Balancing heavy feeding with nutrient export

[jdamon]

If you are doing any kin of water change at all, then you shouldn't have to worry about potassium.

I have an auto feeder that runs twice a day and I feed LFS "home made" frozen food (which is probably closest to papone) once a day, and I feed a strip of nori about every other day. I feed the corals four scoops of reef chili, 1tbsp oyster feast, and 2 tbls roti feast every other day.

It's funny but I have never had trouble growing algae! Usually I have to dial back feeding, or add more GFO etc. turning down or off the skimmer is not as crazy as you might think. Mine decided to overflow every day while I was on vacation, and nothing bad happened. Your rocks should be all different shades of green, red, purple when the lights are off and you shine a flashlight on them. You should not see white. When you have a bunch of hair algae you can be concerned.

 

[bogg]

Imo your going too far in one direction "clean"
so let's make sure your not deficient in potassium
and lets turn the skimmer off a couple hours a day
Let's take a few hours off the photo period
Look into adding some iodine and amino acids asap
There are also products like coral snow to help clean the tank up of any algae etc

 

[MisterP]

When you do skim is it thick nasty coffee colored skim or very light tea colored?

IME a tank that is only 6 months old willl still go through mini algae cycles. This could be cyano or anything. Your miniature ecosystem is still trying to find its balance. Bacteria has to find the right balance, nutrient input/export is trying to balance, etc.

This will take time.

 

[GroktheCube]

I noted earlier in the thread that you were hauling around buckets to do WCs.

Why not just pick up a python, and use a 20g brute for makeup water?

 

[jimrawr]

Imo your going too far in one direction "clean"
so let's make sure your not deficient in potassium
and lets turn the skimmer off a couple hours a day
Let's take a few hours off the photo period
Look into adding some iodine and amino acids asap
There are also products like coral snow to help clean the tank up of any algae etc

I'll see if my LFS can do a K test for me today. On my sunpower, 2 bulbs turn on from 7am-11pm but the tank is pretty dim for a lot of this time. Its the dimmable sunpower. Then the other 6 bulbs come on from 12-6pm and go up to 90% in the middle, and then come back down. I dose aminos with Acro Power

When you do skim is it thick nasty coffee colored skim or very light tea colored?

Skimmate is definitely a dark color and very thick, a lot of crap on the walls of the skimmer and in the cup.

I noted earlier in the thread that you were hauling around buckets to do WCs.

Why not just pick up a python, and use a 20g brute for makeup water?

Yeah I will look into this. I've done about 20% water change this last month, really didnt see any difference from them. Plan on doing another 10% tomorrow. I don't think water changes is the problem here.

That being said, I also don't have a feeling like its the feedings. For a 75g with 40g breeder sump, I think that this should be enough:

1 Cube
Half Sheet of Nori
2 Pinches of Flake
1 Pinch of Pellets
1 teaspoon of oyster feast or 2 plastic spoons of reef roids.

Its not like I have a lot of sps, we are talking about 6-7 frags. It would seem to me just the oyster feast alone should be enough to feed these frags. I think something else must be going on with the water but I could be wrong and dont know what :headwalls:

 

[GroktheCube]

I'd suggest pulling all of your pumps and checking to make sure there's no oxidation on either the magnets that hold them to the glass, or on the drive magnet. Might be worth checking the heaters too, to make sure there's no leaking.

It might also be worth tossing in some Polyfilter to see if it changes colors.

I think that much food should easily do it, so I think you're right in suspecting something else.

 

[jimrawr]

I'd suggest pulling all of your pumps and checking to make sure there's no oxidation on either the magnets that hold them to the glass, or on the drive magnet. Might be worth checking the heaters too, to make sure there's no leaking.

It might also be worth tossing in some Polyfilter to see if it changes colors.

I think that much food should easily do it, so I think you're right in suspecting something else.

Yeah I should use a polyfilter to see what happens, but I dont think its that either because everything in this tank was bought new and only about 7 months used now. Its possible, I will inspect everything.

All the SPS are dying now, not RTN or STN, but literally its like the tissue is becoming so thin that it slowly goes to the bone and then algae (cyano) starts to grow on it. Does not look like STN or RTN at all where the skin seems to look like it peals off.

 

[jimrawr]

I wonder if the Cyano is taking up the NO3 and PO4 which ends up giving me a zero reading on eveything? If this is the case, its possible the Cyano is taking up the nutrients faster than the SPS, and causing them to die. When I started this thread, things werent dying like this at all, and then I saw a nice increase in coloration when I started to feed more. Cyano grew exponentially since then as well, as is probably the only major difference in the tank along with the Angel. The way the corals are dying, I dont think its the angel.

 

[jared355]

This might be long but I'll tell you what I did when I was having sps color issues. I read a ton online and looked at a bunch of successful tanks and I took the common denominator out of all of them and came up with this. First of all my colors were very dull and nothing looked great... My polyp extension wasn't very good and I know obviously they were ****d off. A lot of successful tanks have a lot in common.

1. There fully stocked with the amount of fish the tank can support.
Corals love fish poo poo.
2. They usually feed a lot and I mean a lot. You've heard a lot about high import high export but a lot of the guys didn't export as much as you would think
3. They didn't run gfo, it's my OPINION that PO4 isn't as bad as people come out to say and a PO4 of 0 hasn't ever given me great colors but when it's elevated I don't get brown corals I get vibrant corals
4. They have nitrate, a lot of them had 10ppm or less of nitrate. Again not a lot but enough to be elevated.
5. A diversity of bacteria, I use bio pellets not so much for the nitrate lowering ability but bio pellets grow bacteria, most of them had bio pellets and would dose zeo bak.

Now there's also a ton of people who have done the complete opposite and have fantastic results too as this was my knowledge on doing research.

Besides that almost every TOTM has these params
7-8dkh
Stable ph
78f
1350 mag
400 calc
But the main thing is how stable they keep the params.

One last thing. AGE!!!! A lot of these tanks are atleast 3 years old. It takes awhile for your aquarium to habit a ton of life that is beneficial to coral.

 

[jimrawr]

This might be long but I'll tell you what I did when I was having sps color issues. I read a ton online and looked at a bunch of successful tanks and I took the common denominator out of all of them and came up with this. First of all my colors were very dull and nothing looked great... My polyp extension wasn't very good and I know obviously they were ****d off. A lot of successful tanks have a lot in common.

1. There fully stocked with the amount of fish the tank can support.
Corals love fish poo poo.
2. They usually feed a lot and I mean a lot. You've heard a lot about high import high export but a lot of the guys didn't export as much as you would think
3. They didn't run gfo, it's my OPINION that PO4 isn't as bad as people come out to say and a PO4 of 0 hasn't ever given me great colors but when it's elevated I don't get brown corals I get vibrant corals
4. They have nitrate, a lot of them had 10ppm or less of nitrate. Again not a lot but enough to be elevated.
5. A diversity of bacteria, I use bio pellets not so much for the nitrate lowering ability but bio pellets grow bacteria, most of them had bio pellets and would dose zeo bak.

Now there's also a ton of people who have done the complete opposite and have fantastic results too as this was my knowledge on doing research.

Besides that almost every TOTM has these params
7-8dkh
Stable ph
78f
1350 mag
400 calc
But the main thing is how stable they keep the params.

One last thing. AGE!!!! A lot of these tanks are atleast 3 years old. It takes awhile for your aquarium to habit a ton of life that is beneficial to coral.

Yeah I think everything you said points back to one thing for me, that I dont have enough fish in the tank. Maybe its not so much feeding a lot, and excess food doesn't feed the tank, but the symbiotic relationship between fish poop and corals I wonder can you have an SPS tank with ZERO fish, and ghost feed the tank daily to keep a low level on nitrates. Would SPS be happy in this scenario I wonder?

 

[jimrawr]

I noticed your corals looked bleached from too much light. I saw you have an ATI sunpower 8x54w? I have the same fixture and I personally have smoked the first few corals that I put into my 120 with the ati being too close to the water. I have it at 10 inches above now and corals seems to be liking that now. I have around 550 par at top of the corals.n I would check that, all you params sound fine.

I think this has been my problem in the past, I had a 400w radium on a 37gallon tank at one point and my corals looked exactly like yours. I could never get them to grow great, they had nice color but I think I was smoking them with too much light now that I have a par meter and checked the par levels on this new tank.

Also, in my opinion if you raise your light, buy a new 10 dollar sps frag or two from your LFS to test out the theory. I bet if you raise to 10 inches and put new frag in, you will be good to go if all other params are good with water. Bleached frags are qeak and sometimes never fully recover or take way too long to see results.

I know how it feels to have everything perfect and nothing grow and you scratch your head like ***? I would check that.

Thank you for the input, but I don't think its the light really. I have them ramping up and down and they aren't very high for a large portion of the day. Plus, the corals in the past were doing decently and coloring up/growing until they all turned for the worse. Nothing changed as far as lighting goes in this period so I really don't think its the lighting. I know that too much light can lead to bleaching, but that's not whats happening here. I posted my light schedule in this thread, does anyone else think maybe too much photo exposure?

I'm heading off for vacation soon and will be gone for almost 3 weeks. When I get back, I will add another 4 fish or so and see how that goes.

 

[Cyberdude]

Great thread btw. Following closely in the exact same boat. 2 year old tank. Zero success with sps. All but one are growing like crazy. Upgraded to hydras 4 inches awl. I upped my intensity from 35-45% and smoked all my frags. (They weren't doing well to begin with) same boat as my friend here. I have just cut the gfo flow by 90% and left the flow through activated carbon at 100%. Things just seem happier. In a 55 gallon I have just started heavily feeding and my remaining frags seem to like it. Only been a couple days. My skimmer is now having a field day too.

 

[jimrawr]

How close are your lights to the water is my question to you then. You can smoke your corals in a short time if the lights are too bright

Im going to guess around 10 inches or so from the water, but I am not home right now to give an exact.

 

[Savoie83]

I dose a little bit of amino acid every week and it have help my lps and sps to color up.

 

[jimrawr]

Just measured.. From the rim of the tank 7 inches, to the actual water line is about 8.5 inches, and to the first sps coral its 12 inches

 

[jimrawr]

Quick update... so thinking on the idea that maybe the cyano is taking up all the nutrients before the corals can get any, I decided to run red slime remover. After 3 days, some of the cyano is still lingering, BUT I have a decent diatom bloom. This I think kind of confirms that the cyano was taking up the nutrients, and now without a majority of that cyano nutrients clearly present as can be evidenced from the diatoms.

I havent tested yet, will try tonight