bummer...

Danny_B

Danny_B

New member
So....my mixed reef has been doing good....then .... chaeto forest quit growing....i never saw any nitrates, had to prune it weekly, and melted away. So I pulled it out..... the next week went down hill....nitrates shot up over 100, sps started dying I did lots of large water changes... didnt help...tore rock out and vacuum looking for dead snail or conch....nothing dead... ive lost so much sps.... small milli colony, 2 birdnest colony, 5 different acros, monti .....grrr.... duncan colony wouldnt open so its at a friends house. Lps all fine besides that....so frustrating that I couldnt find any "wrong" or cause for nitrates. I dont feed a lot. Bioload is oc. clown, purple firefish, sixline wrasse, starry blenny, bangaii cardinal, coral banded shrimp. Anyone had chaeto stop growing and melt? I now have 3 varities of caulerpa in the sump...nitrate at 80 ish. Trying to get back homeostasis......bummed.
 
Bummer is right!

Keep us posted. Maybe something will stick out that someone can latch onto as a culprit.
 
dang, I thought you've solved the problem cause I didn't hear from you after getting off the phone...

did you add anything new or doing anything different since the "crash"? maybe turn up your mp10s to stir anything that might be rotting (maybe something you missed). how are the fishies? what salt are you using to do WC?

I would take any cheato out and let your WC and skimming do the job. never heard of cheato melting away...
 
Danny_B said:
So....my mixed reef has been doing good....then .... chaeto forest quit growing....i never saw any nitrates, had to prune it weekly, and melted away. So I pulled it out..... the next week went down hill....nitrates shot up over 100, sps started dying I did lots of large water changes... didnt help...tore rock out and vacuum looking for dead snail or conch....nothing dead... ive lost so much sps.... small milli colony, 2 birdnest colony, 5 different acros, monti .....grrr.... duncan colony wouldnt open so its at a friends house. Lps all fine besides that....so frustrating that I couldnt find any "wrong" or cause for nitrates. I dont feed a lot. Bioload is oc. clown, purple firefish, sixline wrasse, starry blenny, bangaii cardinal, coral banded shrimp. Anyone had chaeto stop growing and melt? I now have 3 varities of caulerpa in the sump...nitrate at 80 ish. Trying to get back homeostasis......bummed.
Click to expand...

Did you change anything with your fuge light? Or change bulb recently?
 
You know, the exact same thing happened to me about 2 years ago on my old tank. There was no obvious cause, just a slow die off at first followed by a massive crash. Here is what I concluded: I had a very robust population of LPS and SPS, but I am a bit of a minimalist with my tank (plus my job kept me really busy) needless to say I did not dose with calcium or do many water changes. Additionally, I had a very deep and very old sand bed as well that I never vacuumed.
So, here is my set up for what I call "old tank syndrome": My lack of adequate water changes in addition to not dosing with calcium and buffer caused massive pH swings at night (due a low dka). This caused some of my SPS to die off. This increased decayed material in addition to my saturated sand bed overwhelmed my nitrification system in my tank causing big nitrate spikes and further pH swings, thus propagating the whole cycle again.
Water changes are essential during this point but the problem is all the pH swings and nitrate spikes have already cause more die off in my tank and I was fighting a loosing battle.

So what did I learn? (This is the only bright side to any loss in a tank, to look a what happened and learn from it so it does not happen again) If I am going to keep LPS/SPS, it is critical to maintain my tanks chemistry and thus a stable pH. In regards to sand (and there will be debate on this); I keep it stirred up either vacuumed, with a good aggressive gobie or stir it up with your hand.

Reef keeping is not just about having a pretty tank, it about keeping and maintaining a micro-environment. What goes into and out of it, what it's happening within in it, and the ability to control and anticipate any changes to that homeostasis which provides the environment that will support a beautiful tank.
 
Something could have happened to kill off the denitrifying bacteria in the tank. With them gone there would be a natural rise in nitrates.
 
parameters

parameters

Sorry to hear about the losses, that really suks

+ 10 mvergas summed up my approach and experience. Keeping consistent/solid chemistry is key and I'd add to that that an Apex or something that tracks/displays the history of parameters is a HUGE help in knowing whats going on. (you can select parameters and view them in the same graph to discover correlations/relationships between parameters. Example, I just found my pH and ORP to be pretty much inversely related.) Add to that that you can automate responses to many parameters, example: dose kalk ATO and kill CA reactor at night during pH drop.
 
If a macro "melts" or goes sexual, everything it had locked away is released back into the water column. The only time a macro algae truly exports nutrients from the system is when you trim it and throw those pieces away.
 
evolved said:
The only time a macro algae truly exports nutrients from the system is when you trim it and throw those pieces away.
Click to expand...

Very true. So that could easily be the source of the nitrates. But since cheato doesn't go sexual the mystery is what caused it's decline and release of nutrients?
 
I've kept my tank nitrate down using brightwell bacteria 7 and Continuum Aquatics Bacter Gen-M (testing both). It kept my nitrate at 40 instead of 100 :/ (yes, you heard me right, my nitrate was hovering around 100ppm, with no coral/fish deaths!)

Anyone think this will help if its actually caused from bacteria dieoff?
 
Sorry to hear of this. But it brings up a question Ive been meaning to ask, because I feel like I went thru a similar situation about 6 months ago. I got a little lazy with removing/breaking off some cheato and getting rid of it and water changes, and I had a bit of an HA bloom and lost any SPS I had in the tank (which wasnt much, but I had a couple I really liked!) The HA is much more under control now (I need new filters for my RO/DI to finish the 'issues' I think I have)

Now my question: How often does anyone replace the light over the fuge for growing chaeto? I use a sprial bulb from HD, on one of those clip on metal fixtures. Do these lights lose power after a certain amount of time?

The next big purchase for my tank is an Apex or something to more closely monitor params.
 
I had chaeto in my refugium suddenly melt away about two years ago. Didn't cause very big problems, don't know what did it. It's a 26 gallon cube with a maybe 10 gallon sump, and at the time it was a new tank, had zoas/palys & photosynthetic gorgonians, was doing 5 gallon water changes weekly. I hadn't harvested the chaeto in awhile, and it was pretty much filling the 'fuge. Then suddenly it melted. I changed some water, sucked out the melting stuff, and didn't have any problems, replaced the chaeto later. Sorry, don't remember what the water parameters were at the time, I had them written own, but maybe it's gone.

Lighting in this tiny fuge is a 10k Ecoxotic stunner.
 
Another consideration in the loss of the macro algae, could be if you we're running a phos remover, if those level drop too low then you cannot support a good population of macro algae.
 
cheato

cheato

Could Cheato run out of nitrate, collapse and release its PO4 and NO4, starting a chain reaction of bad things?
 
Fig70g said:
Now my question: How often does anyone replace the light over the fuge for growing chaeto? I use a sprial bulb from HD, on one of those clip on metal fixtures. Do these lights lose power after a certain amount of time?

The next big purchase for my tank is an Apex or something to more closely monitor params.
Click to expand...

In my experience, the light over your macro algae does not matter much, just as long is it is close to 10k. I am running the same bulb myself. One thing to keep in mind when debulking cheato is that the new growth is on the periphery of the ball. Also in the middle of the ball there is almost for certain a good amount of detritus which is released into the water column when you trim the cheato. So I like to pull the old stuff from the bottom of the ball. Just my two cents.
 
Generally when lights go bad they help grow algae...not sure wiht the spiral guys though. I did recently switch to LED on my fuge just to be sure though.

I do think that low nitrate/posphate could cause the death of the cheato then as mentioned before it puts back everything it's holding once it dies.
 
frogg21 said:
Could Cheato run out of nitrate, collapse and release its PO4 and NO4, starting a chain reaction of bad things?
Click to expand...

Most certainly, but not directly. It's the law of conservation of mass within a closed system: it cannot be created or destroyed. So the phosphate that was bound up in the cheato will be released as it dies. Thats why i love cheato, it grows, removes nitrates and phosphates and the you can just cut it back and remove both from your tank. The nitrate is a bit more complex, it is given off just like anything else that dies in your tank, as ammonia. It then goes through the denitrification cycle.
 
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