Brown to bleached, Out of ideas.

[Versus]

System has been up since nov, bulbs are couple months old (8x24w t5) (tried adjusting heights it is currently at 4inch above water).. Blaah blah. system size is 69g + sump. Flow tunze 6055 rear across/mp40w front across

Rock is from a previous system no copper was ever used, it sat in a container for about a year (sealed but circulating) to kill a bad algae outbreak i could not get under control. all that was added was that uhm.. Forget the name some sort of powder (small bottle/tan) to help it along.

Feeding dosing etc. -Have tried 3 diff salts just to be sure it wasnt that. Feeding mysis for the fish (6small - were added to see if i need fish poop to help the frags along). Daily dosing is in the morning 20ml of alk 20ml of calc every 2 days a squirt of mag. 2 drops sponge power 1/4 cap phols xtra. Night time feeding is tsp oy feast and a few drops of plankton. every week ill add a couple drops of AA and a couple of iodine. rarely i might add a squirt of microvore or reefsnow as i was trying anything at one point to get the corals to color up.


Anyway I had an issue a bit ago as I purchased some frags and they stated to fairly slowly brown, but i had algae so i stepped back on the amount of dosing i was doing as it was quite a bit. corals have all been getting very light in color. I have also messed around with keeping my skimmer wet for a month and dry for another. neither effected they corals they continued to bleach.


alk 8.5 elos
calc 410 elos
ph 8.25day 8.09 night new ph probe and double checked with elos ph
temp 78.7-80.0
salinity 1.26 (refract calibrated with 35 solution)
mag 1500 sal
phos is done with a an api kit so its hard to tell from the first 3 selections but ill just say its low or not showing up.
nitrate 0 sal


I was getting some diatoms when dosing vodka and mb7 so i stopped slowly. The frags have been growing on their plugs but really show almost 0 PE during the day, they use to show a huge amount at night but now frags like the cheapo frogskin in the back (was a tester piece) is showing no polyps regardless during night or day.

I have plenty of examples these are just a couple though.

Third pic the back left thats supposed to be a pink lem :/

 

[jfingers8]

not saying this is your problem but i had a similar situation all my param were good and i was so frustrated because i couldn't figure out what was wrong and it was something so simple. My skimmer works good but my venturi gets clogged fast so it wouldn't working up to par like it was supposed to. When i fixed that problem everything returned to normal in about 3 weeks. Do you have poor PE as well?

 

[Versus]

Day PE is pretty bad at night the come out a lil which is expected but ive never had sps hardly come out at all during the day. i wish it was something like my skimmer just not working well but it is

 

[sps1206]

Where do you get your water from? Do you use RO/DI? If you use your own RO/DI unit, what is your TDS reading?

 

[Versus]

vertex puratek (100gpd) the tds on the meter it comes with (inline) shows 0 unit has only been used for a few months.

 

[Versus]

anyone?

 

[sps1206]

Well, it is really difficult to diagnose. The only thing I can think of is to try and examne your corals closely for AEFW. If you have them, that could definately be causing your acros to look unhealthy.

 

[klepto]

What are your lighting specs? Photoperiod? Bulb combo/age?

How often are you doing water changes? Are you curing the new water before adding it? (just out of curiosity)

Did you bring in any live sand/rock from a healthy tank to re-seed that rock? If not, perhaps your tank is lacking biological diversity.

If you have already changed salt three times, you may want to settle on a salt and give that a few months before making another significant change in your husbandry.

How consistently are your parameters at those numbers? It sounds like you are doing a good bit of testing. Keep that up and you will sort this out! Your corals look like they have some potential, and once you work out a good system, the growth will surely come.

What fishes do you have in there? How often/much mysis are you feeding?

Are you running carbon?

I was having some serious issues with pale colors. I started running TLF hydrocarbon on my tank (probably too much- too fast) and many of my SPS eventually turned pale. I'm running less carbon now with good water quality.

Over the last month, I have been feeding more mysis and other fresh seafood and I dropped organic carbon dosing (vinegar) almost completely. Colors have started to come back much faster than expected.

These are merely my experiences and thoughts, and they will not necessarily be helpful for your situation Versus...

 

[scaryperson27]

I had the same problem when my tank was about your age. I was doing a lot of dosing, water changes of about %40-%60 a month, skimming hard, dosing vodka along with amino acids, strontium, magnesium, lugol's solution. I was feeding phytoplankton and nano reef to my tank. As soon as I gave up my dosing schedule due to loosing hope and stopped feeding the corals, I started seeing improvements. I feel that your tank has to hit a puberty before it becomes truly seasoned enough for SPS corals. The only thing that I dosed after giving up that schedule is the microbacter 7.

It's funny that when my nitrates, phos, nitrites, and ammonia were not measurable on the sensitive tests that I was using, my corals looked terrible and died. Now my nitrates ride between 5-10, phosphates usually at or a little lower than .25 and the rest are pretty low and my corals look a million times better. Let your reef go for a little bit and see how it reacts. I wouldn't even keep doing the phyto because it's dead.

The moral of the story is, I became a slacker, now my reef works. Who would have thunk..??

 

[Versus]

Klep/Scary

I was dosing A LOT of different things before, I suppose now I will stick to the basic "Trio" and forget everything else my tank doesnt need.

As of right now I am doing about a little under 1/4 of my "AQUARIUMS" water in a change. ( around every 2 weeks give or take a couple days) no idea what the exact volume of my changes are.


Current bulbs in the fixture (ati 4x24's two of em) 2 fiji purps 2gman day's 4 pro blue's. 11:30am to 6:30pm dawn/dusk comes on 30min before and 30min after. few months old (around 3) I am debating removing the day's for aquablue's


Carbon I have a large bag of kz's carbon just sitting in the sump.

I did not bring any sand from my old tank, Because that tank was having issues and the reason I broke it down. The rock is from that system and even though I see corralline. The rock sat in a container (the brute i now use for making RO) for about 10 months in the dark. No heater or anything but its always about 76 in my house. The salinity in the container was probably way off so I cant imagine to much survived but there are little things that made it I suppose. I added a deeper sand bed its 1/4 in the front but about 2 1/2 in the back.

I only have 4 blue fin damsels and 1 honey. I am feeding (i thaw my food in the fridge then pour it on a paper towel to get rid of "who knows" the liquid they are frozen with).

I feed a pinch of mysis once a day and some zooplankton (about a quarter of a cube) (Hikaru\san fran)


And even though something might not work for me, I am just glad people are giving ideas. Ive been in this hobby a long time but with my previous tanks i never had issues until i added stuff from other peoples tanks. Now im paying attention to my tank more and now my sps look like crap.

I am even debating changing my lighting, i doubt it will "change" anything but im pulling at straws trying to find a solution.

 

[reefinder]

your tank has not finished cycling fish tanks can take a year or two to fully mature, and your lights are only 4 inches of the water, try moving lights up 5 inches and make your daylight photo period cut in half for two weeks then slowly move your photo period back to normal without moving the systems height.

 

[reefinder]

also dont dose any crap you are not testing for, and hold off on the water changes this week, a tank needs a while to adjust so changing large amounts of water all the time will throw off the balance of a tank.

 

[Versus]

well i assume it has finished cycling, ive stopped dosing. bulbs are getting older so not as bright (tried at different levels anyway above the tank) corals are super light. I cant get a pick cause its night time but, most of them are a very light brown (i thought one was dead but it still has the sweet smell to it, just no PE)

Been doing water changes and nothing, double checked PH and its fine. salinity shows 1.26 still. I did notice on one of the corals a couple "white" (jujubee size) areas towards the base. ive never seen any bugs or anything.

And corals seem to be growing slower, I no longer put any kind of zeo, or supplements in the tank. a small dash of oyster eggs every few days...

Could they possibly be underfed? im really only having to empty my skimmer every 3 weeks or so. Would this cause access bleaching and low PE at day?

Even the birds nest has gone from something small to only about a silver dollar size in uhm, its been a long time. heh. slowly going to come up on a year.


Also the tree still has not had good extension so whatever is going on its not just effecting the SPS. (yet everything still very very slowly grows)

 

[M007]

So to recap you started with a dead system. (Rocks dark, no heat, no food, sketchy SG). New sand and new water. This environment was support what again? Fish will survive since they require feeding and basic water perams. What you needed to do was start with a leather coral, zoos, GSP, etc as see where that goes. Once they start show signs of life move on to the more sensile coral. Did you seed your newly born system with any kind of bacteria Zeo start or MB7? You've stopped dosing (good idea) now try some bacteria supplements and simple corals. Keep your fish, might even add 2 or 3 more, get some simple coral and see where that takes you. After this time you should be seing some significant coraline forming. Just a note about supplements, I know a few people who do nothing but feed their fish and keep basic perams right and steady and have awesome SPS dominated tanks. From what i've read of this thread you have another year to go before you're ready for any acros. Once you think you're ready go with a monti. Good luck, with some patience you'll get there.

 

[Versus]

So to recap you started with a dead system. (Rocks dark, no heat, no food, sketchy SG). New sand and new water. This environment was support what again? Fish will survive since they require feeding and basic water perams. What you needed to do was start with a leather coral, zoos, GSP, etc as see where that goes. Once they start show signs of life move on to the more sensile coral. Did you seed your newly born system with any kind of bacteria Zeo start or MB7? You've stopped dosing (good idea) now try some bacteria supplements and simple corals. Keep your fish, might even add 2 or 3 more, get some simple coral and see where that takes you. After this time you should be seing some significant coraline forming. Just a note about supplements, I know a few people who do nothing but feed their fish and keep basic perams right and steady and have awesome SPS dominated tanks. From what i've read of this thread you have another year to go before you're ready for any acros. Once you think you're ready go with a monti. Good luck, with some patience you'll get there.

Well, semi dead. Even though the rocks had been shut off from light or even water changes etc... Things still managed to continue to live after several months when put in the new tank. (I started mb7 then went to zeo start.. the bleaching was happening so I stopped dosing almost everything besides the basics cal/alk/mag) I am slowly getting coralline but its not exactly the explosion you would normally see (in fact even that bleaches out)

 

[ghostman]

I've had a similar problem as you lingering for a couple months. I have the same lights, skim heavily, and do frequent water changes. I had 2 superman montis, one was bleached, the other was vibrant blue/red. I also had little polyp extension for a few months. I played with my lights, I altered my vodka dosing, I added more fish, etc. This has turned around since I began feeding Rod's food more, and cutting out any supplement other than Ca, Alk, and Mg. I have seen a big turnaround with better colors, more polyp extension, and faster growth. I agree with Scary, keep it simple for a while, maybe your tank is TOO clean and sterile to actually work!! HTH

 

[bmiller1234]

2 Words to solve you problem...

REEF CHILI

I have been battling the same problem and have narrowed it down to sterility. I had a way too clean tank with carbon dosing and low bioload and kick *** skimmer. I started feeding reef chili about 2 weeks ago and I am already seeing an improvement.

Good Luck

 

[M007]

Have you tried cutting back your flow in the tank?

 

[Grant W]

you seem to be doing a lot of tinkering for such a young tank I think you need to slow down a bit and let things stabilize. Do 10% weekly water changes with 1 brand of salt and let your nitrate go up to maybe 5 or 10 and add a couple of small fish. Biggest thing would be ease up on the tinkering

 

[Merfin70]

Any updates Versus? Things improving ?