Apparently i have gotten in over my head, please help

C

cedwards04

New member
I have been in the hobby for about a year now, set up my current tank around january of this year. 40 breeder with 20l sump. I am running a pair of hydra 26hd lights, 12 inches from the water surface.

I started out with lps corals, and everything has been great. Very nice color and growth. A few months ago i started adding some sps pieces, and while i am seeing growth, they are all losing color badly. Everything is turning white. I still have polyps, and they are still extending nicely, the frags are even growing, but losing color. Specifically, my problem is with my birdsnest, purple german digitata, and 1 acro. I jave a couple other sps pieces that seem ok for the moment.

I use red sea test kits, and my alk seems to want to stay right at 7dkh. My ca is staying right at 450ppm. My mg is staying at 1400. I thought my ca seemed high and my alk seemed low so i tried dosing alk, but it seems like i can raise it up after the initial dose, and it almost immediately is back at 7dkh, without ca being consumed. So i feel like it is just precipitating out.

Salinity is 1.025
Temp 78.5-79 (controlled with apex)
Nitrates are 0.

I do not have a phosphate test. I need to get one but after looking at reviews, none of them appear to be accurate. I will say that i am struggling to keep a small ball of chaeto alive, and do not have any algae growing in the tank, so i dont think i have a phosphate issue, but i do not know 100% for sure.

I had my lights set to the brs ab+ simulated spectrum. I think i may have been hitting the corals with too much light, but i am not sure. I recently adjusted the lights to be at 70% intensity of that spectrum. My theory behind that was brs tested it on a 24" deep tank and my tank is only 16" deep.

Any suggestions? Should i just wait a few weeks with the new lighting schedule and see what happens?
 
My guess, you have no nutrients and are blasting them with light hence paling. Get your nitrates to around 5ppm and I would bet things will turn around for you. Feed your fish more quality food is the best way to raise it. If you are feeding fish, you have enough phosphate in your tank for sps to grow. Hth’s
 
I agree sounds like your water is stripped of everything. Start slowly ramping up your feeding and observe the tank. If you still can't get your nutrients up you might have to look into nitrate dosing.

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What type of flow do you have, what's the difference in price between the SPS that is doing well vs the one that is bleaching out? SPS likes lots of flow, where did you get your SPS? Where they under LEDs before you bought them.

Could be lack of flow, lower your light intensity for a week see if it makes a difference. Could be both.
 
Thank you for the suggestions!

It makes sense to feed more as that would probably help my chaeto to grow more as well. Currently the tank is stocked with a clown pair, a firefish, and a carpenter wrasse. I feed 1/4 cube of frozen mysis and 1/6 cube of frozen brine shrimp everyday. I melt the pieces in a small amount of tank water and use a pipette to squirt it in the tank. This is about what the fish can eat in 2-3 minutes. Maybe i am starving the tank? I have always tried to feed so that nothing is wasted. So how much do you think i should increase this?

The tank has 2 jebao pp4 wavemakers on opposite ends of the tank, they are set to w2 mode and turned nearly all the way up. I am running right at 500gph through the sump after accounting for head pressure. I figure i am at 50x flow or maybe a little higher.

Some of my sps came from 2 trusted local fish stores, some came from a local hobbyist, all sps came from led lighting prior to me getting it. One lfs uses radions, the other uses kessils, the other hobbyist uses black boxes. Oddly enough the sps from the black boxes seems to be doing the best. The ones that were under radions are the worst.
 
The varying degrees of health don’t necessarily correspond to the lighting thenxorals came from, so many other parameters may cause corals to be stressed in a new environment..
Like nighthawk and naturalreef, I’d bet your issue is simply super low nutrients. And a little more food for the fish and/or a couple more fish may solve your problem.
Just don’t start feeding like crazy.. increase it slowly..
And definitely get yourself a po4 test kit..
My favorite is the Elos High Resolution po4 test kit. Not the regular Elos po4 test kit.
The Hanna ulr phosphorus tester isn’t so bad either..
Nyos also makes a decent test kit. Similar to the Elos..
Please let us know how it goes in the future with more feeding.
 
I’d say that’s a good start. Feed like that for a couple weeks while testing n each weekend.. see if you start to get a reading for n or if the corals begin to color up a bit.. if nothing, increase again.
 
I also agree on feeding more to increase nutrients, should help a lot. You have good flow, the PP pumps on W2 can move a lot of water. If I run my 2 PP-8 pumps on W2 or Else mode even on lowest speed the sand gets moved around, at 100% if a full blown sand storm.
 
So i have been feeding heavier, i notice now that my fish do not eat all of the food and there is always some left circulating around in the tank. Still reading 0 nitrates, but i am noticing considerably more growth on the tank glass. I am having to wipe the glass nearly every day now. Pretty obvious my phosphate levels are increasing.

I think i am going to try nitrate dosing. I have been reading up on it a good bit and i think i will give it a shot and see how that goes. I feel like i am just wasting food by overfeeding. Picking up some potassium nitrate today and I'll start really slowly and see what happens.
 
I dont know how many fish i could add without them getting territorial. I feel like im about at my limit of fish for a 40 breeder. Pair of clowns, carpenter wrasse, firefish, and recently added a basslet.
 
Its more like every other day, but im pretty anal about it staying spotless. Definitely am seeing increased growth on the glass although i still have no algae growing in the tank anywhere and my chaeto is still struggling. Thinking about throwing part of it away even though it is already a pretty small piece.
 
I don’t think how often you clean the glass should be correlated to nutrient levels.. there is probably a loose relationship but it shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a sign of impending nutrient doom..
I have seen low nutrient tanks that need to be cleaned daily and I have seen high nutrient tanks- like my own where the glass stays clean for several days.. even with n over 20ppm and p over .15..

I think you could probably add a couple more small wrasses- leopard or yellow wrasses are non aggressive..there are some good cardinal options.. bangaii or blue streak also non agressive.. Pygmy angel? Some blennies as well.. you have options...
 
I'll see how nitrate dosing works out. I dosed enough today to theoretically raise it by 0.5ppm, I dont know how fast i should go with it but i plan to dose every other day until i see some results.
 
Looks like i need to increase dosing. I dosed enough that it should have equaled 0.5ppm over the last 2 days. So theoretically i figured i would be at 1ppm. Tests 0ppm still. So i dosed enough for 1ppm, waited about 6hrs and tested again. Still 0ppm. Im going to dose again today for what should be 2ppm, and test again this evening. Im thinking my calculations may be off a little. I doubt the tank is absorbing it that quickly. I know my test kit is good bc i regularly test my friends tank for him and I'm getting 10ppm on his water.

**edit: i realized i mixed my solution wrong. I was suppose to do 1 tablespoon/8oz of rodi, i did 1 teaspoon/8oz... i have fixed the solution and dosed enough to equal 1ppm. We will see what happens.
 
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I suggest you test one hour after dosing. When you wait a long time to test, some of the nitrate is being absorbed by the system.
Have you gotten a po4 test kit yet?
 
Its been almost 5 hrs since i dosed the tank. Had church tonight so couldnt test an hr after dosing. I am getting measurable nitrate levels now, just barely. Im pretty much right between 0 and 2, so I'll call it 1ppm, which is about what it should be after correcting my solution concentration.

Im not sure how quickly i should raise these levels. I dont want to go to far too fast. Im thinking somewhere between 2 and 5ppm is about where i want to stay right?

I still do not have a phosphate test kit.
 
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