Established SPS tank, slowly rotting away.

I don't think that temp swing would cause general stress.. Many of these corals are adapted to tidal variations in temp, salinity and water level..
Maybe not all of them, I guess.. True deep water sps wouldn't be as tolerant.
Maybe a small in sump fan on a timer would mitigate the temp swings, if the chiller is no longer convenient.

I would be inclined to keep your current zeo regimen. Changing it may cause additional stress. (Assuming it isn't the stressor) At the moment, you have to assume it's providing stability.. I think..
Are you bare bottom? I assume so..

So, before January, you weren't using zeostart 3? When zeostart 3 began, things started looking better until a point in May ish? Is this correct?
Before you were using zeostart3, were you using a different carbon source or was n just staying at 5 on its own..
When n started to climb, why not up your zeostart 3 a bit instead of stopping amigos? As systems age, some nutrients get bound.. Maybe the rise in n was just a natural symptom of the tank aging and a small increase in zeostart may have contained the rise..
Had your fish population changed around that point?
Based on what I am understanding from your history, nutrient swings seem like a potential culprit..
Sorry if I'm rambling, I'm sort of thinking out loud..
Please correct me if I got a fact wrong..
 
reefmutt said:
I don't think that temp swing would cause general stress.. Many of these corals are adapted to tidal variations in temp, salinity and water level..
Maybe not all of them, I guess.. True deep water sps wouldn't be as tolerant.
Maybe a small in sump fan on a timer would mitigate the temp swings, if the chiller is no longer convenient.

I would be inclined to keep your current zeo regimen. Changing it may cause additional stress. (Assuming it isn't the stressor) At the moment, you have to assume it's providing stability.. I think..
Are you bare bottom? I assume so..
Click to expand...

I agree, zeo seemed to be doing good things for you.

Maybe try using a powerful fan on your sump to increase evaporation and lower temp. Then you can use twice as much kalk which in a lot of people's experience helped overcome issues like this. I don't think it would hurt anything to give it a try? Pretty sure higher temps may help some tanks with growth but lower temps are better for corals health and stability.
 
The tank was set-up in May 2015 and cycled using the 14 day Zeovit cycle. I have done 25-30 gallon water changes weekly since the system started and the tank has been running the same T5 fixture since July of 2015.

I've ran 1.25l of stones dosing .05ml of Zeostart3 2x daily. The flow through the reactor is whatever the Zeovit.com sticky says should flow into a 2l bucket over x amount of seconds for my water volume. When I change stones 1l is new (a full bag) and .25l is old for bacteria transfer.

I was trying different Zeovit products and over this past holiday season I started to test my NO3 because corals were not the color I wanted. I noticed the test kit was not changing color which told me I could afford to start dosing some nutrient additives.

Since January of this year I was doing on a daily basis:

Potassium Iodide Flouride
Amino Acid Concentrate
Coral Vitalizer
Sponge Power
B-Balance

At the end of March I noticed my NO3 was finally around 5ppm so I started to dose the Amino Acid Concentrate less and less while testing my NO3 every couple of days. Then corals started to brown-out (5ppm NO3) and I thought perhaps I was over dosing nutrients causing this problem so I stopped for a month (I let a change ride out for awhile before I determine if it was good or bad) and the tank seemed to getting pale despite NO3 still reading 5ppm. So I went back to dosing Amino Acids again. After another month, nothing seemed to get better and I decided I should stop dosing everything until I was able to get the tank back on track. When I lost my RR Pink Passion frag this past week I went to the most extreme and just shut down the Zeovit stones and my normal dosing regiment.

I am soaking a new bag of stones as of this morning so when I do a change this weekend I can put them back in the reactor if I decide to go that direction.

When you are dosing around 9 products where 70% of them you aren't following the directions on the bottle (lets face it some of those Zeo directions are not 100% on for every tank) and the tank starts to go south... Could it be all that dosing causing trouble? Obviously people have amazing tanks and dose zero products so I suppose I started to second guess the system.
 
how long have you been doing 25-30 gal water changes? You could also be doing to big a change causing your calc and alk to fluctuate each time you do one. I have a 150 and I only do 10 gal a week, sometimes even 2 weeks. Maybe try to cut your water change gallons in half for a bit.
 
Been doing those water changes since I started the tank. To offset swings (cause that can be a problem) I use Tropic Marin Pro and run my parameters in the tank close to what the salt mixes at.

With that being said, yes I probably need to throttle back on water changes and do something like 15 gallons a week. I'm not sure though if that causes problems since it is something I do week to week for last 2 years. But perhaps that was the culprit.
 
I also gone through same type of issue when I over dosed seachem flourish in my tank. Some of the coral become Brown then it recovered then it went to RTN. Most RTN happened for me at night only.

Sent from my SM-N9208 using Tapatalk
 
man i hate to see big colonies go down hill. I feel the pain.
with your being experienced it doesn't look like you've really overlooked anything.
honestly, the only thing that comes to my mind is pests.. maybe aefw or something like that. Other than that it looks like you've covered the basics....
scratching my head for you
 
Couple things I'm just throwing out there in case they haven't been brought up.

1. I know you already changed the filters cartridges on the RODI, but have you checked for chloramine?

2. Rust on any equipment in water. This was the one cause that hit me in the past.

Good luck and hope you get it fixed. Would be a huge bummer to lose all those nice looking acros.
 
I had a similar isue once. it stopped when i raised po4 levels from 0,02 to 0,04.. Now i try to keep po4 around 0.04
 
One thing many others try when something like this happens:

Gradually reduce KZ dosing, AA dosing, ..., and eventually down to just a skimmer, socks, Alk/Ca dosing, WC, & perhaps KNO3 dosing. Your corals colors look very intense to me so probably not a "starving" issue. At the end of day if it doesnt stop, I would toss out all the affected corals.
 
Right now I am not running much Zeovit.

Just Biomate / Zeobak / Sponge Power each 5 drops, 2x a week. Its a little over a week since the changes and nothing has died. Well that is to say, nothing new has started to STN.

Gonna end up losing a few more things I think but they are pieces that have been struggling for awhile. This was most likely inevitable.

I didn't think much recovery if any would happen last week so hopefully this week I will see some positive signs that things are getting back on track.

I'm going to replace my bulbs and have another NO3 test kit which will be here tomorrow from another manufacturer. If my NO3 is still around 5ppm (I am expecting it to be lower with the other kit) then I will probably put the Zeovit stones back in and keep doing what I was doing.

I've also got some blinds coming in this week for the windows to help keep temps more stable and the excess light out of the room.
 
Any alk issues? I mean even an isolated event? I'm assuming with tank troubles alk starts to flutter. Maybe you had an alk incident early April and it's been a roller coaster since? From your description that would be my guess. What do you use to test alk?
 
I use Salifert Alk kits (2 of them for redundancy) - I was dosing 35ml of both part 1 and 2 going into April. I keep my Alk around 7.5 and I noticed it creep up to around 8 over the course of a week. I reduced it down to 25ml and I'm holding steady between 7.5 and 7.7
 
Is there an established tank around you that you can transfer your stuff until we figure it out? I would hate you to lose all that stuff.
 
This tank is pretty filled up. Would be difficult to find somebody who could hold my stuff. It would also be a nightmare to transport all of this and most likely I would have even more losses.

rbv2tUP.gif



The image below.. You can see the acropora colony with the yellow tips? On the previous page of this thread, that same colony is shown with lots of bright colored yellow tips.

Now as you can see the yellow tips are nothing like they once were.

b4L4ILg.jpg
 
Last edited:
Some stuff is doing good as you can see... Here is some of the bad. Took these the other day with all bulbs firing and the sun hitting the tank.

lfpsiH7.jpg
 
I think the cause of your problems may be that two little fishies veggie clip. I'm betting the magnet is rusting big time in there if you pop it open.
 
Good call on that veggie clip being a potential problem.

I replace them every couple of months because of the rusting issues I've heard about. I cracked my last old one open to see if it was rusting. I will perhaps do the same with this one and dispose of it.

Not sure of another magnetic clip to use unless I make one myself?
 
the last pictures look like how my corals looked when they were starving at 0.02 po4.. when i raised it to 0.04 it only took a week or so, before they started to look more happy. it took a month before they got their color back though.
 
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