Brittle SPS/tissue receding at tips

[Arkayology]

I was looking at my tank this morning and I noticed that a couple of the tips of my joe the coral had algae on them where the tissue had receded. Same on my miyagi tort. All colors are looking normal, PE maybe down a little bit on some coral, but others are showing still.

40g (24x24x16) tank with 10g sump with about 38g of water combined
sg:1.025 (refractometer)
ph:8.0 (salifert)
temp:78
alk:6.7-6.9 (salifert)
mg:1300 (salifert)
ca:430 (salifert)
nitrate:<.2 (salifert)
phos:0.0 (hannah checker)

I have been running zeovit for the last month and a half, dosing:
.1ml zeostart3
2 drops zeobak every day (I just changed out my media a week ago)
1 drop SP a day
I have suspended dosing Coral Vit and Phols Xtra as I am having some brown algae issues.

Using a radion gen1 at 55% @ 8'' above water line
Dosing b-ionic 2part on BRS dosers about 10ml of each solution a day

I think my alk might be too low? I am not having much coralline growth lately, and much of the stuff on the back wall is receding, which makes me think its an alk issue. Most people who run zeovit say lower alk is better (6.5-8), but I have always run my tanks at about 9-9.5alk and 420 ca. Do you think this lowering of alk could be the culprit of the tissue recession on the tips of these couple sps and the brittleness? I am not sure how quickly it went down, so it might be due to a sudden drop in alk. I want to nip this in the butt before it becomes a larger issue. I decided to dose 1.5ml of alk this morning to start raising the alk up as I think this might be the issue. I am not sure if it is related or not, but when I fragged the corals they seemed extremely brittle. Since I am getting some brown algae on the sand, I don't think this is a zeovit overdrive issue? Any thoughts?

 

[danil]

I would ask this question on zeovit forum.

 

[Arkayology]

I would ask this question on zeovit forum.

I did. Nobody is biting either. I have increased my alk slowly from 6.8 to 7.8 over the last day and will keep it around 8 to see if anything improves. I have not noticed any new tips receding, so that is a plus.

 

[clowndude]

I've been battling the same issues with my tank. I've read it's either alk swings, stray voltage, light burning tips or flow.

 

[Moser]

I was looking at my tank this morning and I noticed that a couple of the tips of my joe the coral had algae on them where the tissue had receded. Same on my miyagi tort. All colors are looking normal, PE maybe down a little bit on some coral, but others are showing still.

40g (24x24x16) tank with 10g sump with about 38g of water combined
sg:1.025 (refractometer)
ph:8.0 (salifert)
temp:78
alk:6.7-6.9 (salifert)
mg:1300 (salifert)
ca:430 (salifert)
nitrate:<.2 (salifert)
phos:0.0 (hannah checker)

I have been running zeovit for the last month and a half, dosing:
.1ml zeostart3
2 drops zeobak every day (I just changed out my media a week ago)
1 drop SP a day
I have suspended dosing Coral Vit and Phols Xtra as I am having some brown algae issues.

Using a radion gen1 at 55% @ 8'' above water line
Dosing b-ionic 2part on BRS dosers about 10ml of each solution a day

I think my alk might be too low? I am not having much coralline growth lately, and much of the stuff on the back wall is receding, which makes me think its an alk issue. Most people who run zeovit say lower alk is better (6.5-8), but I have always run my tanks at about 9-9.5alk and 420 ca. Do you think this lowering of alk could be the culprit of the tissue recession on the tips of these couple sps and the brittleness? I am not sure how quickly it went down, so it might be due to a sudden drop in alk. I want to nip this in the butt before it becomes a larger issue. I decided to dose 1.5ml of alk this morning to start raising the alk up as I think this might be the issue. I am not sure if it is related or not, but when I fragged the corals they seemed extremely brittle. Since I am getting some brown algae on the sand, I don't think this is a zeovit overdrive issue? Any thoughts?

Check the actual flow through your zeolites. It sounds to me like you should reduce it anyway. A common cause for this when starting Zeo is too much flow/ too quick nutrient stripping from the water column. You should time how long it takes to fill a 1l jug and then workout l/min of flow.

Alk should be 6.5-8. For Zeo. Alk of 9 will cause tip recession.

Mo

 

[sahin]

Check the actual flow through your zeolites. It sounds to me like you should reduce it anyway. A common cause for this when starting Zeo is too much flow/ too quick nutrient stripping from the water column. You should time how long it takes to fill a 1l jug and then workout l/min of flow.

Alk should be 6.5-8. For Zeo. Alk of 9 will cause tip recession.

Mo

Agree with Mo completely. When I ran Zeovit some years ago, the same happened to me. Make sure the flow through the reactor is correct.

Alk for zeovit should be 6.5-7.5. No higher or that will cause burnt tips too.

Dosing too much bac or zeofood can cause this as well. Try and verify all dosings and parameters with someone on the zeovit site. Alexander and the others were always there to help in this regard...at least when I used to visit.

 

[Arkayology]

Flow through the reactor is about 45GPH-ish. I have been keeping a close eye on the alk. When I converted, alk dropped from 9.0dkh to 7.0dkh. It has been pretty stable around there, but I was just unsure if that was alright. When I was using biopellets for about a year, I kept my dkh around 9.9.5 and I had excellent growth and color.

I will make sure to keep the dkh under 8 for now on. I have checked my zeovit dosing with a few experts and have been keeping everything on the dot to what I have been directed to dose, so I am not worried about overdosing. I will be watching for abnormal algae blooms as the zeo part of my tank matures. If brittle tips/receding tips are signs of overdosing, is that from nutrient stripping? If so, I am sure there are undetectable amounts of phos and nitrates as I am getting some brown algae on the sand.

Thanks for the input everyone!

 

[Moser]

The stone dosing is 1 litre per 100G water.
If your vol is 40G, allowing 10% for rock etc, your water volume is 36G. This needs 0.36 litres of stones. approx 1/3 litre.

The flow should be 200- 400 litres per hour for 1 litre of stones.

Your flow should be 72 litres per hour - 144 litres per hour max.
If you've just started Zeo, you should be aiming for the lower limit.

You're running about 200 litres per hour- well over the upper limit. This will damage your corals.

You can't compensate for excess flow or two high volume of stones in your system by dosing more solutions. Your corals will be too sick to feed, so the excess solutions will just feed algae, which can still grow in such conditions, in fact they have no corals to compete with, so preferentially feed on your amino's etc. This is why many people fail. They think there is algae, so there must be too many nutrients, so they up their stone flow/ volume and /or dose more start3. This further strips the water column and the downward spiral begins…..

Brown slime algae/ cyano/ brown furry algae are all most often due to overdosing one or other solution. Because we don't know what is in each solution, we won't know if we are double dosing (several solutions contain amino's for example), so it's easy to over do it. This causes the algae probe associated with Zeo. The ideal way to overcome this is to do things very slowly and only add a solution/ up dosing when you know the effect of each in YOUR reef. If you rush, you won't know what is doing what and what you might be overdosing something, but will never find out what…..

Mo

 

[sahin]

The stone dosing is 1 litre per 100G water.
If your vol is 40G, allowing 10% for rock etc, your water volume is 36G. This needs 0.36 litres of stones. approx 1/3 litre.

The flow should be 200- 400 litres per hour for 1 litre of stones.

Your flow should be 72 litres per hour - 144 litres per hour max.
If you've just started Zeo, you should be aiming for the lower limit.

You're running about 200 litres per hour- well over the upper limit. This will damage your corals.

You can't compensate for excess flow or two high volume of stones in your system by dosing more solutions. Your corals will be too sick to feed, so the excess solutions will just feed algae, which can still grow in such conditions, in fact they have no corals to compete with, so preferentially feed on your amino's etc. This is why many people fail. They think there is algae, so there must be too many nutrients, so they up their stone flow/ volume and /or dose more start3. This further strips the water column and the downward spiral begins"¦..

Brown slime algae/ cyano/ brown furry algae are all most often due to overdosing one or other solution. Because we don't know what is in each solution, we won't know if we are double dosing (several solutions contain amino's for example), so it's easy to over do it. This causes the algae probe associated with Zeo. The ideal way to overcome this is to do things very slowly and only add a solution/ up dosing when you know the effect of each in YOUR reef. If you rush, you won't know what is doing what and what you might be overdosing something, but will never find out what"¦..

Mo

Mo outlined it all. :lol:

You really need to figure out the flow properly. Time how long it takes to fill a measuring jug etc for 1 minute and then work out the flow properly, then adjust as required.

With the Zeobac, isnt it 2 drops (for your tank size) every OTHER day? Not everyday. This is after a zeolite change. Twice weekly after that is fine.

With the Zeovit system you have to be fairly precise with everything, and it is really a thin line.

Hopefully with the adjustment of the flow, the corals will recover.