Brown to bleached, Out of ideas.

[Alex T.]

I'm with scaryperson27. When I stopped trying to keep my tank so pristine and nutrient free, things took a turn for the better. Vodka dosing worked great in the beginning, but pale and sloughing corals took a turn for the worse. I stopped dosing, I fed more heavily than I should have and sent my system into a 180 degree shock that caused a hair algae outbreak and all sorts of water issues. I knew better...but shot from the hip haphazardly and paid the price with a phosphate spike. Now my nitrates hover at around 5 and coloration and pe have come back. I thought I had flatworms, alkalinity issues and all the other routine checklist items we go through. What I should have done, (and will definitely do next time if it ever happens) is take a deep breath, relax and take my time eliminating every potential problem as the culprit. My advice to you would be to do the same.

I've posted on this before, but many tank of the month recipients purposely run "dirty" systems with exceptional results.ULNS systems need a good amount of nutrient input to keep everything from starving. If you've got the funds and the time, it can be very rewarding. But, if you're like me, you'll save yourself the hassle and give them a little pollution always in the water column for your corals and inverts. Leaving things alone is usually better than startling the system by changing something too fast. I remember reading that reef tanks are like race cars.....bad things only happen when you go too fast. I've been there and back again.

Don't believe me. Check out the nutrient parameters on these tanks of envy....

http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/current-issue/article/58-tank-of-the-month

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2009-03/totm/index.php

 

[Versus]

I'll post pictures tomorrow when the lights are on, unfortunately nothing has really improved. I have the past month though started used pellets and feeding heavier.. I would add more "Poop makers" but unfortunately the newbie fish can never get use to the current and get sucked up pretty good.

I have layed out my rock work a little lower so there is no semi direct flow on corals now its all indirect. 1 of the corals is no longer showing polyp extension. Lights seem to not make a difference on adjustment but what confuses me is, NO PE during the day. Growth is still slow, slight rtn on some. Have up'd my alk a tad (it was actually low.. at a 7. which could of been a huge reason) and ive been trying to balance that.

Still though I wonder what else there could be? Its coming up on a year since I have had these corals almost (will 3 months) and the frags have grown an extra inch on some max..

Anyway, yeah pics tomorrow with all my para's. ONLY THING bad in the system I could think of (which would be gone by now) I used that Gorilla PVC glue, its eco friendly blah blah blah not like I care and doesnt really bond but just kinda glues the pieces to each other, well it leaves this thin left over liquid that i didnt know until a fair amount after and the system was running (was on the outside of the pipes)

I think im pulling at straws though.

 

[Merfin70]

Well that's unfortunate. Interested to see the pics. My tank is not improving much either so I was hoping you were having some luck. I probably just need to give mine more time. I bleached many of my coral because I had my T5 too low and on too long. I've raised it up and recently shortened the photoperiod. Guess I'll see in a couple of months is that helps.

 

[Versus]

Sorry for the junk pictures the (hair/slime) you see is because I was cleaning the front and sides of the glass.. going to leave the back covered as "aquarium obsessed *ur doin it wrong*" had messed up my build so even covering the back in black I wouldnt of been able to keep it nice looking because of the large rear over flow box.


kh was 7 low but with in spec, ganna raise it a tad to 8.5-9 not like it will help though. My sal is at 1.27 a notch high, ganna lower to 1.24 over the course of a week. its not like I can stress the corals anymore.

raised my lights 15 inches, keep in mind that tree is about 3x that size when fully extended yet never has in my tank. I have been slowly losing coral also.

feeding twice a day pellet and a squirt of vore/oy eggs and have the skimmer on dry skim.

(test coral on right is starting with a frogskin then later corals pon birdnest/ setosa)

my coralline algae is also a very light color, everything is being affected. at this point all i can think of is my RO water is contaminated, even though the inline (since new) is showing 0 ppm.

 

[Versus]

Still no improvement, slight growth but most of them havent even transfered after a year to the rocks. softie still does not fully extend and i have shortened the time on my lights by an hour and raised them to 9 inches.

One of them has rtn spots but continues to live. a couple always seem dead with no polyps but once in a blue moon they will poke out and say "oh hey, just letting you know im still here but I hate you, hope you got poop for the holidays."

ive just been feeding pellets, sponge and phols now once a day. ph is up to 8.5 now. and changing of salts made no difference. I noticed on the under side of some the color seems to be darker.

Ill take pictures again but some are worse and some are a tad better, no real improvement. zoo's continue to just stay small and not do much. mine finally seemed to of faded after a year. (were on the rock that the softie came on)

Oddly enough I noticed a couple alg bubbles, this is after my last tank was shut down due to them over running the system. some how they managed to survive in the same water they sat for 8-9 months in 0 lights.

 

[ptr13]

I read in reef aquarium that raising Ca and alk too fast tend to bleach corals

 

[Merfin70]

Sorry to hear that Versus. I just past the 9 month mark on my new tank and I am FINALLY starting to see some improvement in colors on my SPS Frags. Unlike you though, I had good growth on many of my pieces, just pale and/or tan corals with little life. I've done little but my weekly water changes, carbon/GFO changes once a month and good skimming. I did change two things though can't of course say they are the reason for my improved colors. I removed my filter sock and I had begun to supplement Iodine a small bit. If anything, I'd say the removal of the filter sock seemed to bring about the greatest change. Perhaps our systems are too clean though in my case I doubt that. Do you run a sock on your system?

 

[Merfin70]

Any better news for us? How often do you fee the fish? Any additional algae showing up?

 

[funkejj]

Ok I have one question, can your mag be to high? You said in your first post (yes I know this was a while ago) your mag was 1500 which is the highest that salifert tests show. What are the chances it is way higher than this? You say you were adding a squirt of mag daily so I am just curious if this might be some cause of this.

 

[Versus]

Well after changing back to MH they have changed a good bit and even running a radium still washed out colors. I cant even really tell what is what anymore for the most part. Hopefully the new bulb I purchased will bring out the colors more but its been a frustrating couple of years.

 

[ChicagoReefOne]

I don't know maybe others will back me up but that's looking pretty darn good!

 

[sahin]

Those stags looks beautiful. I do see that your corals are somewhat pale. Have you tried dosing a couple of drops of Amino Acids per week? Honestly, if ypu've tried everything else, then buy the following: KZ Amino Acids Concentrate for SPS corals and KZ Coral Vitaliser. After dosing these two my corals got darker and more colourful. I dont run the Zeovit system, but do use those two.

Start with one, dose only HALF what they say on the bottles.

 

[sqwat]

yo bro i think you are trying to hard sit back and let things stable dont rush and wory so much.dont vodka dose eather youre tank has no need for beeing so understocked i personally think there is no need whatsoever its just to risky but it works for some people.in the last pic it looks good keep that up and just enjoy youre progress so far if it was easy everyonr would do it.once you fihure this system out you will be so satisfied.

 

[Versus]

I dose nothing now just 2 part / mag .. Put on a brs gfo/carbon filter last night..

Its the fact that , what you see is 3 years growth and I would assume there would be more and the colors are a lot lighter.. The light looking corals should be , all of the ones I have in the tank are some sort of bright vibrant "designer" coral .

Awhile back I was dosing some coral vit and AA's (not kz aa's though) , My main concern and what has been consistant through out the years is I get hardly any polyp extension during the day, aside from the sunset you see and tiny rose milli the polyps only extend at night and the extension is not that great.

Oh and that blue stag :/ its supposed to be purple heh.

Here is an example, see the back right , the sps right in front of the kenya tree (that was a tester coral, in the other tank it was about 9" high, in mine its never gone past 4" ... Well that sps in front of it, was this.

:headwally::headwally::headwally::headwally::headwally::headwally:

Yet if you look at the base you can see the color, some how its turned into an odd pink lemonade

I removed some rock work trying to get more flow around the tank. doubt thats my issue though.