing because water changes won't keep up, or you will be doing 100% water changes to keep up.  Alk can drop quickly, especially in a smaller tank.  

Yes but I meant for now I don’t plan to until I get everything else stable. Going out of topic but hoW long should things be stable before dosing for future reference.

[markalot]

13 minutes ago, Lizbeth90 said:

Yes but I meant for now I don’t plan to until I get everything else stable. Going out of topic but hoW long should things be stable before dosing for future reference.

 

You don't dose until Alk starts to fall.  Ideally you want Alk to stay at the same number every day, assuming you test as the same time every day.  You test Alk and if it starts to drop you determine your daily usage based on the daily drop and use a reef calculator, like this one:  http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html to determine how much of each part 2-part you need.  

 

Corals use Alk and Calcium equally so you test Alk and determine dosing from the Alk test.   You must dose the same amount of both parts in different areas of the tank, ideally at different times.    I need to add to also test Calcium at least once a month, if not weekly, to make sure everything is staying generally balanced.  I had a small doser error I let go for months and ended up with very low calcium because I was too lazy to do a simple calcium test.

 

Dosing can be rather confusion so take it slow and make sure to do all testing at generally the same time every day and before anything is dosed.  My doser runs hourly so I test in the evenings just before the doser adds Alk and, 10 minutes later, Calcium.  

 

 

[Lula_Mae]

Others have given good advice.  If your corals don't show improvement you can try a Lugol's iodine dip.  A couple of drops of Lugol's per cup of tank water for 3-5 minutes (can be repeated a day or two later if needed). It's not a cure-all, and it's no substitute for stable parameters, but it can help ailing corals recover.  

[Clown79]

 

3 hours ago, Lizbeth90 said:

Yes but I meant for now I don’t plan to until I get everything else stable. Going out of topic but hoW long should things be stable before dosing for future reference.

Dosing is done to replenish what corals consume. That's the reason I mentioned your target numbers.

 

Dosing is done to maintain stable parameters. 

 

The only way to know if you need to dose is by daily testing from waterchange to the  day of the next waterchange. Same time every day.

 

This shows you your target numbers after a waterchange.

And how much the tank is using each day after that.

 

Then you dose according to the daily drop to keep the alk/ca st the target levels.

 

Using 2 part is easiest. 

 

Say your target number is 8.5dkh of alk and every day the alk drops to 8dkh. You will want to dose to keep it stable.

So with 2 part you would dose 1.5ml of alk bufffer(just an example number) and then you would dose the equal amount of ca buffer(1.5ml)

 

This allows the levels to stay balanced. 

3 hours ago, markalot said:

 

You don't dose until Alk starts to fall.  Ideally you want Alk to stay at the same number every day, assuming you test as the same time every day.  You test Alk and if it starts to drop you determine your daily usage based on the daily drop and use a reef calculator, like this one:  http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html to determine how much of each part 2-part you need.  

 

Corals use Alk and Calcium equally so you test Alk and determine dosing from the Alk test.   You must dose the same amount of both parts in different areas of the tank, ideally at different times.    I need to add to also test Calcium at least once a month, if not weekly, to make sure everything is staying generally balanced.  I had a small doser error I let go for months and ended up with very low calcium because I was too lazy to do a simple calcium test.

 

Dosing can be rather confusion so take it slow and make sure to do all testing at generally the same time every day and before anything is dosed.  My doser runs hourly so I test in the evenings just before the doser adds Alk and, 10 minutes later, 

Not sure what 2 part product you use but I contacted ESV bionic regarding proper dosing instructions as there really was only personal opinion vs facts regarding this.

 

Per esv.

 

If you are dosing in the sump, you must give enough time for the first dose(alk) to be dispersed into the whole tank before dosing the ca buffer. This could be hrs according to them,  depending on tank size and turnover rate. 

 

If you dose in a high flow area in the tank, you can dose the ca as soon as the fogginess of the alk buffer is gone. No more time is needed than that and it can be dosed in the exact place as the first buffer.

 

I personally dose mine in the tank in front of my powerhead. They are dosed minutes apart and I have had no issues with this method.

[markalot]

I dose in the first chamber of the sump that is stirred by a dedicated powerhead ... 800GPH I think, ridiculously powerful for a small chamber.  In my large tank I don't think this is an issue.  In my 40 gallon, which I just started auto dosing on, I bet this is a problem.  Both outlets in a slow moving HOB sump and only 10 minutes apart.   Hmmm.

[Clown79]

I've done it in my return chamber and have been lazy with only about 10mins apart.

 

I never had any issues with params. 

 

I just started in my main tank in front of the powerhead.

 

I've also waited hrs apart and there were no issues.

 

 

[Lizbeth90]

I checked my water parameters today  and my alk dropped from 7.85 to 7 in a week. Is that a lot? Also my phosphates were back up at .15 but my coral are all puffed up like in a good way. I’m thinking I should just leave the gfo alone and not change it? Sorry for the dirty wall pics I’m due a wc but currently dealing with a pulled back.

also magnesium is at 1500