Learning/rebuilding from my epic fail

Thanks Jorge. Live and learn, indeed...
I don't think I will lose many more pieces but the brown out will probably take months to reverse..
I think the worst is over but you know it takes weeks or months for some corals to respond to stress like this and then several more to recover..
We shall see. I'm just totally demoralized since I was really seeing good things happen in my tank..
I'm such an idiot sometimes.
 
Matt, Put it behind you and move forward. I have been having to do this a lot lately. Don't dwell on it. Put a system in place so you don't let it happen again. You have an amazing tank and it will bounce :bounce3:right back.
 
Sh!t happens Matt. Sadly it happens all the time in this hobby. Success and failure are very much intertwined. OK, what happened was perhaps avoidable, but you did not do it deliberately. We all make mistakes. Please do not punish yourself and lose interest. Your corals need you.

On a separate note, on two or three occasions, my tank also suffered from sudden alkalinity crashes for various reasons, but my corals were not affected. The main difference was that the drop was from ~7.5 dKH down to ~5 dKH within a day or two. Is it possible that corals tolerate alkalinity drops if they are kept at NSW levels? Similarly, Eric Borneman, in his book, referred to anecdotal evidence on corals' tolerance to temperature hikes. He reported that according to this evidence, corals kept at natural sea temperatures (e.g. 29C) tolerated temperatures hikes up to 32C, whereas corals kept at 26C bleached when temperatures suddenly rose to 29C.
 
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Corals do tolerate better if you have the correct support nutrients and trace elements.
I have alkalinity swing of 7 to 9 and back down within a day or two.
Corals sulked a bit, but it didn't go brown as everyone anecdotal says alk swing cause browning of sps corals. I did repeat that theory on another time just to confirm it doesn't brown your corals.
It got me thinking because one person I know have his system temp swing from 28C to 34C.
I am also dosing way above the recommended balling trace - 50% more for a whole month now. All I saw was more growth and colours with more trace. I will keep this up and watch if any deterioration or further growth.
 
Hey guys, thanks for the support and yes you are all correct, **** happens.. gotta live with the consequences and move on.
I'll stop acting like a baby.. although I'm still ****ed every time I go down and see more browning. Anyways..
I was thinking about what else was going on a couple weeks ago and realized that I had also gone back to using gfo.
Just before reducing my ca reactor, I had added fresh gfo.
Now, I had been using it for a couple weeks before this happened, so it's not like I added it for the first time just as my alk dropped.. and it hasn't really affected my tested po4 levels but has reduced the frequency of my glass cleaning from every day to every other day..
Maybe the slight reduction in available phos along with the alk drop played a role..
Bulent, my alk went from 8.5 to 6.5.. so from slightly high to pretty close to natural sea water levels..
Temp is pretty steady in my system- around 79-80..
As for trace, last month, I reduced my additions of iodine, Flourine, micro e and Koralcolor by about half but I am still adding them at a reduced level..
Maybe I'll go back to my full dose.. or maybe I'll just leave it as is..
This is the time when you want to start trying everything under the sun to try to bring things back when really, the tank just needs absolute stability..
I also want to begin dosing kalkwasser.. maybe I'll wait on that a bit..
Thanks again for positive comments!
 
sorry to hear that Matt!

got some problems with my alk as well...

having a tank is a never ending story of learning and making mistakes...

cheers mate
 
Sorry to hear about the alk swing Matt. These things happens to the best of us. Hopefully you were able to save/make frags of most of the dying corals.
 
Thanks, guys.
The rtn seems to have stopped.
I completely lost a couple colonies and a few frags but in general, I didn't lose a lot. However, there are some corals who's flesh has darkened and dried up so badly, I'm really not sure if they will live or die..
On the other hand, many corals have not even noticed the swing and are doing perfectly.
Just a waiting game now..
It'll be a while before I even go in the chop away the rtned sections from the surviving corals.
I'm just going to leave them alone for now..
The only thing I want to do - since my ca reactor is off and I'm only dosing buffer at the moment- is to restart ca/alk dosing using a set amount of kalkwasser as a base dose. Once that weekly set dose doesn't supply enough, I will restart my ca reactor.
My rational for this is to raise ph a bit and to hopefully pull a tiny amount of po4 from the system.
 
Thanks, Tim. I hope I caught it soon enough... actually, I'm pretty sure it was the drop that caused the problem. Not the slow rise.
If I had lowered alk more slowly, I wouldn't have had a problem in the first place..
The corals that have been effected could literally take months to recover or die..
waiting it out is the absolute hardest thing.
I'll probably end up pulling half of them out and replacing them with new corals down the road.
 
Sorry to hear about your troubles Matt I'm sure you will have things turned around in no time.
On the bright side you will have room for new frags [emoji6]
 
Thanks. Over the past few months I have really broken my addiction of acquiring new corals...
This set back may be reignite my 'problem'...
Mooouuuuuhaha!! :)
Actually, even with the losses, I am short on space...
 
If look at a browned acro frustrates you, remember this: you still have a browned acro to look at....

;0)))

Best luck from now on.......and...keep moving....keep moving....
 
reefmutt said:
Thanks. Over the past few months I have really broken my addiction of acquiring new corals...
This set back may be reignite my 'problem'...
Mooouuuuuhaha!! :)
Actually, even with the losses, I am short on space...
Click to expand...

Lack of space...... Yea right. Pull a biggles and just start piling acros upon one another!
 
Ouch Matt, so sorry about the alk incident. Whoever can make a reasonably priced continuous Alk meter will make millions. Hopefully the overall health of the tank will allow most corals to recover quickly.
 
Sucks to hear what happened Matt :(

You know these things wouldn't happen if you dripped your daily alk from a plastic container like me........ safer than any electronic doser or reactor ever built and impossible to overdose - ever. You should join me in the old fart reefing club mate :thumbsup:

Look forward to seeing you rebound and restock buddy :)

Pife said:
Lack of space...... Yea right. Pull a biggles and just start piling acros upon one another!
Click to expand...

Oh here we go........... you do realize in nature Pifey that parrot fish snap acro branches off and spit bits onto other acros, i am merely creating as natural a reef scape as possible. Yeah, you didn't see that one coming did you Pifey ! :reading:

Mess with the bull and you get the horns......... if you swap the word 'bull' for 'moose' btw, it loses all the menace since moose are such a joke looking animal - just a fyi Matt in case you ever think to do it mate - don't. :twitch:
 
Alex Costa said:
If look at a browned acro frustrates you, remember this: you still have a browned acro to look at....

;0)))

Best luck from now on.......and...keep moving....keep moving....
Click to expand...
Thanks Alex.. yes, you've had your fair share of problems!
We will both come back better! :)
Pife said:
Lack of space...... Yea right. Pull a biggles and just start piling acros upon one another!
Click to expand...
Ha! Indeed. I've been doing that forever and it wasn't biggles who showed me, it was sheer desperation to acquire more and more frags.. necessity is the mother of invention, as they say..
markalot said:
Ouch Matt, so sorry about the alk incident. Whoever can make a reasonably priced continuous Alk meter will make millions. Hopefully the overall health of the tank will allow most corals to recover quickly.
Click to expand...
Thanks, my issue was really user error..
biggles said:
Sucks to hear what happened Matt :(

You know these things wouldn't happen if you dripped your daily alk from a plastic container like me........ safer than any electronic doser or reactor ever built and impossible to overdose - ever. You should join me in the old fart reefing club mate :thumbsup:

Look forward to seeing you rebound and restock buddy :)



Oh here we go........... you do realize in nature Pifey that parrot fish snap acro branches off and spit bits onto other acros, i am merely creating as natural a reef scape as possible. Yeah, you didn't see that one coming did you Pifey ! :reading:

Mess with the bull and you get the horns......... if you swap the word 'bull' for 'moose' btw, it loses all the menace since moose are such a joke looking animal - just a fyi Matt in case you ever think to do it mate - don't. :twitch:
Click to expand...

You know, an angry male moose is s daunting animal.. he may look weird and all gangly and uncoordinated as he barrels towards you but he'll still stomp you to death.. even with his cute fuzzy antlers..

I recently pulled out my Red Sea calcium test kit to compare the oddly high and consistent results I was getting from my salifert test kit and discovered that there was a 50ppm discrepancy! Salifert is giving me 420 and RS is giving me 370....
I was using salifert when I got my 500ppm reading which caused me to turn off my ca. Reactor.
This whole thing was not a technical error or malfunction, Andrew, it was me overreacting and doing so in haste.. I really thought I was over doing dumb sh*t like that but apparently not..
I'll have to buy a third test kit and compare results.
If I had originally been using my RS kit and gotten a result of 450ppm, I would not have reacted to stupidly..
Oh well, the damage is done and the corals that got shocked, continue to decline but some that weren't affected have not really changed much.. growth has stopped and colours are awful but I'm trying to just get a stable base and go from there.
Each removed coral skeleton is a good spot for a new Aussie coral (in my dreams)
 
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