Let's save Georgi's tank!

[terahz]

Alright guys, I'm starting to get quite frustrated with my situation. Here is a little background for those who don't know it:

I had a 10G tank for about a year that was doing really nice. Then, I decided to upgrade to a 40G and pretty much since then (June 2010) I haven't been able to keep a single stony coral.

About 4 months ago I did a complete restart of the tank, thinking that somehow the bacterial balance wasn't good, or the algae scrubber I had on the rocks was doing some damage, or something has gotten into the tank that is killing my sps.

Right after I restarted, I put a small piece of monti cap as a test, and to my surprise the little thing was growing like there is no tomorrow. It was putting probably 1/4" a week. For 3 weeks . Then it went back to pre-restart.

When I did the restart, I setup a 10G QT tank as a good practice, and to my surprise sps in the 10G tank are fine!!!. Recently I moved a dying birds nest from the DT back to the QT and it has stabilized and has great PE.

So what are the symptoms:
- coral has great PE for the first week or so
- then any trace of color is erased and coral turns brown/pale/unsaturated. polyps barely show out.
- then you start to see one of 2 things happen:
- the coral starts to get lighter patches and/or the entire coral becomes even lighter
- any tip (even the round things that the polyps come out of) becomes a skeleton and only the "trunk" is left with skin (it kind of starts at the top of the sps, but within a few days the entire coral is like that)
- coral "hangs" for another week or so (total of about 3-4) and it dies.

Equipment:
QT tank has 4 white leds barely making 100par, 1 MJ400, heater and AC50 on the back. That's it. I top it off once a week, if that, and don't do water changes on it. No clue what parameters it has.

DT has an eshopps psk100 skimmer, eheim 1260 return, 2x MP40wES (on maybe 25% power), Hydor ETH300 inline heater, MJ1200 running a reactor with GFO and carbon and currently 4x24W T5s (used to be 48 LEDs which are now down for some upgrades). 1450 Mag, 0.03-0.08 phosphates (that's pretty much the Hanna checker's error range), 450 Calcium, 8.7 Alk, pH 8.10 with fairly low swing. Water temp 78.2F. I put a dose of prodibio every 15-20 days to provide some bacteria to the tank (no clue if it does squat).

Both tanks use ESV Salt.

Here are some pictures of the symptoms from before the restart:

I have a thread over at the chemistry forum on this:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1975860

But I figured this is the perfect thing for a club to do.

So at this point I've tried anything I can think of, but lets take a step back and start from the beginning. I am willing to perform pretty much anything (within reason, of course) on the tank. Anyone is free to come and look at the tank, do tests on it, or ask me to do it. I can take photos when requested and do tests as requested.

I really don't want to say it, but if I can't turn things around I'll have to limit my losses at some point and just give up.

So what do you guys think?

 

[srusso]

Alright guys, I'm starting to get quite frustrated with my situation. Here is a little background for those who don't know it:

I had a 10G tank for about a year that was doing really nice. Then, I decided to upgrade to a 40G and pretty much since then (June 2010) I haven't been able to keep a single stony coral.

About 4 months ago I did a complete restart of the tank, thinking that somehow the bacterial balance wasn't good, or the algae scrubber I had on the rocks was doing some damage, or something has gotten into the tank that is killing my sps.

Right after I restarted, I put a small piece of monti cap as a test, and to my surprise the little thing was growing like there is no tomorrow. It was putting probably 1/4" a week. For 3 weeks . Then it went back to pre-restart.

When I did the restart, I setup a 10G QT tank as a good practice, and to my surprise sps in the 10G tank are fine!!!. Recently I moved a dying birds nest from the DT back to the QT and it has stabilized and has great PE.

So what are the symptoms:
- coral has great PE for the first week or so
- then any trace of color is erased and coral turns brown/pale/unsaturated. polyps barely show out.
- then you start to see one of 2 things happen:
- the coral starts to get lighter patches and/or the entire coral becomes even lighter
- any tip (even the round things that the polyps come out of) becomes a skeleton and only the "trunk" is left with skin (it kind of starts at the top of the sps, but within a few days the entire coral is like that)
- coral "hangs" for another week or so (total of about 3-4) and it dies.

Equipment:
QT tank has 4 white leds barely making 100par, 1 MJ400, heater and AC50 on the back. That's it. I top it off once a week, if that, and don't do water changes on it. No clue what parameters it has.

DT has an eshopps psk100 skimmer, eheim 1260 return, 2x MP40wES (on maybe 25% power), Hydor ETH300 inline heater, MJ1200 running a reactor with GFO and carbon and currently 4x24W T5s (used to be 48 LEDs which are now down for some upgrades). 1450 Mag, 0.03-0.08 phosphates (that's pretty much the Hanna checker's error range), 450 Calcium, 8.7 Alk, pH 8.10 with fairly low swing. Water temp 78.2F. I put a dose of prodibio every 15-20 days to provide some bacteria to the tank (no clue if it does squat).

Both tanks use ESV Salt.

Here are some pictures of the symptoms from before the restart:

I have a thread over at the chemistry forum on this:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1975860

But I figured this is the perfect thing for a club to do.

So at this point I've tried anything I can think of, but lets take a step back and start from the beginning. I am willing to perform pretty much anything (within reason, of course) on the tank. Anyone is free to come and look at the tank, do tests on it, or ask me to do it. I can take photos when requested and do tests as requested.

I really don't want to say it, but if I can't turn things around I'll have to limit my losses at some point and just give up.

So what do you guys think?

The only common denominator is your tank... If I remember correctly you have a custom rimless 40 gallon... It's the silicone I bet, if all your practice in a 10 gallon works fine... Corals actually improve their health when moved into QT aka a standard 10 gallon tank I bet... IE no silicone issue... I know we have spoke about this before but it's really the only thing that makes sense...

 

[srusso]

So I guess my challenge is get a larger standard aquarium and see if it is your beautiful rimless tank the that's killing your SPS...

 

[gmate]

Find out who made your tank what kind of silicone they used. Sorry if I missed it, but did you at any point run activated carbon? If so, did that make a positive or negative difference? It's possible they even used the right silicone but didn't give it proper time to cure.

 

[scolley]

Good call on the tank Steve. Who made the tank Georgi? Any chance it was done with one of the nasty, mold killing, silicones?

IMO the easiest way to see what's wrong with the DT is to methodically change conditions on the QT until that coral dies too. Will take a while though.

You CAN make several changes to the DT at once, but if the corals die, you'll have to do more work to figure out which of the changes made the difference. So you could start running carbon and GFO in the QT. And add Probidio. After that I'd add a rock from the DT to the QT. That will let you know if the problem is a pest or not.

And what about lights? And way to make those conditions the same, or equivalent?

Finally I'd like to share something that happened to me, to see if it spurs your thinking...

Years ago I had beautiful 75g planted biotope tank. It started out spectacular, but developed a bit of an algae problem that I could not get rid of. I ripped all the plants out and replaced with less algae prone plants. Those too got the same algae. Worked on-line with the "experts" for about 9 months, trying to fix it, but my plants all slowly died, and the algae got insane. After having worked so, so hard trying everything to beat the algae, I eventually concluded that I did not know what was wrong - why the lack of vigour in my plants - and admited defeat and tore the tank down. And in the process, I made a shocking discovery.

While setting up the tank, I had sections of substrate separated from sand areas. To keep them from mixing while pouring it in, I used cardboard separators - which I removed. And to keep the cardboard up - temporarily - I used various small heavy household objects - also removed. Except one. I had neglected to remove a nice, silver rimmed glass coaster. Unbeknownst to me, it remained in the soil. And silver is a nasty, nasty killer of plants. Think copper and inverts. Similar.

Sorry for the long story, but is there any way that you are overlooking something in this tank? Pennies that fell in once, and you thought you got them all? An unusual piece of plumbing that you THOUGH would be benign? Anything?

 

[scolley]

It's possible they even used the right silicone but didn't give it proper time to cure.

It could be silicone. But it's not curing. That happens faster in water. So it's cured now... LONG since cured.

And while something could have leached from that curing process (only a few days underwater), that should be gone from water changes.

Georgi - correct me if I'm wrong, but you've done more than one total water change. Correct?

 

[terahz]

Tank was made by glass cages. I gave it more than a month to cure after I got it and it has been now almost 2 years since I got it. I'd guess anything leaching from it would have leached out by now?

Yes I run carbon. Doesn't make a difference.

So, changing the tank is one recommendation. It sounds like a reasonable next step I guess... Let's hear some other ideas before I go take apart my entire system

 

[scolley]

Georgi - I just realized if you want to rule out light, you can start doing regular WC's on your QT with DT water. Big changes - like 50% - often. If your QT SPS don't start dying after a month, then the problem is either lights, or something nasty that does not move with the water - like critters on a rock.

Also - unlikely - but have you used a thermometer to test BOTH tanks temp. Just to have the temp confirmed by a common source? And is there any chance your DT is going through temp swings?

 

[gmate]

My only other guess is what Scolley brought up, that there might be a possible heavy metal corrosion or issue in that matter. I've heard people having magfloats that ruin water quality because they're rusted away or something along those lines. What equipment do you have in the tank? Everything big and small, from powerheads and pumps to magfloats and nori clips. Anything that you think may even possibly cause an issue with stray voltage or leeching metals into the water?

 

[srusso]

...is there any way that you are overlooking something in this tank? Pennies that fell in once, and you thought you got them all? An unusual piece of plumbing that you THOUGH would be benign? Anything?

...powerheads and pumps to magfloats and nori clips. Anything that you think may even possibly cause an issue with stray voltage or leeching metals into the water?

ok, like they said... maybe its not the tank but maybe you should take good look at every single thing. Test your DT leds over QT... trust none of your equipment. :deadhorse:

 

[terahz]

Steve, that's a good point about contamination. I am certain there is nothing extra in the tank, only the equipment can cause trouble. And yes, I'm currently thinking of doing equipment replacement.

And yes, I have made large enough water change for the past 2 years I think . Any silicone-curing stuff should be long gone. I can't, however, remember exactly what silicone I used to seal the gaskets on the bulkheads. I do remember going through great deal of researching to get reef safe silicone grease.

The QT is running LEDs that I took from the DTs fixture. Obviously I can't run 48 high power leds on a 10G tank . Unfortunately I also can't test most of the equipment in the 10G (mp40s, return pump or inline heater), however I will change the QT water with DT water and see if that starts killing corals.

I also put a couple of drops of the prodibio stuff in the QT tank, so I know that's not causing a problem.

I don't have any magfloats or nori clips in the tank.

I've used 3 thermometers to check both tank's temperature at various times (one is IR, the other two are of the probe type) and if there is one stable thing in my tank, it is water temperature.

Soooo, I guess next step is to change the QT water with DT water and see if that causes problems. I like that better than replacing the tank .

Next suspects would be:
- skimmer pump
- inline heater
- MJ1200 for the carbon/GFO reactor
- float switches
- MP40s

That's all the equipment I have in there.

I guess moving the DT water over to the QT tank should narrow down the possible problems.

Thanks so far guys.

 

[scolley]

Good luck. :thumbsup:

 

[RTMA]

Maybe try shutting down the gfo and carbo for a bit. If you are not feeding a lot and only have two fish, and doing monthly water changes, there may be no need to run gfo yet. My gut is telling me this by the way. Lol

 

[RTMA]

I'm assuming your QT has no reactor.

 

[gmate]

+1 on shutting down Carbon for the time being, take a look and see if something surfaces that maybe is a symptom that Carbon has been hiding/disguising

 

[njudson]

Have you tried dialing the DT leds back to ~60% for a few weeks?
How stable is your pH?

Nick

 

[thefuz]

What about stray voltage?

 

[terahz]

I can certainly turn off the reactor. (no reactor in the QT) But if the Phosphate test is to be believed, there is certainly something the GFO can do.

I guess I'll turn it off and see how it goes.

Nick, I'm not using the LEDs right now. As I said in the first post I'm currently using 4 t5s (both as a test for the light, and while updating my LED fixture).

I remember doing some stray voltage/current measurement last year and it didn't seem to be a problem. Will check again this week.

 

[MrMatthew]

DSB? Maybe the bottom of the tank under the sand has not cured yet and leached into the sand itself and is just festering there, and that is assuming it's a problem with the silicone. When I first started reading this post it was first thing that popped into my mind is it could be the silicone.

I don't know what chemicals are used to make plastics but, you would imagine there is some sort of mixing of chemicals and additives to make plastic objects, so is it possible at some point at the manufacturer for power heads, skimmers, reactors, inline heaters or whatever equipment that a wrong mixture took place and a little more of part A was added then needed or to little of part B was added? And could slowly leak nasty stuff into your water colum over time. No way to really test for that but anything is possible. In my field of work we use alot of polyethylene sheeting and have come across rolls acted differently than normal suggesting maybe they cheaped out on certain additive to save on cost or just brainfarted the mixture when they were making it, these things happen man all across the board. Sorry of any of this is useless to helping you out but it's just my 2 cents. Good Luck!

 

[terahz]

I don't have a deep sand bed. Only about an inch. And I've changed it twice already. Whatever had to cure has long cured. Leaking is a different story.

I'm really hoping it is something in the equipment I have. I've shut down the reactor and the pump is out. I'm considering shutting down the skimmer as well, but that could cause to other problems...

Anyone have a skimmer (non toxic) that will fit in a 7x10 area? Or should I just dump mine and get one of em sc65 ebay skimmers. Steve, I saw your post on it, is it still performing well? How is the noise?

This coming weekend I'll remove the heater too.