cprice
New member
So I have now had my reef tank up for almost 8 months. Everything was going smoothly until about two months ago.
I was getting excellent color, growth, and polyp extension from all of my corals. My solenoid on my calcium reactor broke and caused the pH to drop in my calcium reactor, which in turn spiked both the alkalinity and calcium in the tank. I typically keep my alkalinity around 8.5 and it jumped up to 13. It was then that I started paying attention to all of my corals on a daily basis to keep an eye out for alkalinity burn, or any sort of tissue necrosis. It was during this time that I noticed I had AEFW (yay!).
I recently started a new job that only allows me one day a week to really work on the tank. After pulling all of my acro's out of my display and starting to treat them for Acker eating flatworm I was simultaneously letting the alkalinity drop in my system. Once everything got back to normal levels I reset my calcium reactor and started letting the tank do it's thing.
Over the last week I have started having entire colony is completely dissolved overnight and I'm waking up to new white skeletons every morning. I just checked my alkalinity, and it has again spiked to around 12.5. That means that my tank has gone from 8.5 to 13 back to 8.5 and now it's at 12.5 all in the span of about eight weeks. That along with the Bayer dipping for pests has no doubt stressed a lot of my coral to the max. At this point I'm so tempted to do a water change to start to get all of my parameters back under control but I'm afraid to yet again shock my system. I know that a lot of my corals can't take the higher alkalinity so I need to lower that first.
What would you guys suggest on here as A plan to start to get things back under control and prevent as much coral death as I can in the process. I'll note that I have several decent sized colonies that I would hate to lose such as Orange passion, ASD rainbow, RR Pink Floyd, etc. they have all seen the weather the storms thus far but I'm getting nervous that the Pink Floyd is about to go.
Here are a few shots of the tank as it currently sits. A lot of the coral is still in the garage frag tank waiting to be transferred back into the main display. The two systems are connected and share the same water and lighting schedule via radions.
I'm worried that with the combination of alkalinity stress and bayer dips, I have done too much damage and may continue to lose colonies over the next few weeks until I have nothing left.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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I was getting excellent color, growth, and polyp extension from all of my corals. My solenoid on my calcium reactor broke and caused the pH to drop in my calcium reactor, which in turn spiked both the alkalinity and calcium in the tank. I typically keep my alkalinity around 8.5 and it jumped up to 13. It was then that I started paying attention to all of my corals on a daily basis to keep an eye out for alkalinity burn, or any sort of tissue necrosis. It was during this time that I noticed I had AEFW (yay!).
I recently started a new job that only allows me one day a week to really work on the tank. After pulling all of my acro's out of my display and starting to treat them for Acker eating flatworm I was simultaneously letting the alkalinity drop in my system. Once everything got back to normal levels I reset my calcium reactor and started letting the tank do it's thing.
Over the last week I have started having entire colony is completely dissolved overnight and I'm waking up to new white skeletons every morning. I just checked my alkalinity, and it has again spiked to around 12.5. That means that my tank has gone from 8.5 to 13 back to 8.5 and now it's at 12.5 all in the span of about eight weeks. That along with the Bayer dipping for pests has no doubt stressed a lot of my coral to the max. At this point I'm so tempted to do a water change to start to get all of my parameters back under control but I'm afraid to yet again shock my system. I know that a lot of my corals can't take the higher alkalinity so I need to lower that first.
What would you guys suggest on here as A plan to start to get things back under control and prevent as much coral death as I can in the process. I'll note that I have several decent sized colonies that I would hate to lose such as Orange passion, ASD rainbow, RR Pink Floyd, etc. they have all seen the weather the storms thus far but I'm getting nervous that the Pink Floyd is about to go.
Here are a few shots of the tank as it currently sits. A lot of the coral is still in the garage frag tank waiting to be transferred back into the main display. The two systems are connected and share the same water and lighting schedule via radions.
I'm worried that with the combination of alkalinity stress and bayer dips, I have done too much damage and may continue to lose colonies over the next few weeks until I have nothing left.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The only things that I've found to help is to lower the lighting intensity, watch alk REALLY close (because consumption will probably go way down), and feed the fish a bit more to help give the corals nutrients to help deal with the stress.
