Is this what is blowing up my stick stocks?

[toothybugs]

I posted this on Facebook so sorry if any of you get it there too -

I've been blowing through pieces left and right for a couple weeks now, like 2-3 a day. I figured a bit of it was due to changing stuff around for a tank transfer (detritus/ nutrient kicking up, etc) or a brief period of 1.029 when my ATO sensor got crudded up while I was out of town, but when it started to get worse after I stabilized things, I was at a loss. I moved everything over to my upgrade on Thursday, with better lights, triple the system volume, etc. Better all around. My numbers could hardly be better:

Alk 8.4 (high of 8.7 two weeks ago)
Ca 420
Mg 1320
Nutrients undetectable (I'm feeding the 8 fish and not running carbon or biopellets or anything)
Temp 78-79 via Ranco and feels like its telling me the truth
Salinity 1.026 (refractometer holds a calibration well, but I should recheck it)

Currently the 75 is powered by 2x 250W Radiums on a a Hamilton M80.

This crap is making me want to man-cry

ANY help is appreciated. Thoughts, criticisms, questions will get answered ASAP.

Thanks
NG

 

[lynchmob3000]

Looks like alk plus nutrient or sg. Id turn the new lighting down however possible bc now the super clean water after the transfer plus upgraded lighting. ive seen sps start to shed their skin like this. Gotta make sure things are in line and ride it out. Sometimes transfers go smooth some times it goes just like that. Maybe something in the new tank is leaching? New silicone pvc glue etc. You might throw a bag of carbon in the sump overnight, see if that helps. Did you by chance change salts during this transfer?

 

[toothybugs]

I matched the new water to the old as close as possible - alk, ca, temp/ SG, etc were all incredibly close. Mag was 100 higher in the new system but I used all the old water in to the new system to minimize any shocks. I didn't get any new salt - kept with my good old IO. Same bucket even.

Any silicone or PVC glue had cured for 2 weeks before I put water in the tank. I took this one nice and slow, but the delay in my frag tank for some reason started to hurt.

 

[lynchmob3000]

Any new live rock added?

 

[Piper27]

The salinity swing could be it along with any other changes in the water. How long was the swing for? Once stressed the other smaller changes like lighting and nutrients will be that much more visible.

 

[toothybugs]

Any new live rock added?

About double. Since August when this upgrade idea started, I cycled cured rock between my sump and cycling tank to keep things moving and minimize the "newness" of new rock. Started with acid-washed dry Marco and seeded it with some tank rock, doing 100% water changes on a monthly basis (remember, since late August, so a full 5 months of curing and rinsing it out). I haven't seen any upswing in nutrient levels.

As of this morning almost all my acros (the millies seem to be doing okay, actually) are dead, I have about 15 frags out of around 50 still surviving. I'm expecting to lose 6-7 of them before this is all over. Even the Slimers are gone.

So this is what you guys mean when you say we all go through a crash and a reboot, huh? Cuz this seriously sucks. I'm not a quitter by any stretch but this is making it really, really hard to be optimistic about picking up and moving forward.

 

[toothybugs]

The salinity swing could be it along with any other changes in the water. How long was the swing for? Once stressed the other smaller changes like lighting and nutrients will be that much more visible.

Too long. Probably a couple weeks. I had to take a sudden 4-day trip for work so I made sure the ATO had water and things were generally good. The wife knew to reset/restart if things started to seem weird for any reason.

I came home and saw a few salt lines around the top of the water. "Oh, the ATO was beeping so I just moved it down to the top of the water and it quit." :uhoh2: :facepalm:

I saw stress so I moved forward with the new setup faster and didn't think to actually check the salinity at that exact point in time. I bumped the ATO back up to where it originally was, incrementally of course, but didn't check the salinity for maybe a week or so until I was prepping water for transfer. Salinity should be the same if no salt was added and the ATO was back to where you thought it was, right? :facepalm:

I'm betting you hit the nail on the head with this one. Something so simple probably wrecked my tank.

 

[reefmutt]

Too bad... that totally sucks!
But after everything that has happened, I'm not too surprised by the outcome.
Even if things are settling down now, the shock the corals went through is still killing them off.
You basically have a brand new system...
I'd say you should just keep everything stable, wait for the dust to settle- like a couple months and then try adding a frag back to the system and see how it goes..