Coral dying, need idea

M

MrGarbonzo

New member
im having a strange problem that i cant seem to solve on my own, and im out of ideas

this tank is a 225 gallon system that was set up in August with live from from LFS and live rock from my old 40 gallon.

Temp - 78
Salinity - 1.026 Spec Grav
PH swings from 8.0-8.1
Ammonia - 0
nitrite - 0
Nitrate- goes between 0-5
Magnesium 1460
Phosphate .14
Calcium - 480
Alk - 11dKH
Copper - 0

i double checked all my readings by using my test kits on my LFS water and on a bottle of 'Two Little fishes' AccuraSea and everything seemed ok


from what i can tell my parameters are good, lighting and flow should be good

affected Coral

Blue Mushrooms - spilling guts from their mouth

zoa - big colony with over 100 heads has not opened in almost 2 months. much of this colony has melted away

Duncan - 10 head Duncan closed up and appears to be only skeleton left

Torch- Shrunk back and is now 99% skeleton

Bubble Tip Anemone - was only about 1 inch in diamater to begin with, it closed up for a few days, it appears to have lost its tentacles and is regrowing new ones?

xenia- clump the size of an apple disintegrated in 3 days

green star polp- half open

unaffected coral

Ricordea - 10 or so heads they are fully opened most of the time

open brain coral - mouths usually closed tight, tentacles extended during feeding



i have a small fish bioload overall: 1 clown 5 chromis, 1 powder blue tang, 1 yellow tang, 1 royal gramma 1 foxface lo, 1 pep shrimp


im stumped as to what the problem could be, any ideas?
 
i may not have converted that number right, using a Redsea API test phosphorus reads close to 0

using a hanna ultra low checker i get 50ppb
 
about a month ago when i first started seeing issues i raised my
alk from 8 to 12
salainty from 1.022 to 1.026
ph from 7.8 to 8

should i slowly let them drift back down?


this is what my blue/green mushrooms look like
http://imgur.com/DX17LqZ
 
Considering the corals affected , I dont think high alk would cause demise, the PO4 is very high and should be brought down, it could tick off some of the corals listed but I am guessing there is something else going on here.

What kinda of lighting are you running? any possible way contaminants would be able to make it in to the tank?
 
im running 3 hydra 52's

i thought my phosphate was very low so i wasnt concerned...weird that the api i used and my LFS both got results close to 0. maybe i didnt use my hanna right, i just got it a few weeks ago. ill double check that tonight
 
my money is on light shock, I have 0 experience with LEDs so I can't give advice on tuning, Ill leave that to the LED experts, but my guess is they are turned up too high.
 
@rob wow according to that chart my phosphates are horrible, that could be the problem!! ill retest tonight and try to start increasing my water changes to bring that down ASAP, thanks for the tip

@c Eymann i have the LED at 75% right now, for the first 3 months the intensity was only 60% i dont think its the lights
 
I would bring down your calcium to 420-450, magnesium to 1350, alkalinity to 8.3 and phosphates to below 0.02. What are the symptoms when the corals die, do the bleach out? How long and at what intensity do you run your lights?
 
.14 po4 is a little high, but it is not going to kill any corals !!!! look for a problem somewhere else.
 
@thegrun
-i posted a picture of a mushroom that is dying now but idk where it went? it looks like it is spilling its guts out of its mouth
-xenia melted away in 3 days
-torch coral slowly receded
-BTA closed for a few days and when it opened it had no tentacles, its open now with very small new tentacles, its mouth is tightly closed so i assume thats good
-duncans closed up and never reopened

my lights are on for a total of 12 hours they start off at 25% then ramp up to 75% for 6 hours then go back to 25%

@CHSUB i didnt think the po4 at that level was lethal, i just ordered a GFO so ill get that going this weekend along with some bigger water changes to get that closer to 0

...but im grasping for straws on what this could be. fish show no negative signs, eating and swimming regularly.

i have also checked for stray voltage and found none

i currently have a poly-filter in the tank that is supposed to change color based on what its removing..after 12 hours it has not changed color...so we see what happens after more time with that
 
Do you have a QT tank? How long has this been setup successfully?

"Edit" Missed you said August.

What has been changed since August? This is still a very new tank. Are those lights new? Do you still have the old 40G?
 
I would limit the maximum intensity of your lights to 4 hours maximum (I have my Hydra 52's set at 65% for 3 hours at peak intensity, they ramp up from 5% to 65% for 4.5 hours, hit peak intensity for 3 hours and then ramp down to zero for 4.5 hours), but it does not sound like they are the source of your problems. I would try running a Polyfilter even though your tests showed zero for copper, the filter will turn blue if there is any copper in your system. I'm kind of grasping at straws here, I don't see any on obvious issue. See what happens if you get your phosphates and alkalinity back to normal.
 
Nothing was changed from August till end of November on new tank, I saw lots of growth on the coral. Around end if Nov I had a small diatom bloom (2nd bloom the tank had) some coral closed others remained fine and are still fine today. I figured at first it was just the algea bothering them. A week later after bloom died these coral never reopened

Mid December my LFS recommend I increase salanity from 1.022 to 1.026 and also to try get ph from 7.9 to 8.4 (I can't seem to get it higher than 8.1. This increased my alk from 8 to 12 it also brought my calc and magnesium up. I increased these over a 2 week period and from my research I figured the high alk/mag/calcium would not be a problem

I do still have the 40 gallon. I use it as a qt for the new fish I added to tank. It is currently empty as I didn't want to add fish while the coral were not happy
 
Can I suggest by trial of elimination you get your corals into your old happy setup? Or better. If the lights on the QT are still there for things suitable for lps (I grew these under T8s) Even buy a new one.. put in QT wait a month and then put into the main tank?>
 
@thegrun I have had a poly-filter in there for 24 hours now, just got home from work and it looks a bit more grey than it was, which would indicate lead , or cadmium , zinc...

I'll change my lights to match yours, I wasn't sure I had them set right to begin with, thanks for the help
 
I had my zoa colony in qt for about 2 weeks with old lights and noticed no improvement. The qt was filled with water from the old tank that I had from a water change.

I could get the qt filled with new salt water but it would have to wait a few days, unless I don't do my water change in big tank tonight
 
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