Established SPS tank, slowly rotting away.

Kurkis493

New member
I took this shot last night.
D7umAcs.jpg



So here is the problem... Despite that picture, I have a small pile of coral skeletons slowly growing on my porch. Almost every other day I am looking at my tank and seeing a new coral with burnt tips or STN starting at the base.

My tank is over 2 years old and up until this past Sunday I was running Zeovit.

Why did I stop Zeovit? I dunno, I'm so out of options, I don't know what else to do. My parameters have been stable all year...

CA: 450
ALK: 7.5 - 7.8
MG: 1370
NO3 - 5ppm
PO4 - .02


I typically test with Salifert kits, I even tossed out less than 6 month old kits for new ones. Everything read the same. I sent my water to Triton Labs to see if there was some kind of metal in the tank and everything cameback where it was expected to be aside from elevated levels of Vanadium and slightly low levels of Bromide.

I haven't changed my bulbs since the last week of January and my lightning schedule doesn't change. I run an ATI 8 bulb unit w/ 2 Reefbrites with the same bulb combination and lightning schedule as Cherry Corals. My ALK / CA is dialed in by a combination of a Litermeter III dosing 1 gallon of kalk water daily and my Apex DOS.

The tank is 120 gallons and every week I do a 25 - 30 gallon water change. The salt is always premixed for 2-3 days using the same salt Tropic Marin Pro and heated to the tank's temp. I even test new buckets to make sure parameters are where they should be.

I use only brand new filter socks changed out weekly (3 total) and I use a shop vac to clean my sump during water changes to ensure nothing builds up in the tank.

Despite this, despite the stability, my corals have lost a ton of color over the last few months and I keep having stuff dying. I've checked for pests on dying corals etc and AEFW is not present in my system.

The only X-factor in this is that my tank usually runs a steady 78.5 degrees. My tank is in a room surrounded buy 9 windows that receives the brunt of the sun while it sets in the spring / summer months. This will cause my tank to go from 78.5 at 3pm to 81.5 by 7pm and back down again. The tank also receives alot of natural sunlight in addition to the T5 unit I run on the tank. So from the end of April - mid October the tank will experience these conditions.

Now I know somebody is going to tell me, it sounds like your water is too clean, feed your fish. Yes, maybe my water is too clean and that is something I am not taking off the table. However, I have been testing my NO3 daily for the last 3 weeks and it says 5ppm. I've done this test with two different kits for redundancy. My Triton Labs test cameback last week saying PO4 is .02 so according to tests my water is not stripped.

Now what boggles me a little bit is that I did three, 30 gallon water changes last week in an attempt to help reset any potential chemical imbalance in my tank and my NO3 still reads 5ppm even after those huge water changes.

What else makes me wonder, I used to dose Amino Acid concentrate and I'd be at 5ppm NO3 and even after I stopped dosing it, I still sit at 5ppm NO3. Weird?

I ordered the Red Sea test kit today to see if using something other than Salifert will show a different results.

Despite the corals growing a tolerance to changes in temp is it really that possible that 3 degree swings can cause so much havoc? As you can see in the picture, my entire tank is not doom and gloom but I'd say 50% of the tank looks great and 50% of the tank doesn't. My issues is that when one coral dies, another of the good looking corals starts to take its place.

I'm at my wits end here with this, anyone advice or something I should look at that maybe I have not?

Since I couldn't find it anywhere else... The Triton Labs test reports back PO4 levels but I didn't see NO3 levels.. Just Nitrogen levels.

Also is it possible this can be a trace elements issues? I thought using Tropic Marin Pro, there shouldn't be any need to dose trace elements especially since I do fairly generous weekly water changes.

Thanks.
 
One coral dying and another taking its place sounds bacterial. Pics of the dying coral would help. How long does it take to die? Do they turn green before they go?
 
Nothing turns into that minty green color.

Basically my tank went very dark in April and PE started to decline a bit. I have some that look great and then have little areas of tissue loss that is now covered by your typical algae.

Some had STN at the base and it just stopped and so its all white around the coral and parts of the branches and the rest of the coral is just brown and has been this way for months.

Some have tissue recession on the tips like my Fox Flame and the rest of the coral is otherwise brown.

I had an efflo's colors become very muted (didn't brown out though) and I woke-up one morning and it had RTN'd.

I have a Pocci that was doing very well and now it looks like a dog with mange with sporadic polyps and otherwise skeleton.

A purple confusa has been slowing dying from the base up for 4 months now and I haven't bothered to try cutting it because of where it is in tank.

Its all just so very random and then I have other pieces still growing with color and the irony is that I need to increase my ALK / CA dosing from my typical 1 gallon of daily Kalk and 25ml of Part A and B this week because my current dosing isn't keeping up with the stuff that isn't suffering.

I'm so utterly confused. When you say bacterial, are you meaning too much bacteria in my system used for nutrient reduction or something completely different? I have been running Zeovit so I do carbon dose.

I will typically catch a coral starting to STN and I can remove it and frag it up into pieces and usually in the end I've been able to salvage atleast a frag of the mother colony. This has been the case so I have alot of dead coral skeletons outside but frags of it on my rack so not a total loss. I've only had 3 corals over the last 3 or so months RTN on me.

Are we talking about a human bacteria being passed onto a coral causing loss? Is it really that possible that I transferred some sort of bacteria into my system? That seems like a pretty rare situation.
 
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How did you stop zeovit? Did you just pull your reactor offline and stop dosing. I have ran zeovit twice, and had a similar problem when I stopped. You need to stop zeovit very very gradually, you should look over on the zeovit forum. I found that even when I tried to gradually stop zeovit some of the sps got really stressed as you described.


I don't think its necessary from the levels, but the rapid changes that occur when zeovit is stopped. Possibly, even a decrease in biological filtration since the zeovit rocks are removed or decreased.

Its hard to deal with the situation if thats what it is, because if you start to try and control your nutrients too quickly it will further shock your corals, and if you keep letting things go, you will still be watching corals suffer.

When I went through it, I rode it out, did water changes, began slowly using gfo again, until the tank stabilized, and the corals began recovering.

Other possibilities could also be a contaminate in your tank from some source, or a pest.
 
My problems have been happening since the end of April...

I just shut Zeovit down this past Sunday so the issues I've been suffering from have been happening while my tank has been running Zeovit.

My typical 6 week stone change was this past weekend so instead of replacing the stones I replaced them with Seachem Bio Media. I'm stilling dosing Biomate / Sponge Power / Zeobak 2x a week and this past week I've been dosing .05ml of Zeostart3 to the reactor to help the bacteria colony get going on the Seachem Media. At some point, I would want to stop doing the Zeostart3 all together.

This method should be similiar to what people are doing with the Spirox only because I have the Seachem media in in the Zeovit reactor I am able to clean the media.
 
Kz a balance might be something worth looking into. On label it says;

Recovers the systems biological balance
Helpful if corals show basil tissue narcosis
 
I was thinking bacteria infection but burnt tips would say another problem is going on. I have had an issue with it before and I switched to dosing ONLY Kalk for my alk and calcium demand which helped some. I will try and remember some of the other things that helped, I am working now so I I'll get back to this thread on break.
I would say the 3 degree swing would be a factor but 82 degrees I try and stay away from especially if things are making corals have problems.
 
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Bacterial infections will jump from one acro to another after its dead. At least in my experience. Some corals turn green or partly green before the show rtn. Sometimes it will be a number of days and sometimes weeks on end before you see another infection start. They go quickly once infected, but sometimes just the base or a branch will die and then days later the rest will go. Sometimes whole colony will look as it did before it was infected while dying but sometimes they will show thin tissue when infected. Thin tissue normally happened to the smooth skin types of acropor in my case.
I fought it by trying to keep pH up with as much kalk as I could dose daily, iodine dips as soon as I could see a sign of infection and after fragging, and daily doses of things like coral excel. I am sure there was another but I can't remember now.

I am not saying this is your case but it could be. Do you change your ro filters and keep up with your unit correctly? A malfunctioning ro unit was the cause of my first bacterial infection issues.
 
Have you increase your water circulation over time? As corals get more dense it is harder to get good flow to all the parts. I am fighting something similar. My SPS get random dead spots, but no sign of pest. I suspect a flow or bacterial issue. New RO/DI filters arrived yesterday so going to get cleaner water. I also added a gyre 130 to my two vortec mp10s to try and up the circulation to see if that helps. There is also a fair amount of turf wars going on in my tank and that contributes to some of the random dead spot.
 
trying to add something as well:
I had issues until I changed 2 things with my tank, one being I had LED only then setup a retro fit T5 into the canopy so now have LED and T5. That really helped colors. Not sure if you mentioned that but what lights do you have?

Second thing which was the biggest improvement and I hate I didn't have this for years!!! I added a doser to dose calc and alk throughout the day and night. This completely turned my tank around. Stuff that wasn't happy or seemed not to grow for a year or more took off. Even though I though manual dosing was working, I was wrong. This was in my case so doesn't mean for everyone but just keep in mind.
 
I may replace the RO/DI filters. I do run a 7 stage unit I pieced together and the cartridges were all changed this past March so I'm not sure if they would tap out in 4 months.

I run an ATI T5 fixture w/ a pair of Reefbrite LEDs and I dose my 2-part with my Apex DOS along with 1 gallon of Kalk being pushed into the system with a Litermeter III.

IqdFVu1.jpg

This was my first victim. It went from that nice green to 50% dead within an evening. Necrosis started at the back and across the bottom of the piece. I was able to save 3 frags of this before the rest of the colony was gone.


F6FBnfb.jpg

This acro is not dead however, in my system it now has the same PE but the yellow tips have faded away. Its more just a brown acro now.


roJSN7K.jpg

This colony is doing ok but instead of this green / purple poylps the thing has went super darken and is now more lavender.


dFbF6lW.jpg

This acropora is a colony in my first pick, just above the orange digitata. As you can see from the first picture it has gone super dark.

While my tank was producing corals like this, I never changed anything and suddenly things just went downhill.
 
Despite your troubles, you are posting some of the most astonishingly nice corals I have ever seen!
Amazing photos and tank. I would be killing myself if I had your corals and your troubles.
After reading all of the above, the only thing that has really changed just prior to your problems is your RO filters...
Did you replace the membrane as well?
I've never really heard of RO pre filters or membranes causing this type of weirdness but maybe you got a funky filter...
Have you changed foods lately?
Good luck with this!
 
What about airborne contaminants..
Anything change in the room? Construction? Cleaning? Air conditioning work?
I'm thinking some sort of contamination which wouldn't show up on a reef based test regimen...
 
Thanks.

I use BRS filters and I flush them etc before I start to use the water in my tank. I didn't change the membrane, I usually do that once a year.

Where I am confused and struggling is that this isn't something that has been happening for a couple of weeks. We are talking about months of this lingering issue where I would imagine if something had gotten into the tank the carbon I change every 4 weeks would have removed it, or it would have been removed by weekly water changes.

I've gone through 3 buckets of Tropic Marin Pro since the problem started so I'd imagine if it was a "bad batch" of salt it would have been replaced.

Here is where I am at for where I think my troubles are. Have any of you guys had any of this happen to you?

Temp changes: From October - March the tank stayed between 78.3 - 78.6 degrees. Once daylight savings hit the sun will linger over some windows at my home between 4:00 - 6:00 or so and during this time the temp in my home will go up 8-9 degrees. The tank will go from 78.5 at 4:00pm and by 6:00pm it will be 81.5 degrees. By 10:00pm it will be back to 78.5 degrees again. Is it possible going up and down 3 degrees in that short window of time is just not something the tank can handle? If it is as simple as this, I hooked my chiller back up this past Sunday. I took it down last fall because I redid my sump area and there wasn't room for it anymore.

Zeovit: For those familiar, I was dosing daily products like PIF / Amino Acids / CV / Sponge Power / B-Balance. I was running my stones and dosing Zeostart3 based on a 120 gallon net volume system. I was dosing this since January and things got really good (see above pics) but is it possible all this dosing hit some kind of critical point and started to have ill effects on the tank? I have to imagine not but, maybe I am wrong. I was dosing Amino Acid concentrate at 5 drops a day and with that was maintaining 5ppm. However, this goes back to my current theory. When the tank started to look bad and go brown I stopped dosing the Amino Acids because nutrients = brown corals . Even after I stopped dosing nutrients my NO3 remains 5ppm. Weeks after I stopped dosing NO3 while still running 100% zeovit my NO3 still read 5ppm but corals kept getting worse.. Brown and pale. So is possible my Salifert kits are junk (I did order a Red Sea one, should be here today) and I'm getting false readings from the test and my NO3 could actually just be zero and the fact I am not dosing any nutrients to the tank while I was still dosing start3 / bak / biomate is just starving my corals causing stress and necrosis. This is why I just shut down Zeovit.

I don't like abandoning Zeovit. My thinking on Zeovit right now is that the other manufacturer test kit is going to tell me my NO3 is very low, lower than Salifert which means perhaps I should put a new bag of stones into the reactor and go back to dosing my previous regimen when things were going good. If the test kit reads that my NO3 is still 5ppm then maybe I should still put Zeovit back online because clearly Zeovit isn't keeping my water "too clean".

Now perhaps some kind of bacteria is in the system which is why I haven't found the answer. On a 2 year old tank to be experiencing problems I would think to have in the first 6 months is very perplexing, frustrating...
 
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Sorry , over on the Zeo forum they always talk about starting with 0 tds water. Hope this helps , your corals are very beautiful and I know this is frustrating you to have to go through.
 
I'm running a 120 gallon SPS reef. For the last 6 months I've been adding a couple of the Korallin products ("coral vitalizer and amino acids). I add 5 drops of each a day daily and so far my results have been very positive. I used to do large weekly water changes and saw some of the problems you've described, but mostly some STN. Because my system naturally runs low nutrient, I stopped doing water changes for a while and things settled down (the longest I've gone is 7 weeks). I've since gone back to weekly water changes, but only around 4-5 gallons weekly. My tank seems to have hit a sweet spot as of late so that's what I'm sticking with for now. I tell you this because I saw that you said you change 25-30 gallons weekly, which is what I was doing when I had issues. Maybe, a water change that big throws off alk or something else temporarily that the corals don't like. I'm not sure, but this is what's worked for me.
BTW, your coral pics look outstanding. I hope you can get things back to looking like those photos.
 
Jesus thoes acropora are astonishing!!!!! Thoes colors were freaking fantastic! I really hope you get this fixed :) I would love to have frags of these.
By the way, which salifert test kit do you have? They had new cards recently that were printed darker than the last ones so everyone was getting high readings. They have since fixed the problem, my new one reads the same as my old one. These new kits are the ones with the black edge on the color test card.. But low nutrients doesn't equal dark and brown corals that I have ever seen. I wouldn't think the rocks would be hurting anything but I don't know much about them yet, just started experimenting with them actually. If your nitrates are good I still relate the shift in coloration to bacterial infections and also sometimes too much carbon source. How long have you been using a carbon source and how much of what are you using? Did you bump up your dosage before this started?
Try and think back to the first signs of this problem and remember what you may have done differently. It almost always boils down to something simple.
 
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