old established tank, all parameters are fine, s.g where it is susposed to be, all fish and critters are fine, but all corals closed or have lost their polips. weather soft or hard corals, all the same, looks like the bubble tips are starting to close up as well. any ideas of where to look? tank is a 75 with sump and t-5 lighting.
help, corals dieing
- Thread starter bobt2
- Start date
Alk swing? Metals (rusty magnet)? Coral warfare? Dosing anything new or other changes in the last month? Old bulbs? New bulbs?
Really need a lot more info with actual measured parameters.
Really need a lot more info with actual measured parameters.
Agreed, please post your actual parameters.
Also, have you recently calibrated your refractometer? I was having some issues and realized I hadn't done so in a while. Turned out my salinity was low by quite a bit.
ok, no3 4ppm, ca 405, alk 9.8, sg 1026 and ph 8.1 lights were changed with no effect, water changes do not seam to help. even vacuuming the sump. the only real change i made months ago was the tank is tbs rock that was getting old, so i removed some rock and added some new tbs rock, but there was never a problem and the life on that rock is still alive, last, skimmer is acting normally
What is your PO4? Corals can tolerate high PO4 but if it goes really high it will negatively impact most corals.
What was your alkalinity a month ago, two months ago. If alklinity has been climbing for awhile or suddenly jumped it would indcate a problem that initially just slowed coral growth but has gotten worse over time.
Are you carbon dosing? DOC can be very bad for corals and it builds up in a system if water changes aren't done and carbon dosing can cause or will exacerbate the problem. Repeat water changes are needed, probably multiple 10% - 20% weekly water changes for 5-8 weeks. Keep in mind you're not going to see much improvement right away if you've already seen coral death as there is likely secondary infections or issues that corals will need to get healthier to recover from,
What was your alkalinity a month ago, two months ago. If alklinity has been climbing for awhile or suddenly jumped it would indcate a problem that initially just slowed coral growth but has gotten worse over time.
Are you carbon dosing? DOC can be very bad for corals and it builds up in a system if water changes aren't done and carbon dosing can cause or will exacerbate the problem. Repeat water changes are needed, probably multiple 10% - 20% weekly water changes for 5-8 weeks. Keep in mind you're not going to see much improvement right away if you've already seen coral death as there is likely secondary infections or issues that corals will need to get healthier to recover from,
no carbon dosing, po4 is around .1 if i remember, alk varies a little, but not that much, i,m thinking something came in with the added rock, but i cant take it all out now, truthfully, after 50 years of doing this[im 75 now] it may be getting to the point of just saying the heck with the corals as the fish and all the critters are doing great.
How frequent are water changes? DOC can be roughly divided into labile, semirefractory and refractory. The labile portion, whether it's from corals or algae promote microbial growth with the stuff from algae promoting oxygen depleting stuff and pathogenic stuff in coral microbiomes and excess coral DOC can cause oxygen draw down in coral microbiomes by too much microbial growth. There's just a small fraction of semirefractory DOC in reef systems but it can promote the oxygen depleting stuff. The refractory makes up most of the DOC in reef systems but with excess laible DOC from algae heterotrophic bacteria can feed on it potentially crating anoxic conditions around corals at the mm scale making it difficult to measure with our test kits/testers. Frequent water changes along with algae removal are the ideal way to correct this situation.
It's also possible your corals are just old if you've had them a long time. Coral colonies and polyps do show signs of aging. Obviously aging will vary signifcantly by species but polyps can show signs of senescence from as little as a few months to centuries.
It's also possible your corals are just old if you've had them a long time. Coral colonies and polyps do show signs of aging. Obviously aging will vary signifcantly by species but polyps can show signs of senescence from as little as a few months to centuries.
Whenever something like that happens to me I have to assume coral warfare or other contaminant, so I run activated carbon for a week in a hang on filter. It sorts it out.
Maybe stop then, lol.
Have you tried testing your newly mixed water BEFORE doing the water change? Is it possible that something is off with your current salt mix? I recently had a bucket of salt that was drastically low in Alk and drastically high in Ca. This led to some problems as you can imagine.
As I mentioned above, when was the last time you calibrated your refractometer?
As I mentioned above, when was the last time you calibrated your refractometer?
Unfortunately GAC dosen't remove all types of DOC. In cases like this where the usual maintenancce regimens isn't helping I run a diatom filter for a day to basicly reduce teh mmicrobial load in the water and hopefully let the corals promote what's beneficial for them. Old Vortex XLs work great for this (@PaulB) but mine rusted out a long time ago. I made one using water filter parts from the local home supply store using 5" diameter pleated filters and diatom powder from a pool supply store. Seeing corals that have turned brown recover their colors with no changes in feeding or lighting using only a diatom filter is one of the expericneces that helped the research on microbial processes and DOC resonate so well when I stumbled across it.
