Diagnose my tank

bshumake

bshumake

New member
For a few months not my tank has been in decline and i can't figure out what the problem is. It was doing fine for a while but somethings up.
I moved from my 180 to a 90 in spring. During the move I lost most all of my stonies. In the holding tank something (or a number of somethings) went nuclear and wiped out most of my stonies and LPS's. When the move was complete the only things left were a maxima clam, zoas, neon green candycanes, some caps and a few acros. The only thing left now are the zoas and the candycanes. The clam died Monday. Up until then it was acting normally.
My tank is 48L x 18W x 24T. My lighting is a 4 bulb, 4 ft T5's. Each bulb is 54 Watts so that 216 Watts total. I have two Koralia 4's for internal flow and a Mag 7 for return. I'm not running a skimmer. Instead i'm running a algae turf scrubber. My water parameters are pH=8.0 (i'm trying to bring that back up) NH4=0, Ca=500, Alk=4.45, NO2=0, NO3=0, PO4=0-0.025 (I claim 0, i believe the 0.25 checked at Memfish was from residual detergent in the container I used) and Mg=1200.
Thoughts, ideas anyone?
 
Oh yeah, my zoas are not extending their skirts. their mostly open, but something is definately amiss. I forgot to mention, I have a pair of green turbinaria (daughters of the mother I donated to the Chili's tank at St Jude) that are starting to show stress (white lines in their tissures.) I can tolerate (barely) losing other corals,but not these. I've had them for 10+ years. If I can't get this problem solved I'll have to find temporary homes for them with club members until I get this problem fixed.
 
A few thoughts, just based on what you posted:

A pH of 8.0 is acceptable. Is your alk value (4.45) in dKH or meq/L? If it is dKH I would say it is a little low, and I would suggest slowly raising it to natural seawater values in the range of 7-10 dKH. This would bring up your pH as well. Alk swings have been known to kill corals, especially SPS and LPS.

How often do you perform water changes? Do you run activated carbon or anything to battle chemical warfare between corals (zoas)? Do you use RO or RO/DI water for your water changes? Some dissolved minerals can build up over time (old tank syndrome), and this can be confounded by using tapwater, and lack of a skimmer. This seems to be more of an issue if you have a deep sand bed, use crushed coral, or have a lack of detrivores to sift the sand.

Lighting could potentially be an issue - are/were your corals browning out at all due to lack of light? If you don't have good individual reflectors on your T5HO bulbs, and if you don't change them often, keeping stonies or a clam anywhere other than the top of the tank might be a problem. Most zoas adapt to lower light, but if the bulbs are very old (more than 2 years) they may be having trouble with the light. (I've used spotlighting with high power LEDs over corals with extra lighting needs with success)

I would normally suggest adding vitamin C to help your zoas (see big thread in the zoa forum) but without having a skimmer, you may just drive up your bacteria population and crash the tank.

The key is stability, so I wouldn't do a lot of changes all at once, but water changes are your best friend. There are some certain trace elements that we don't test for that may be necessary for corals to survive, and water changes are generally used to replace these.
 
Rudolph: Temp is 78.6. SG is 1.025

Inexplicable: Alk is measured in meq/L. I use RO/DI for topoff and water changes. I don't do water changes very often, maybe twice to three times a year. I haven't been running carbon but popped by Memfish today and got a carbon mat to run for a week. My tank is bare bottom. I wanted to try and go rubble bottom and let my zoas grow out. My lights are a few months old, maybe 4 months. No browning at all visible with the corals. I'm going to run the carbon for a few days and get a water change ready. I've never done weekly water changes and have had a healthy system. At its peak I would do a water change once a year and my corals were growing like crazy. I was constantly giving frags or selling frags to people and club members.
I'll make my changes slowly and hope things pick up. Keep the suggestions coming folks! Thanks again,
B
 
i had some corals start dying off and i couldn't figure out why...finally figured it out....i'd been using my red sea hyrdrometer to check my salinity (too lazy to use my refractometer) it was reading 1.026..which is fine in my tank....when i checked it with my refractometer and it was reading a consistant 1.015-1.017....that was the problem...raised my salinity to the proper amount and it fixed it!!
 
4 bulb T-5 fixture does not sound like enough light for a 90G unless the sps is way up top of the tank. For some reason my sps would die off under my 6-bulb T5 fixture but thrive under my halide. I would also find a mercury thermometer to double check the temp - I even have one you can borrow if needed. Koralia 4's? There is a real possibility they are leaking voltage. Both of mine did.. I had them replaced.. and the replacement did too eventually. I now use them to mix salt. I also agree on upping the frequency of water changes. 10% of water vol per month sound good?
 
No smacking. I use my Reefkeeper and a digital Red Sea for temp. But I'll use the mercury to double check, sure. The SG I checked at Memfish earlier this year and the 1.025 I posted is from their refractometer. I wanted to make sure that the values I posted were verified by me and another source so there would be no doubt of their accuracy. I guess it's possible there is stay voltage, but it must be very low since I can't feel it.
 
Stray voltage is easy enough to test for if you have a voltmeter, but the ground probe should take care of it. You can disconnect the ground probe and test it versus the ground in a wall outlet. Use the AC voltage setting and put the red lead on the ground probe and the black in the ground of a wall outlet. Should read zero if no stray voltage.
 
How often are you cleaning/harvesting your turf scrubber? I started getting algal accumulation in the main tank several months after running a turf scrubber.... my fault totally... I wasn't scrapping and rinsing it on a weekly basis as is recommended. Even though the frequency of scrapping the glass went down significantly. So I ditched the scrubber and went back to what I know best... chaeto and skimmer in the sump.
 
Barrett...I have a spare skimmer you are welcome to if you want to try it... When Chris was having issues with his tank we brought my refractometer and calibration fluid. The LFS was WAY off.

DO WATER CHANGES MORE!!!
 
Barrett , you should pick up some test kits for your self , the best sample is always directly from the tank its self , ive been using the API kits my self for over a year now and haven't had any issues with them at all . plus they cost much less than their competitors and are just as good. even the calcium test is pretty close to a saliferts readings just not a on the dime accurate . most likely the shock from the chemical warfare in the holding system was the cause of this whole issue , running carbon is a must with a mix of corals to absorb the nuke of chemicals produced by softys , lps and sps when stressed alk , ph , salinity and temp swings will also cause quick death. nitrates will show a slower recession but will due some serious harm exp to sps . more frequent water changes will be most helpful.
 
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