Advice needed. I struggle to keep LPS longterm

[Surykor]

Hello
I hope someone can help me reveal cause(s) of my multiple problems with LPS.

I purchased Caulastrea ( the branching one) and australian Scolymia on 8/2015 it never splitted or grew. But both looked okay so I thought it is just matter of time.

Sadly around 3 months back I have noticed Caulastrea is receding some heads, some heads even died since. Now 3 more heads are receding and I guess will die soon. Second caulastrea I kept even longer was like on sinewave of receding and growing new heads rapidly. In the end it receded and died completely

Scolymia also receded a lot since, but now again accepts food so it looks a bit better now.
Before christmas I also lost my acan lord (also very slowly receded to nothing even though it was fed weekly and feeder tentacles was out full time)


Way back in 11/2014 I purchased Euphyllia paraancora -brown stalks, green tips-common one I think
no recession..., from 3 head frag it is now splitting to 10 I think. originaly it had puffy thick tentacles.
Now it has more stringy and way more pale tentacles but still growing
I have noticed change in way it grow new skeleton. Originaly there were 3 big branches. Now every big branch has two smaller ones grown on it with smaller septa and everything.. you know. just smaller My hammer just now looks more like E. Glabrescens than hammer!! .
all LPS are on sand bed


beside that I have some pseudogorgonian, couple of zoas and palys, plate montiporas, digi montipora, briareum, ricordea, discosoma
.Also my zoas hesitate to grow new polyps.

Some basic info:
Tank was set up 10/2013 using RO/DI
It is custom 35Gallon long with SSB (40"x14"x15" water level) +10G sump with small refugium
livestock: L. amboinensis, L. wudemani, yellowtail damsel, pair of clownfish, common cleaner wrasse, gramma loreto.

I see some small starfish IDK if they can be possible cause. but I think they mostly feed on coraline and algae on rocks
temp 24°C
SG 1,026
alk 9,9-10,2 KH
NO3 <5ppm
Po4 0,03 (HI 736) But I think its false reading: with caulerpa, rowaphos in reactor Halimeda sp algae is growing new leaves every day!
Ca 440
Mg 1310

I used 117W T5 (blue+blue+ coral+) for 10 hours a day but 2 weeks ago I switched to 39W diy LEDs With no improvement yet.
flow Tunze 6025 (740gph) +return pump

I try to answer all questions best I can and add pics if necessary.
Thanks in advance for all your opinions

 

[Surykor]

Sorry Ca is 400ppm not 440.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Your problem seems to be centered around not enough light. Your T5s when they worked were because of good bulbs, T5 bulbs aren't good for much more than 9 months at best. I am not familiar with your new LEDs but with only 39 watts it sounds like it's very under what you need.

You need to figure an average of 3 watts per gallon of tank size for keeping corals.

But to me it would sound like you have insufficient lighting to grow corals in your tank. Some softies might be fine or zoas and platy's. Many of the soft corals don't need a lot of light, but LPS needs a lot more light as do anemones and SPS corals. I'm not saying that you need anything that is SPS lighting unless you plan on at some point keeping the harder to keep SPS.

Yes pictures would be helpful.

 

[Surykor]

Thx for reply
Well, as mentioned I have a couple of SPS frags montipora digitata, small seriatopora hystrix frag. I have 2 montipora capricornis in middle of tank dooing good. One green and one red.. Red one is now more pinkish than I got it but still..With not enough light wouldnt be SPS browned out completely if "not enough light for LPS" would be the cause ?

T5 were 1 month old with no improvement so I changed to LEDs
With 1W per gallon rule of thumb T5 were 3,3W per G rough
I used to change T5 after 9-10 months.

I planned to make dimmable LED setup but little failed so Instead of dimming I will add more leds overtime into circuit 39W is just start.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

I had one of the Chinese black box LED's over my 40b 36x18x17 and it would only cover a 24x24 are so I had 6" both sides that were on the dark side. So I looked for one LED fixture that would give me better coverage than the CBB did. I purchased an Ocean Revive Arctic T247 about 3 weeks or so ago, the growth since I've finally gotten them adjusted after burning up half of my acan frags is just incredible. I've got more adjusting to do but so Far I'm VERY happy with them.

Yeah I'm thinking you need stronger lights.

 

[organism]

I'm gonna disagree, never give receding or stressed corals more light, and if you have montis doing well then your light intensity is good, especially if the red cap is turning pinkish since they bleach a little with high light intensity. For future reference if your corals aren't dirt brown your light is not the problem, if anything your issue could be too much light. LPS aren't big on light that's too white, how is your DIY laid out? I've made tons of fixtures and you can crank the blues but once the whites get over 25% your LPS can start receding. Not sure how you're acclimating corals to the new LED's but wouldn't hurt to turn the whites way down (or off entirely) for a while since it will help the LPS by lowering the overall intensity.

How are you measuring your salinity? If it's not with a refractometer calibrated with calibration fluid then it might be too high, I've had LPS issues in that case as well and try to keep the salinity for them at around 1.024 since they seem happier.

Another possibility is sometimes peppermint shrimp can go rogue and decide your LPS are part of an all-inclusive buffet. I'd keep an eye out to make sure it's not picking at them, especially at night.

 

[organism]

I planned to make dimmable LED setup but little failed so Instead of dimming I will add more leds overtime into circuit 39W is just start.

Missed this part, if you have undimmed white LED's in your DIY fixture you will soon have zero LPS. Blues are ok, but never run whites at 100% that's a good way to torch your tank. For some corals it only takes a couple of days at that intensity to burn them so bad they'll never recover.

 

[Surykor]

So my leds right now are 10 Royal blue and 3 whites . All 3w 700Ma 120 ° but I gonna remove one white because I prefer more blue look. I never think about whites are stronger than blue ones as I thought blues put most par/pur.
This is same think my lfs told me. "Maybe for corals you keep, you have too much light"
As for other points. I have leds just for 2 weeks
Wurdemani is about 3 weeks in tank. And problems started way before.
I have both refracto and glass one.sorry forgot english version of that thing :-D red sea refracto is little tricky with calibration so i have glass one for sure...

 

[Sk8r]

You say calcium is 400? S/b 420; that would be a problem.

 

[Surykor]

You say calcium is 400? S/b 420; that would be a problem.

Workin on it with microbe lift calcium

 

[Surykor]

UPDATE after month
I still use 18x3w led - 54w instead of 117w t5. None change in color so far.
Maybe red monti cap is pitch deeper purple but definitely not red :-D

 

[Coralmassa]

I've rescued one big lobo and one scoly from completely bleached states. I dose reef energy aminos everyday, when I lapse for more than a few days they start to lose color. I've kept both for about three years now, with very little growth but awesome coloration and they developed ravenous appetites. With my acans, I noticed they absolutely loved being in the top of the tank, they were super spread out and their tentacles were out all day and night. They are happy on the sandbed too though, I wonder if it has anything to do with a slow ramp up and sunrise/sunset schedule