acropora trouble

[toothman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyTTVdBWpgI&feature=plcp

I really think it is too hard to tell what is wrong with this acro by looking at it. The tank is 5 yrs old, live rock same, very little sand 5 pounds.

I have a large tank that is a part time job to take care of, I generally have trouble keeping nitrates/phosphate down even with 100 gallon water changes 2x a month. The sps were not doing well anymore. Lps were doing well, acans, lobos, elegance, zoos.

I tried vortex biobeads for 6 weeks, the lps never looked better, puffed up like crazy, the sps started to peal at the bases. I finally took the beads out when my oregon tort started to peal. Two months later the acros are doing poorly, still pealing, like everyday another 1/4 inch would peal up the staghorn in the video.

There was some stn prior to the beads, but very little. It seems anything I do now makes coral stn like: Add gfo, add carbon, run the skimmer ( the bubble king skimmer really pulls out almost nothing now) There is ony 10 fish in a 600 gallon system.

Any thoughts of how to heal this system would be appreciated, I am really at the point that I may want to just redo the whole tank.

 

[o2manyfish]

With that coral in the video. If you turkey baste it near the bottom edges of the tissue do you see Acro Eating Flatworms....

Just a thought.

Also with the remedies you've tried -- Pellets, GFO and Carbon How did you try them? My question relates to quantity. If you started with the recommended volume for your size system those medias will all quickly change your parameters and SPS don't like that at all.

With all of those medias you would want to slowly ramp up the volume over a 6-8 week period.

Sorry for your tribulations.

Dave B

 

[toothman]

Thanks for the suggestion most likely the one I would also recommend. I did take the gfo out as suggested with biopellets, the phosphate crept up to .1 on hanna, I added 3 pounds of new gfo and the tank did not like it. It went down to .05 the next day, and in a few days the coral began to stn again, I took the gfo out and a couple weeks here we are. I think I will try 1 lb of gfo. And do weekly water change with tropic marin.

 

[o2manyfish]

The response you saw from the GFO, could also happen with full size changes of carbon and bio pellets. And playing with all 3 could definitely lead to instability which they won't like. Water changes are always the best remedy.

Dave B

 

[Moser]

It looks to me like you have too many filtration methods ongoing.

I find pellets to be very harsh at ripping out nutrients and have had similar difficulties with them in the past. It seems to me that the larger the system, the relatively less the volume of pellets required.

The most forgiving nutrient extraction method I have used is a chaeto sump. The only issues were extensive coralline growth and a messy sump. My 1000G tank looked best when I ran chaeto, GFO and carbon. I would suggest you remove the pellets, run GFO and add in chaeto, if you can and then apart from regular cleaning, leave the system alone and let it recover.

I do believe in old tank syndrome. I never registered nitrate until a couple of months ago. I now carry out weekly syphoning of the sand bed and sump and a weekly 100 gallon water change. The amount of crap SPS give off is amazing!.

All of this is of course assuming that you don't have flatworms. I would check for those first!.

Mo

 

[toothman]

when I started the biopellet method I took my 55 gal chaeto refug out of the loop. I also only used 1/4 the recommended amount of pellets, but believe me it had a large effect on the system.

The tank really did/does have old tank syndrome and I was just ready for a change, the pellets were not right for me. Pe was going down and the tank was generally average a best.

I decided to scoop and siphon out the sand (there was more like 20 lbs in the tank). The phosphate spiked to .16 letting me know that there was latent phosphate in the substrate. I think the next step I will clean the dsb, chaeto refugium. Hopefully these changes will not crash the tank.

Here is a video of the tank
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z43nLCCtVo&feature=plcp

I also ordered a 3500 gph powerhead, a little more flow always helps.

 

[polywise]

toothman,

Did your flow around the coral change or get reduced?
The coral seems to have a good amount of alge on it, maybe it is covering the areas that are having the problem?
just a thought...

 

[toothman]

I think the algae grew from the nutrients of the dead coral. The flow was rather slow in the center. I ordered a koraila powerhead 3500 gph to put in the corner. The tank now has about 11k gph, I am not sure how a non pulsing pump will affect the flow. I really think more water flow is the problem with a lot of people's tanks, every time I see a tank with another or stronger pump added it looks better a month later.