Long Post: Hello & Need SPS Help

[rs2208]

Hello everyone. I posted just over a year ago about me getting back into the hobby after a long break and then went silent for the past year. Owning my own business plus 3 kids have kept my SLASH time to a minimum.

Well over the last year my plan of having a simple mixed reef quickly changed to my old habits of an SPS only reef. Everything was doing awesome until a month or so ago. Lets rewind. I bought some cheap frags from various LFS around christmas to see if I was SPS ready and like an idiot did not dip or quarantine. However everything did fine for months. SPS looked great for months. I realized I was running too nutrient free and too high of lighting / Alk causing faded colors. I dropped my Alk to around 8.5 and added 5 anthias and feed frozen mysis / reef food 3 times a day. A few months ago I got some crazy cool frags / colony from mpcart for a steal and was on my way to having my dream of a full blown SPS tank back up and running again. His frags / colony grew like nothing I have seen before. 100% completely pest free. I did dip them in bayer as I read up on it and it seemed pretty foolproof.

So my mpcart frags are growing at a super fast rate and the colors are amazing. So I order a few colonies from DFS Divers Den. I dip them in Bayer and they do great for a few months. Also got 15 frags from a local reefer and Bayer dipped them as well. Then I start messing with the KZ little blue bottle supplements and Acro Power. Wow looking awesome. Then I get a few Alk swings. Get it back in check but then think I possibly overdose potassium. Burnt Tips. Going to order a Potassium test kit. Lost a few DFS DD wild colonies. Milli's don't seem at all effected by it.

So my tank has basically almost stopped consuming Alk and Ca. My remaining SPS are on stand-by mode. This is what partially caused the swings. I have a controller and am trying to reset values to compensate for this. Testing Alk daily right now.

On to the pests: I have had red bugs and AEFW back in the day and know their traits. On my corals that are STN / RTN I have noticed little bugs like red bugs on them. The only difference from my memory of red bugs 10 years ago are these move fast like pods. My recollection of red bugs is that they are very slow. Could these just be small pods cleaning up dead tissue? I can't find them on any living SPS tissue. Either way I am planning on doing a whole tank Intercepter treatment soon. My clean up crew is bare and needs replacing so a few may have to be sacrificed.

A few tank stats:

Display: 185g
Sump: 80g
Small refugium with cheato / mangroves in sump
Return: Panworld 200PS on an actuated ball valve - rotates every 5 min
Closed Loop: Sequence ReeFlo HammerHead on an OM V2
Temp: 80 - 81.5
PH: 8.15 - 8.25
Calcium: 425 - 450
KH: 9ish
Nitrate: 0 - 0.3
Phosphate: 0
Salinity: 1.025
Magnesium: 1300 - 1400
Skimmer: Hydor Performer 3000 Recirc Protein Skimmer
Bulk Reef Supply doser for Ca/Alk
Controller: DA Reefkeeper

Here is a pic of what I am seeing.

Sorry for the long post. Any input would be great. Let me know what I missed. Thanks
R

 

[mpcart]

Man - that's a bummer. I can't remember what frags you got from me but I'm glad they were doing well. Not sure what is wrong with your tank and since you don't mention lighting I wonder if changes to it had anything to do with your issues.

Regarding the bugs - I don't know what the circled bugs are as they kind of look like pods or good bugs to me. However, the ones to the left look like red planaria (flatworms) which should be harmless.

In any case, when you get things sorted out let me know and I'll hook you up with some fresh new frags.

Good luck -

-Mike

 

[TanksDad13]

I'm no help as far as advice but, sorry to hear about your tank!!

 

[Tigé21v]

They don't look like the red bugs that wiped out my entire acro collection a couple of years back. But who knows, it's about time for another new pest.
If your NO3/PO4 are that low, you may want to drop your alk to closer to natural sea levels. Or dose nitrate and phosphate.
Very interesting thread if you have the time. It may help
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2253547&highlight=secret+to+elusive

 

[Phisher13]

I agree looks like pods and some flat worms nothing that some flat worm remover can't fix. However imo non of those would cause what you just wrote. I had a similar thing happen because my alkalinity got all out of whack caused by a calcium reactor I installed Once I got my alkalinity back in order everything took back off. I would start there and work my way backwards. Good luck

 

[Pife]

I've read about this happening to others in the sps forums. They have fixed there issues with raising there nutrients and sometimes there lights. Some have also added sand beds that were bare bottom and believe that the added bacteria helped there sps.

 

[rs2208]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm leaning more towards my alk fluctuations and possible potassium overdose. I wondered if I had some kind of pest all along and they just took off when my corals were weak but know im not sure as I did dip most corals in bayer. I have read a few posts about potassium overdose causing burnt tips as well. I should not have been adding additives I wasn't testing for. My guess is that the potassium overdose caused the corals to be unhappy and stop consuming alk and calcium which went up and fluctuated too much. One weird thing I noticed is that the tips on my green slimer all turned purple before burning.

As for lighting I have 2 reefbreeders photon 32's ran pretty high. I don't think this is the issue because even when my nutrients were very low my corals were all growing great but faded. I began feeding more and adding some sps food and the colors began to really pop. Another reason I don't think it is the lighting is that i've had issues with corals up high and some almost shaded. I am also only running my skimmer at night right now.

My fish are: powder blue tang, yellow tang, clown, a green chromis, six line wrasse, and 5 lyretail anthias. All doing excellent.

I am starting to get some cyano now and have to clean my glass every 3 days where before it was once a week. My kh has fallen down to 8.3 and i'm going to try and keep it steady at 8. My mag was a bit low as well last time I checked. I began doing more water changes and hopefully it will turnaround soon.

 

[Tigé21v]

If you haven't come across this , it's another interesting read that deals with coral coloration. Seems to hold pretty true, esp in low nutrient systems.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2300585

 

[Pagey]

Hey there.

So I am a reefer all the way out in Australia! Sorry to hear of your problems. I am somewhat of a noob when it comes to Acro so I will leave that to the others.

I'd like your thoughts on the Hydor Performer 3000. I have not bought the skimmer yet and I am wondering what you think about it? How you are running it etc? Any info would be greatly appreciated, I can't find much online to be honest.

Also sorry for hijacking the thread. I couldn't PM you because I don't have 10 posts or more lol.!!

Cheers!

Anthony