In serious need of some help

Slowly but surely most of my corals are dying off ....

I've had my tank up and running for about 4 yrs without any real issues and things have been thriving & growing.

Over the last several months corals which have been thriving & growing (for several years in some cases) have all begun to slowly have tissue recession & die

I've lost all 3 of my large multi layer monti cap corals, 2 multi heads of torches, both colonies of trumpets, several long tentacle plate corals & most recently my prized lobo which I've had for over 3 years.

Some things, like 2 colonies of acans are still doing well as are 2 very large frogspawn & 1 large hammer colony. My green hairy mushrooms, palys & purple shrooms are doing well and also a medium size digi cap colony

I've also had a dozen fish & 1 snowflake that have been totally unaffected throughout this.

System equipment: 4 AI Sols (2 blue/2 white), 2 MP40s, 300g PS, CaRX, Phosphate reactor, Genesis auto water changing system, 5 stage RO/DI system, 50 gal sump with 200 micro filter sock attached to sump input from each overflow, gold Reeflo Dart running everything

I dose the Red Sea equivalent of vodlka dosing 3x/week, feed 1 frozen shrimp cube daily, oyster feast & Rodi feast 3x/week, 1 piece seaweed daily & shrimp for the eel 3-4x/week

My system parameters have always been stable & I checked them again last night:
SG 1.025
Alk 9.74
Ca 440
Mg 1110
Nitrate .25 ppm
Phosphate 0
Ammonia N/A

The only big change I've made in the system in the last year was the addition of the genesis system which changes out 1 gal every 12 hrs 24/7

I also vacuum the sand bed 1x/2 weeks. lately there as been a small amount of red algae showing up which I siphon off & then change out the filter socks

I'm at a total loss as to the cause and/or what to do about it. I don't dare add anything new to the tank at this point ....

Anyone feel free to chime in, no idea is too crazy at this point ...
 
What are you measuring salinity with, and are you sure it is properly calibrated? What is the temperature, and how is it measured?

Mag is also low.

Maybe try running a poly filter, see if there is some contaminant in the water?
 
temp is 78 +/- 1 deg controlled by a chiller
salinity digital hanna refractometer - I'll check the calibration ....
I'll get Mg back to 1300
I'll get a poly filter ...my first thought was some kind of contaminant also ...
 
Yes your mag is a bit low would try to get it up to about 1350 but do it gradually over a couple of days can't really think of anything else at the moment

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I had kind of the same thing happen. Everything was happy and healthy, couple days after a WC things started going downhill fast. On the advice of others I did a massive WC with a fresh bucket of salt, and a few weeks later things started to perk up a bit.

The general consensus was bad salt, which I'm inclined to go with. I sent a sample to Triton just to see if it was possibly salt contamination. Triton returned high sulfur and high lithium which they attribute to salt contamination.

Fast forward a couple months and a fresh batch sent to Triton after several WC's, and all parameters are in check with the lithium and sulfur levels back down where they belong. Needless to say, I threw out that bucket of salt.


FWIW, I have always used IO-RC and just happen to get a bad bucket. The next box was fine.
 
Ok, looks like I've most likely discovered the issue - besides my buffoonery that is ...

I checked my Milwaukee digital refractometer calibration last night & it checked at 1.000 so that wasn't the issue .... on a whim I decided to recheck my salinity again and teh first reading I got was 1.020 ! I rinsed the collection bowl with distilled water & rechecked it ... 1.021, repeated this 2 more times and it was still 1.021 ... no wonder things are dying ...
Mixed up a batch of high concentrate seawater & introduced it into the sump. Also turned off the STORM ATO portion of my Genesis system so that natural evaporation would slowly help raise salinity as well. Checked a again this morning and SG was up to 1.023. Added another batch of concentrated seawater before heading off to work & will check again. Poly filter also shwed clean this morning as well.
Luckily my fresh seawater replacement tank for my auto PWC system almost empty so I need to make a new batch anyway. I obviously need to change my seawater creation procedures a bit to monitor SG more regularity. One down side of being highly automated is that I tend to not check things as often as I used to assuming everything is 'set it & forget it'.
Expensive lesson but hey, now I get to buy a bunch of new corals .... :) .... probably shouldn't explain it that way to my wife who is only interested in the fish ...
 
I know the feeling, my salinity had done the exact opposite and crept up too high and I lost a coral that had been doing really well.
 
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