I've lost the touch

wow slugs That sucks!

Just another reason for me to keep my tank at 9.5-10 KH. Seems like my corals start dieing off when it gets to 8 or below.

Hope raising your alk gets everything back in line.
 
up date

up date

Just to update. I added reef builder by dripping it. I raised the KH by one dkh a day. I am now at 9 dkh. My monti cap is dead. My superman is dead. My pink milli has no sighn of pollup extenchtion and has started to die off from the top down. The green birds nest has dead tips and the center looks like the tissue is spider webbing. I am so frustrated. I want back into the sps hobbie but have no clue as to what is wrong.
 
you have a beautiful aquarium. Perhaps you should just focus on keeping what you have alive. It's not everyday that you see two Achilles Tangs in the same aquarium.

There are some glaring obvious things to take care of if one wanted to be serious about keeping SPS in this aquarium. There have been questions asked and suggestions made.
 
Gary Majchrzak said:
you have a beautiful aquarium. Perhaps you should just focus on keeping what you have alive. It's not everyday that you see two Achilles Tangs in the same aquarium.

There are some glaring obvious things to take care of if one wanted to be serious about keeping SPS in this aquarium. There have been questions asked and suggestions made.
Click to expand...

Ya, its unfortunate that you lost more of those corals, but it sounds like you found the immediate culprit: bad test kit giving incorrect dKH numbers. That said, I think a more long term problem is the water changes. Even if you do everything else right, the trace element depletion of a tank full of SPS colonies makes at least occasional water changes a must. I don't I've heard anyone ever suggest that no water changes should be done. Its not like your doing EVERYTHING wrong.
 
reefslugs said:
I don't do water changes. I never have and never will. As long as my water test out good there's no reason.
Click to expand...

Foolish...14yrs you say....and all your sps keep dying? I've ran my tank @ 6dkh before..right now @ around 7...no problems yet....Hmmmm......:hmm5:

New salt water replenishes some of the essential elements like iodine and others. You dont have to wash your car either...as long as it looks clean then forgetaboutit!
 
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With bleached caps I think fluctuating alk, uncalibrated ph monitor or probe, calcium/mag synergy issue. Then there is always the big-tank-second-cycle that seems to happen to new big tanks a year in and then again at three years. Happened to me with both of my last reefs and several other long-time reefers that I know of personally that keep tight ships of consistent husbandry and OCD reefkeeping
 
Granted that water changes replenish trace elements, I use water changes as a source to go through the sand + rocks and clean out the detritus, and other buildup that can cause bad nutrients. The thing that I have noticed is that you want a good source of nutrients that are fresher than stuff that is sitting around rotting. Good nutrients like fish poop...

Also, deep sand beds are notorious for turning on a tank. They build up more and more crap until they start releasing it into the tank. I would go with a shallow sand bed and vacuum it regularly.

If you have some points about why you don't like to do water changes, please enlighten us. You made it seem as though you have a strong belief about not doing them, just want to hear your justification before I make alternative suggestions.
 
Other things to look at are temperature swings. That's the latest problem that i have had. What's your high, and low throughout the day?
 
I think I'm back

I think I'm back

I think I'm back after finding out my Salefert KH test was wrong. Using Tetra test, I brought my KH up to 10 dkh. I also removed my maximods and put my tunze 6101's back in. I don't think my tanks looked this good in a long time. Here are some pictures I took tonight. The first is the green milli I bought two weeks ago. The second one is the red planet I picked up on friday.


<a href="http://s214.photobucket.com/albums/cc160/reefsluge/?action=view&current=DSC07776.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc160/reefsluge/DSC07776.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>


<a href="http://s214.photobucket.com/albums/cc160/reefsluge/?action=view&current=DSC07775.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc160/reefsluge/DSC07775.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
 
reefslugs said:
Just to update. I added reef builder by dripping it. I raised the KH by one dkh a day. I am now at 9 dkh. My monti cap is dead. My superman is dead. My pink milli has no sighn of pollup extenchtion and has started to die off from the top down. The green birds nest has dead tips and the center looks like the tissue is spider webbing. I am so frustrated. I want back into the sps hobbie but have no clue as to what is wrong.
Click to expand...

BTW, How's the two Achilles doing?

I kinda wondered why your tank was empty. Thought something was up.

Guess what I am going thru the same issues. My tank is brand new. Did the update to accomodate the old corals but ended up loosing all of them! Big mature colonies!

I did a few water changes and started on a couple of colonies and they kept dying. All params checked out using Salifert.

Just lately I did a few massive water changes and started to see encouraging results. Like yourself, for me it's SPS or bust.

I bought a small frag that's now doing well so went ahead and ordered a small colony.

To this day I don't know what happened. I have checked everything and even changed all my RO filters even when the TDS reading was close to 0.

Good luck and don't give up. The Achilles looks good but looks so much better when there's SPS in the background!
 
Gary Majchrzak said:
you have a beautiful aquarium. Perhaps you should just focus on keeping what you have alive. It's not everyday that you see two Achilles Tangs in the same aquarium.

There are some glaring obvious things to take care of if one wanted to be serious about keeping SPS in this aquarium. There have been questions asked and suggestions made.
Click to expand...

just a reminder
 
Wow I can believe its been three years now since I started this post. After making many attempts during the three years. I still am not able to keep a SPS to save my life. I've been doing water changes. I have up graded my skimmer. I have tried many different pumps for flow. I have changed the lighting. I run large amounts of GFO and carbon. My alk says steady at 9 using a calcium reactor. I even have removed beautiful fish that I thought might be picking at them.

After all of this still no SPS survivors. Does anyone have a cure or a solution to what my problem might be? Or should I just give up?

Here is my latest milli. It was doing good for about three weeks. Now it looks like this.

IMG_0500_zps49a8aaea.jpg
 
Tissue damage to the tips seems like it's either issues with Alk or a fish picking at the sps.

Boy I hope you figure it out.

Beautiful tank without sps anyway.
 
reefslugs said:
FTS

IMG_0470_zpscc873807.jpg
Click to expand...

The tips of that Mille resembles ALK burn. Also I noticed you still have the Sinularia leather in the FTS. They are one of the more potent softies that SPS do not like. I keep Sarcophyton with SPS and run carbon with success but I believe Sinularia is much more potent.

- Joe
 
My alk stays steady. I never have to make any adjustments on the calcium reactor. As far as fish all I have are tangs, clowns, and mystery wrasse. I am wondering if its the leathers that are doing it. I can't find any pictures that show what happens with chemical warfare. I'm tempted to remove the leathers, but if that does not curt the problem, I won't have much look at.
 
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