Calling out all Chemists!!!!
- Thread starter Dr. Reef
- Start date
allabarton
New member
So happy to hear that. Please, keep us updated. Thank you.
what it boils down to is first i have a bad media in sulfur denitrator that destroyed my reef. it leeched something in tank over 8 months that took several water changes to rid and still not there yet.
second cause of the problem was lights itself. i have my AI Vegas 9" above water line. and at 30% intensity on all colors. after getting an advice from Ron and keithhays i invested in a par meter. found out that even at 100% par was not sufficient at sand bed.
i am getting 3000 at the leds then they drop to 800-900 right under waterline. and from 500 to 200 from water line to sand bed. i am getting 175-200 on sand bed.
most rocks on top are getting 250-400.
so between both issues i was not able to keep sps alive.
second cause of the problem was lights itself. i have my AI Vegas 9" above water line. and at 30% intensity on all colors. after getting an advice from Ron and keithhays i invested in a par meter. found out that even at 100% par was not sufficient at sand bed.
i am getting 3000 at the leds then they drop to 800-900 right under waterline. and from 500 to 200 from water line to sand bed. i am getting 175-200 on sand bed.
most rocks on top are getting 250-400.
so between both issues i was not able to keep sps alive.
running Vegas at 100% all blues and whites red and green at 80%, still at 9" above water line and cut hours down. running then at 1 hrs ramp up and down. starting at 4pm to 10pm. they start to ramp up at 4pm so 5pm at full strength then at 10pm ramp down by 11pm complete darkness,
total of 7 hrs while 5 hrs of full strength.
i am expecting another unit of vega soon. once in i will place that on top making 6 vega color units and drop the height down to 4-6" above water line. at that point i will check the par again and reduce the intensities if required.
wayne in norway
New member
You never described exactly what happened in the process of dying, but poor light intensity and an absolute lack of dissolved nutrient means corals will starve rather quickly.
well sps corals (acro mostly) were dying in four hours after being placed in the tank so there had to have been something in water that testing didnt catch but i blame the bad sulfur media in denitrator. A soon as i pulled it off line everything went normal. Light was the second issue along with running a very very clean system that starved the corals. so it was a collective of few things with major damage from sulfur.
There are 2 acro frags and 1 birdsnest frag all 1" in the tank at this point. all seems to be ok. been in tank for over 10 days now. colors are holding polyps extend etc. keeping fingers crossed,
styrofoam was a insulation styrofoam from lowes. i used 6"x6" pieces 2 of them to huld sea swirl in place. i noticed it had a aluminum on one side. i took the whole styrofoam pieces out. i dont think that was the problem as aluminum was tested for in the water test. it was never exposed to light as it was under the sea swirls snugged between back wall and under the units. back wall is covered by car tint mirror shade that bounces the light away from the tank.
Sounds good. I am a blue fan so no way I could ever get near 100% with the whites. On this 60 gallon cube I still use a RB setup I made and just added an 8 led UV setup along with the vega color. So hitting a lot of spectrum and may add a few warm whites I have into the mix as well. Need to get par meter and see where I am at with 54 leds over the cube. I am coming from 2 sol whites on this 60 and the RB setup i made.
that is one thing i never test. what is orp isnt it oxygen water mixture or something like that?
Keep in mind I am still learning. ORP or Oxidation Reduction Potential is the way we can measure the rate at which oxidation is taking place in the system or rather how fast it may be taking place. The way i have come to think of it is with a low ORP, waste in the tank will never break down, and with an ORP too high everything in the system will breakdown too fast. ORP can also be used as an earlier indicator that something is wrong. For example, if you have a fish die in the back corner of your tank where you would never find them, you can see a change in ORP and know that something is off. The original reason I asked you about ORP is because chemical companies used to use ozone depletents as blowing agents in the making of foam in the past. And until recently government regulations allowed this, so it is possible that some of that could have leached in your tank from the foam.
Could be possible but with 30 gal change every 3rd day for 14 times that should not be a problem now. Now I have switched to 30 gal every Sunday. I see improvement since I took sulfur out set lights right and took out the foam. I am going to monitor progress with few cheap frags over period of time and watch for signs of improvement or not and then make more changes accordingly. I am though looking into vodka dosing for phos reduction with combination of gfo.
For this I have to bring alk down from steady 8.5 to under 8. More likely 7.6 to 7.8 range. Change salt from red sea coral pro to regular red sea.
For this I have to bring alk down from steady 8.5 to under 8. More likely 7.6 to 7.8 range. Change salt from red sea coral pro to regular red sea.
well guys eventually it all came down to rock i bought from reefrocks.net
It is man made rock and may be leaching something that kill corals. i took the rock out did 100% water change and bought new dry rock from BRS and happily carrying corals now with no issues.
It is man made rock and may be leaching something that kill corals. i took the rock out did 100% water change and bought new dry rock from BRS and happily carrying corals now with no issues.
tapio
New member
Glad to hear you solved the issue. As much as I like trying to be ecofriendly, I have always viewed things like man made rock with suspicion in reefs.
no idea Jon but another give away was as rock got covered in coraline it started to support softies a little where coralline was very dense. Another test i did was place few frag corals on the sandbed and kept them alive for 1 month then moved them to rock and killed them in 3 days. everything pointed to the rocks.
When i ordered the rock i sent pictures of structures i wanted to build to reefrocks.net (Steve,owner) he replied back that such rocks will need time to produce as shapes were not something normally they keep on hand.
Took them a while and i called him as i hadnt received the rocks. His response was its been raining and storming and i couldnt get the rocks dried enough so if you want them fast i can ship them out but u need to let them sit in garage or sun for few days.
I am thinking rushing him and getting not fully dried rock may have something to do with leeching. i dont know what all they put in the rock its a trade secret he said. whatever it was got solved with rock removal after costing me tons of money and headache and killing bunch of corals.
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