Corals suddenly dieing! help pls

[wickedfish]

Sorry for your losses hope you find the culprit. Need to always recheck your refracto with a 35ppt. solution and calibrate correctly. Also your waiting a minimum of 24 hrs when you add the salt water after mixing? I wouldn't rule out anything especially faulty equipment.

 

[zachfishman]

Sorry for your losses hope you find the culprit. Need to always recheck your refracto with a 35ppt. solution and calibrate correctly. Also your waiting a minimum of 24 hrs when you add the salt water after mixing? I wouldn't rule out anything especially faulty equipment.

Checked the salinity with a few refractos at work, 35 on the nose. Hopefully the big WC will hold things together in the time it takes me to solve this. My snails have also been behaving oddly, more often than before I see a couple overturned on the sand bed (they still get up though, just not as quickly I guess).

Really hoping to lick this before heading home again for xmas - planning on bringing a few frog and zoa frags back from my tank in NY

 

[jskaras]

Don't forget to check the parameters of your WC replacement. I had a bag of salt recently that tested MG at 600 so I was depleting my MG with each change. Your massive water changes may just be further diluting out some of your chemistry.

 

[zachfishman]

Don't forget to check the parameters of your WC replacement. I had a bag of salt recently that tested MG at 600 so I was depleting my MG with each change. Your massive water changes may just be further diluting out some of your chemistry.

I'll be sure to check. The alk of this IO batch is ~9, and I always have to boost the Ca a little (mix is ~350). As for Mg I'll get to testing; the tank was at 1200ppm yesterday, but I doubt that's a significant enough deficiency to cause this kind of stress.

Things don't tend to look worse immediately after water changes, it's been more of a gradual downhill slide.

 

[jskaras]

If the Mg was 1200 yesterday then it is not the problem.

 

[greech]

Man, sorry to hear things have not turned around. One thing that I had not seen mentioned was whether or not you recently replaced your bulbs?

 

[zachfishman]

Man, sorry to hear things have not turned around. One thing that I had not seen mentioned was whether or not you recently replaced your bulbs?

Good idea, but no. I bought the bulbs new when I set up the tank 5 months ago. FWIW they are 1x65w UVL 50/50 PC-R and 1x65w Current-USA 50/50 Smartpaq.

 

[T Diddy]

have you tested for copper by chance? Do you have any metal hose clamps etc?

 

[zachfishman]

have you tested for copper by chance? Do you have any metal hose clamps etc?

Funny, as I also thought of this as a possibility just this morning. No metal clamps or anything of that nature, though my LR is secondhand so it is possible (the indivudal assured me she had never dosed Cu ).

As far as copper goes, I understand that detrimental and lethal levels to inverts and corals are well below the 100ppb or so minimum that commercial test kits can measure. I guess my best course of action would be to run Cuprisorb or a polyfilter (<--- not that bad a practice anyways) and look for an improvement :sad2:

 

[zachfishman]

Update: WC done (10g) and Polyfilter added, we'll see if it picks up any copper. Here's some pics of current conditions:

Bleached FS:


Bleached zoas:


(Mostly) pale GSP:


Bleached rics:

 

[lotusstar]

Wow, this is crazy. I just took pics of my frogspawn to post on here with the very same issues. The tissue looks very much like the tissue you posted from the FS. Only difference my FS I've had for about a year and a half and has always looked awesome. I have very similar parameters too. I'm mixing up a bunch of new water to do some big changes myself, hope this helps. I'll keep an eye out on this thread to see if you get a response from something you do. Best of luck!

 

[Steve W]

Check your heater. I had something similar happen and it turned out I had a leak in my heater and there was enough current leaking into the tank to cause problems but not enough to kick the breaker.

Also check your temperature. That was what tipped me I had a problem. When I pulled the heater out I could hear it sizzling. You might also check other electricals for current leaks.

The good news is that if that is what it is, all of mine recovered even a Duncan I thought was dead. Don't give up on your candy cane yet.
Hope this helps.

 

[zachfishman]

Check your heater. I had something similar happen and it turned out I had a leak in my heater and there was enough current leaking into the tank to cause problems but not enough to kick the breaker.

Also check your temperature. That was what tipped me I had a problem. When I pulled the heater out I could hear it sizzling. You might also check other electricals for current leaks.

I've checked the tank for voltage, and only get ~3volts with everything plugged in. I haven't tested it with the heater on though, so I'll check again.

Oddly, I can isolate 1V of stray voltage coming from my MJ900, but the other 2V I can not determine the source of (unplugged every other device with no change in voltage, but it does drop to 0V when I unplug the whole strip).

 

[strike2867]

Don't worry about those Rics. Once you get the issue figured out, they will come back fully to their normal color.

 

[zachfishman]

Don't worry about those Rics. Once you get the issue figured out, they will come back fully to their normal color.

Yeah they've been doing fine. Everything in the tank (now that the candy is dead and gone) is kind of in a stable state of OK-ness. No more death or tissue recession, but no growth either. My ORA birdsnest looked great yesterday after the big WC - super fuzzball!

 

[zachfishman]

Polyfilter isn't looking blue (guess there isn't significant Cu); pulling a bit of organics though (guess the carbon doesn't grab as much as I thought). The frogspawn looked mildly better today (tentacle extension only). Hopefully things will color up and regrow (all my zoas are about half the size they used to be).

Anyone think my water could be deficient in some regard? It's a small water volume with a very low bioload and I don't dose stuff like iodide, etc. Would my tank benefit from something like Coral-Vite or Coral-Accel? I'm game to try some but don't want to waste money.

 

[eskymick]

I went thru the same thing recently. In the end, it turns out I was starving my corals.
I too have a mixed reef. In an effort to maintain a ULNS, I was scrubbing all of the nutrients from the reef. As the LPS corals receeded and died, they in turn fouled the water just enough to stress the SPS colonies. It became a vicious circle.

A friend suggested I start dosing phyto and baby brine and/or cylopeze. Within a couple weeks, everything began to recover. After 6 weeks time, all looking great.

 

[zachfishman]

I went thru the same thing recently. In the end, it turns out I was starving my corals.
I too have a mixed reef. In an effort to maintain a ULNS, I was scrubbing all of the nutrients from the reef. As the LPS corals receeded and died, they in turn fouled the water just enough to stress the SPS colonies. It became a vicious circle.

A friend suggested I start dosing phyto and baby brine and/or cylopeze. Within a couple weeks, everything began to recover. After 6 weeks time, all looking great.

I can see that being a possibility; this is the lowest bioload system I've ever kept by far. I've dosed Phytoplex in the past for xenia with success, what brand do you recommend? I'll try that if things don't turn around soon. Did you experience any bleaching?

Another point of interest, the LFS read my salinity at 30ppt, albeit with a hydrometer... Turns out I didn't "season" the swing arm of my hydrometer, so maybe I've falsely written off salinity.

 

[eskymick]

I can see that being a possibility; this is the lowest bioload system I've ever kept by far. I've dosed Phytoplex in the past for xenia with success, what brand do you recommend? I'll try that if things don't turn around soon. Did you experience any bleaching?

Another point of interest, the LFS read my salinity at 30ppt, albeit with a hydrometer... Turns out I didn't "season" the swing arm of my hydrometer, so maybe I've falsely written off salinity.

I use DT Phyto.

And yeah, that salinity is very low. You might want to verify that reading.

 

[zachfishman]

UPDATE:

Things have started looking up, but nowhere near back to normal. The corals have regained a little color, and a small amount of growth has restarted. The FS has good tissue extension again, though it is still pale:



I've done some research, and as eskymick said I may benefit from feeding my system - seeing as I have a very small fish-load and thus sparse feed for corals to grab. Anybody used any of the Zeovit products in this package?

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