cristhiam
New member
I'm feeling giving up the nitrate battle, nitrate spiked again to about 100+ salifter kit, but this time it was too late to rescue my 4+ year old purple tip acro, some might come back I can see a few good branches, also digitatas are looking bad, not as bad as the purple tip, LPS are some what fine not too much extension but nothing is melting other sps's looks fine, zoas fine, gsp fine, elegance a bit stressed not expanding like before, clams are fine. Orange caps are fine, purple cap a bit bleached, xenia going crazy again. I have many other types of corals that are fine.
I did a 50G water change Sunday and things seem to be better, nitrates are down to 10. The purple tip pretty much got a brown jelly infection and spread all over it.
About the system: 125G + 40G sump, CSS 125, cheato in the sump growing well, PH 7.9 (morning) to 8.2 +/- at the end of the day.
About 60 nassarious snails, about 20+ blue legs, about 15 astreas, some turbos, no HA or any other type of bad algae’s, a bit of cyano around the sand but not crazy. The skimmer is pulling a lot of junk probably from the die off of the acro.
It seems that my DSB has been disturbed by the pistol shrimp and lost the bacteria that feeds on nitrates, the shrimp has tunnels all over it, this is what I think is the problem, the shrimp is about a year old but it's pretty big now.
What I feed to the fish is 2 shrimps a day, I use a feeding stick and it pretty much gone within an hour, a 3x3 inch nori sheet (morning), and 3 cubes of home made frozen food (night). I think the system should be able to handle but I guess not.
Water changes are done 25G every two weeks.
Water parameters are: nitrates 10 (now), calc 400-420, DKH 9, salinity 1.026, phos 0, MG around 1300.
For now I've put my denitrator back online but it takes about 2 months to cycle, I'll add a DSB in the sump, but before all this I might use the sugar method and water changes until the sand bed starts working again.
I need ideas. A picture of my poor purple tip (disturbing)
I did a 50G water change Sunday and things seem to be better, nitrates are down to 10. The purple tip pretty much got a brown jelly infection and spread all over it.
About the system: 125G + 40G sump, CSS 125, cheato in the sump growing well, PH 7.9 (morning) to 8.2 +/- at the end of the day.
About 60 nassarious snails, about 20+ blue legs, about 15 astreas, some turbos, no HA or any other type of bad algae’s, a bit of cyano around the sand but not crazy. The skimmer is pulling a lot of junk probably from the die off of the acro.
It seems that my DSB has been disturbed by the pistol shrimp and lost the bacteria that feeds on nitrates, the shrimp has tunnels all over it, this is what I think is the problem, the shrimp is about a year old but it's pretty big now.
What I feed to the fish is 2 shrimps a day, I use a feeding stick and it pretty much gone within an hour, a 3x3 inch nori sheet (morning), and 3 cubes of home made frozen food (night). I think the system should be able to handle but I guess not.
Water changes are done 25G every two weeks.
Water parameters are: nitrates 10 (now), calc 400-420, DKH 9, salinity 1.026, phos 0, MG around 1300.
For now I've put my denitrator back online but it takes about 2 months to cycle, I'll add a DSB in the sump, but before all this I might use the sugar method and water changes until the sand bed starts working again.
I need ideas. A picture of my poor purple tip (disturbing)
I think the problem is that the pistol keeps digging and oxigen gets under the DSB and causing the DSB not do what it's supposed to be doing.
