Corals continue to die slowly

[judah001]

I have been reading for months now and can't seem to figure it out so I figured I would post. It seemed to happen all of a sudden around May where all my coral which were growing great died. I had a chalice beginning take over a rock in my tank, a healthy torch coral, and 2 random lps coras from my lfs, a red plating chalice, and a bight green birds nest. It seemed almost over night everything began to decline fast and the polys and coral skin began to flake off the LPS and birds nest. As for the chalice they just stared quickly fading and died out along with the torch. The only thing at the time I could suspect what cause that was somehow the cat got a hold a pantie liner and I found it in my filter sock. I know right right?!?! How the heck did that happened!! I change my socks out regularly so it couldn't have been in there for more than a day.

Fast forward a few months later I am still having trouble keeping any corals in the tank. I keep running into the same issue of the tissue flaking off and them dying. During this time I have no fish loss and for the most part stable parameters. My LFS said to do a 50% water change back in August and did so. After that he gave me 2 tester corals which grew great. The testers he gave me where a small leather and pulsating xenias. Since Then I have put more corals in and the growth has been lack luster to say the least. I am still having the same issues I had before with the tissue flaking off the lps and a frog spawn that lost its color. The only thing that seems to be surviving is a couple chalices. I do weekly eater changes of around 5 gallons a week. I also make my own salt water using red sea coral pro salt. I was previously using an RO buddy for RO DI water but just got my new spectrapure 5 stage chloramine RO DI system. I'm thinking this might help but have no idea. I was getting 0 tds out of the RO buddy but not sure if all RO 0tds water is crested equal.

My LFS is thinking I am running my tank to clean so I have been heavy feeding daily to try and get my nutrients up. That is why I am detecting slight nitrates and phosphate. I have noticed a slight improvement but its still same end results. I am open to any thoughts or suggestions. I have also attached a couple pics from about a week ago. I will get some more recent ones and post.


System setup
50 gallon cube with 20 gallon refugium with chaeto
Live stock: Picasso clown, yellow tang, mandarin fish, 1 chromis,2 cleaner shrimp
80 pounds of live rock
1 Ecotech MP10
XR 15 Radion using coral lab lighting study setting
Phosphate reactor
Carbon reacator
Dosing 48 ml of Alkalinity per day
Dosing 56 ml CA per day


Recent water tests

10/29/16

Temp 80
Salinity 1.026
PH 8
Nitrate 1
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Phosphate .03
Calcium 470
Mag 1360
Alk 9.1


10/21/16

Temp 80
Salinity 1.026
PH 8.2
Nitrate 1
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Phosphate 0
Calcium 430
Mag 1360
Alk 10.1

10/16/16

Temp 80
Salinity 1.026
PH 8.2
Nitrate 1
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Phosphate 0
Calcium 420
Mag 1360
Alk 9

 

[judah001]

I will take more when I get home tonight

 

[JonezNReef]

What test kits are you using? Are you using a calibrated refractometer? I ask because I had a situation similar to that and it was because my refractometer wasn't calibrated with calibration fluid and come to find out my salinity was off quite a bit. Another time a few years ago I had this problem because my Alk wasn't staying stable.

 

[judah001]

What test kits are you using? Are you using a calibrated refractometer? I ask because I had a situation similar to that and it was because my refractometer wasn't calibrated with calibration fluid and come to find out my salinity was off quite a bit. Another time a few years ago I had this problem because my Alk wasn't staying stable.

I'm using all red sea test kits. I know the parameters are correct because I just got my refil kits the other day and they were in line with previous results. As for the refractor I bought it on Amazon a while back and calibrate it with distilled water before every use. I have also brought a sample to my LFS to compare and the salinity is in line with my reading. Previously I was keeping my ALK on the higher end around 10 but have recently brought down to 9 which was recommended by my lfs.

 

[judah001]

Here are a few picture of what I was describing. The one that looks like a torch coral is actually a frog spawn. Also I did say LPS several times but I meant SPS. Also my Acan has been dying a slow death too

 

[2smokes]

The first 2 pictures,the seriatopora guttatus and the frogspan get too much light .The 3- montipora digitata is doing well for the moment and is aclimating .Try to feed at night the acantastrea and the frogspan or any LPS you have with the pumps turned off for 15 minutes(with coral liquid or diy food).Also i would sell the led amp and buy T5HOs.The 1 picture is an sps coral that doesnt like too much light even thogh is sps,its a deeper water specie and verry hardy,it could recover if the STN stops.I would say you have bad light and low nutrients.Also,if you are dosing ALK and Ca then use a salt that has lower alk ,like the normal red sea salt instead of coral pro.

 

[CrayolaViolence]

Have you checked for red bugs?

 

[75mixedreef]

Red flag on using DI water to calibrate a refractometer. You should really use the calibration fluid since 1.00 is not in the range of what we measure in our tanks. It is quite easy to be off by a ways when doing this. The LFS might be off too so try using the calibration solution and verify. It might not be your problem but it is a good practice.

Have you been feeding your corals at all. If not try feeding them a little. Your reading are low on phosphate and nitrate so maybe they are not getting enough nutrients. Just a little with spot feeding should hurt anything but could go a long ways to helping them.

 

[judah001]

Have you checked for red bugs?

No visible bugs in the tank...

 

[judah001]

The first 2 pictures,the seriatopora guttatus and the frogspan get too much light .The 3- montipora digitata is doing well for the moment and is aclimating .Try to feed at night the acantastrea and the frogspan or any LPS you have with the pumps turned off for 15 minutes(with coral liquid or diy food).Also i would sell the led amp and buy T5HOs.The 1 picture is an sps coral that doesnt like too much light even thogh is sps,its a deeper water specie and verry hardy,it could recover if the STN stops.I would say you have bad light and low nutrients.Also,if you are dosing ALK and Ca then use a salt that has lower alk ,like the normal red sea salt instead of coral pro.

The light setting Im using mimics a t5. Ecotech did a study and created a setting that mimcs different styles of lighting. The reason why the light looks so bright is cause I had to turn it up under the full spectrum to take a picture. With the current setting Im using its too hard to see. I have attached the link to the different light setting below to give you an idea what Im talking about.

Ecotech Coral Lab Study

 

[judah001]

Red flag on using DI water to calibrate a refractometer. You should really use the calibration fluid since 1.00 is not in the range of what we measure in our tanks. It is quite easy to be off by a ways when doing this. The LFS might be off too so try using the calibration solution and verify. It might not be your problem but it is a good practice.

Have you been feeding your corals at all. If not try feeding them a little. Your reading are low on phosphate and nitrate so maybe they are not getting enough nutrients. Just a little with spot feeding should hurt anything but could go a long ways to helping them.

I read it was okay to use distilled water to calibrate. I will order some just to rule out the possibility. I have been feeding daily alternating seaweed and a mix of Mysis and reef chili. I kill my return pump and leave the mp 10 on to circulate the food in DT.

Regarding my phosphates and nitrates being low I get confused. From what I read most people sit at zero so I don't really understand what makes that different from me getting to zero. Hopefully that makes sense lol.

 

[75mixedreef]

You are probably getting enough food to your corals, depending on how much you are feeding. Seaweed doesn't really help corals, its just for fish and is pretty low nutrient compared to the more protein dense foods. Maybe you could try target feeding the corals with the powerheads off and allow them to really pull the food in. Most people that have near 0 nitrates and phosphates feed a lot but have systems in place to pull out the nutrients like ATS and GFO. Those are the people that feed several cubes a day and have a ton of fish so low nutrients are never an issue. The real difference is if the nutrients were ever there or if they are being pulled out to give a near 0 reading.

 

[judah001]

You are probably getting enough food to your corals, depending on how much you are feeding. Seaweed doesn't really help corals, its just for fish and is pretty low nutrient compared to the more protein dense foods. Maybe you could try target feeding the corals with the powerheads off and allow them to really pull the food in. Most people that have near 0 nitrates and phosphates feed a lot but have systems in place to pull out the nutrients like ATS and GFO. Those are the people that feed several cubes a day and have a ton of fish so low nutrients are never an issue. The real difference is if the nutrients were ever there or if they are being pulled out to give a near 0 reading.

That makes sense. I will start with the target feeding every other day instead of just putting the coral food in the tank. The seaweed is more to keep the tang happy and healthy I run GFO too but I guess my system is stripping everything out faster than the nutrients can build up. Thank you for the advice!

 

[JonezNReef]

I read it was okay to use distilled water to calibrate. I will order some just to rule out the possibility. I have been feeding daily alternating seaweed and a mix of Mysis and reef chili. I kill my return pump and leave the mp 10 on to circulate the food in DT.

Regarding my phosphates and nitrates being low I get confused. From what I read most people sit at zero so I don't really understand what makes that different from me getting to zero. Hopefully that makes sense lol.

I was using RO water to calibrate mine as well and when I bought actual 35ppt calibration fluid I found out it was of by 4ppt. Not saying thats this is the case with you but it happened to me.

 

[judah001]

I was using RO water to calibrate mine as well and when I bought actual 35ppt calibration fluid I found out it was of by 4ppt. Not saying thats this is the case with you but it happened to me.

I ordered some from BRS on Friday and it will be here Monday. Man will I feel stupid if that's the issue. Ill post an update once I calibrate with the solution.

 

[judah001]

Calibration liquid came in today and after calibrating my salinity was at 1.024 and not 1.026. So did make a slight difference using the calibration solution.

 

[JonezNReef]

Well your SG isn't off enough to cause these issues. Did this issue come up before or after you switched RO systems?

 

[shred5]

I would try a polyfilter in your tank. It will change color based on what contaminate is in the water.. When and how the liner got put into your tank it may have got some sort of contaminate in it too...

 

[judah001]

Well your SG isn't off enough to cause these issues. Did this issue come up before or after you switched RO systems?

It was before I changed my ro. Corals seem to be hanging on but not thriving since I started daily feeding and spot feeding. Now that I have a slight phosphate reading I've noticed the chalice is starting to get some color. I'm worried about changing my phosphate media since its exhausted. I noticed once the media was exhausted the color in the chalice started to come in.

 

[organism]

I read it was okay to use distilled water to calibrate. I will order some just to rule out the possibility. I have been feeding daily alternating seaweed and a mix of Mysis and reef chili. I kill my return pump and leave the mp 10 on to circulate the food in DT.

That's your problems right there. Your refractometer is definitely way off if you've just been using DI water which is most likely what's killing your corals, and you don't need to feed anything especially when your corals aren't looking good. You're just raising your nutrients which stress them out even more, corals don't need food and will do just fine without it. I can guarantee your problem is not lack of food.

Feeding is something you do once everything in your tank is looking awesome, you have no nuisance algae, and your parameters are spotless. If that day comes then you want to spot feed corals with your pumps off so you don't get food all over your tank. Also 0 corals eat seaweed, that's for tangs.