Acro trouble, where should look?

S

steallife904

New member
Been in the hobby for about 12 years and have kept SPS and etc before. About 5 months ago a overdosed ALK in my tank and whipped out a lot of my coral, mainly my sps. I had some colonys that where at least 8-10 years old. I have got my levels back in order (did within a few weeks after it happened) but now any acro I throw in dies. I have LPS like chalices and acans doing great. Have a birdnest, monti and stylo doing good.... every acro I put in slowly dies and I am not sure what I am missing. I have tried at least 6-8 frags of different acros that all slowly STN. Current one has seemed to lose flesh from the top and bottom working its way toward the middle. have checked for pest... nothing I can see. Have watched for someone nipping and have not seen, calc has stayed at 450 and alk around 8.2, mag in the 1400 range, nitrate and phosphate 0, ammonia 0. I feed frozen RODS or Larrys food daily and a few times a week dose acropower so they should have nutrients. I run Reefbreeder LEDS and never have the blue channel over 55% and white channel never over 15% (run blues higher, white is to white looking for me). I also have a retro T5 kit I run for only 2 hours a day around mid day. What should i try different???
 
should also mention my tank is a 150 g, for flow i have 2 gyre XF150s on the advanced controller for random flow. they max out at 30% power, that seems to be plenty in my tank.
 
Could be a bacterial infection issue. In my experience I just had to cut or pull any acro showing signs u til it went away. Switching to kalk to increase ph a little could help, I did this and it seemed to help. I forget where I read it and don't even remember why but maybe you can find some info on it.
 
steallife904 said:
Been in the hobby for about 12 years and have kept SPS and etc before. About 5 months ago a overdosed ALK in my tank and whipped out a lot of my coral, mainly my sps. I had some colonys that where at least 8-10 years old. I have got my levels back in order (did within a few weeks after it happened) but now any acro I throw in dies. I have LPS like chalices and acans doing great. Have a birdnest, monti and stylo doing good.... every acro I put in slowly dies and I am not sure what I am missing. I have tried at least 6-8 frags of different acros that all slowly STN. Current one has seemed to lose flesh from the top and bottom working its way toward the middle. have checked for pest... nothing I can see. Have watched for someone nipping and have not seen, calc has stayed at 450 and alk around 8.2, mag in the 1400 range, nitrate and phosphate 0, ammonia 0. I feed frozen RODS or Larrys food daily and a few times a week dose acropower so they should have nutrients. I run Reefbreeder LEDS and never have the blue channel over 55% and white channel never over 15% (run blues higher, white is to white looking for me). I also have a retro T5 kit I run for only 2 hours a day around mid day. What should i try different???
Click to expand...


what test kit or equipment are you testing phosphate and Nitrate?
to have zero Phosphate the tank might be starving for food and to have zero Nitrate on a old system you must be good, I just know that when I have phosphate low my tank Is starving and I never ever had zero nitrate in all my sps tanks..
do you vodka dose?
I had same issues and this resolved everything!!
 
how did you correct your alk issues and what do you use to maintain parameters?
Have you changed any other husbandry practices since the problem?
have nutrients always been 0? where they there before the alk issues?
 
for test kits I use salifert and redsea, also have a hanna for ALK. my phosphate and nitrate have always read 0 or undetectable for years. haven't changed anything. When the tank overdosed I just stopped dosing ALK (I have a doser that dosed ALK, calc and Mag) and just let it fall back over a few weeks with water changes. Since I lost a bunch of coral I had to adjust the amount of everything I dosed to get back in range. took about a month to get back. I do not dose vodka... only dose calc, alk and mag all from BRS. I guess its possible that I think I am over feeding but maybe im not??? I could always try more I guess but I would think all the corals would be effective if that was the issue????
 
I had the same problem and lost just about all my sps.
After getting water back to correct parameters I also was not able to keep sps.
It took almost a year before its good again.
Maybe I did too many water changes ? Who knows
Maybe it's the bacteria that lives in the live rock ?
I would buy a test Frag every 2 mo and each would linger or die faster death.
But one day the frag formed a base within a week.
So my guess is just time for water to age.

Not sure if there's a short cut.
 
yep, seems you did/doing what I am. Since correcting the water I buy a test frag every now and then but they don't make it, the acros that is. Guess I will just keep doing what I am doing and hope it turns around.
 
I think that getting 0 readings for n and p can mean different things depending on the situation in your reef..
I know this sounds a bit wishy washy but sometimes 0 readings means that the corals in your tank are getting just enough that they consume all they need and deplete your system. But sometimes 0 means that there just isn't any.
Has your fish population changed/reduced since your coral die off?
If I were you, I'd get your n and p results just into the detectable levels and then try more sps.
I'd suggest adding a couple more fish and feeding them more, then add some test pieces..
 
I would guess too low of nutrients.

Seems like not enough flow imo. In my 75 I run a gyre 150 at 80%, and a mp40 and mp10 on NTM that max out at 90%

What's your alk level? Or did I miss it?
 
I added 2 fish since then but at this point I am maxed out on fish bioload. I can try more food to boost the nutrients up and see what happens.

Since I have both gyres on each side of the tank the flow kinda crashes in the middle of the tank and pushes down at that point. if I run them any higher they start ****ing off some of the chalices and acans I have low in the middle of the tank and moving sand around. I can try moving them up to 40% or 50%. Back a couple years ago when I only ran 1 on one side even then I only had it on 50, maybe 60% and that was still fine. I don't have much rock work in the way of them either.

Alk level 8.2dkh
 
Just thought of something... I remembered a while ago I turned off my phosphate reactor and never started using it again. I cant remember when exactly I did this, it was before the ALK overdose. But maybe now its affecting the tank some how. I turned it off because I always had 0 reading for phosphate. Even off I still always get 0, even feeding what I felt was heavy. Can you think of any reason the phosphate reactor NOT running would hurt anything?????
 
Could get a build up of hydrogen sulfide if it's sitting there totally stagnant.
I'd take it off line completely..
 
it is still sitting there but no flow or anything running through it. You saying something could be getting into the water from it still? Guess I should pull out anyway since not running and if I was going to run I would pull and clean and replace GFO first of course. Just wondering now if that could have messed anything up and if I should start using again.
 
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