Lost alot of my corals

[chunders]

Things were growing slowly over the last 18 months. Acopora were growing, bird branch, trumpet and shrooms. Then it all started to deteroirate. Acorpora were slowly loosing their skin, trumpets showing skeleton, even lost xenia. LOTS OF APTASIA took over. After I lost most of the corals, I bought the infamous shrimps to eat the Aiptasia.. no goo. I purchased 10 nudibranches, I'm month, but hoping to see them in the next month or 2. In the last 2 months I lost my coral banded shrimp and benny.

I have uncontrollable growth of the green star polyps. They are doubling every few weeks, taking over everything, I even started a separate tank just to grow the hell out of it. Not sure what to do with it.

90 gallon reef tank with a 30 gallon fuge
Running protein skimmer in wet mode. ( I just put an airline tube outside this morning)

Dose 30 ml of vinegar 3x a day
Dose 10ml homegrown phytoplankton weekly
Dosing CA 20ml daily
Dosing Alkalinity 20 ml daily
Monthly water changes with RODI unit and Instant Ocean
Feed mysis, brine twice a week
Running GFO

Levels
Salinity 1.025
Temp 78 F
Calcium 420-440
Magnesium 1500, maybe slightly higher
Alkalinity 10 dkh (using Hanna checker)
Nitrate 10ppm
Phosphate - .25ppm

Fish invert
2 x blood red shrimp
fox face
kole tang
pajama cardinal
5 x blue chromis
various red and blue crabs
Few snails
benny
firefish


Chateo grows very slowly, I just upgraded to a high LED light off of amazon.

Carbon- I started with Vodka, and then switched over the vinegar. Vodka created weird stringly things at time, clogged the pipes, and screwed up flow. Big buildup in pipes. After switching to vinegar, I didn't see this issue. Been dosing the same amoount for few weeks, but not sure what my limit is. I can tell you one thing, I still have light algae on the glass.

What can I do about the coral loss? Anything else I can check? It is crazy to see all that go after a year of slow growth.

 

[Uncle99]

MG is too high. 1260-1360 plenty, let it fall on its own
Alk is too high with nitrates at 10ppm, 8.0-8.5 would be more balanced, again, will fall on its own.
Phosphate is way high, s/b say 0.02-0.07 max, your three times that. Mop it up with a GFO

Stability is key.

I had too much trouble with vinegar and vodka, using NoPox now 26 months, holds my nitrate at 5ppm and some sporadic use of ROWAPHOS to maintain phosphate at .04-.07.

NOPox is actually cheaper than vodka.....at least in Canada, dose about 10 ml per day, once per day.

 

[Tripod1404]

Were your corals brown before dying? With N and P that high, I would expect corals to brown. If not something else is limiting zoox growth. This might be the same thing that limits growth of Chateo, they are both algae after all. What is your light? That would be my main suspect.

Other points to consider;

Your P is high, but I have seen people keeping corals with P even that high. What is your measurement method for P? I am skeptical it can be that high with GFO. If your P is lower in reality, you might be starving corals with GFO.

Do you have coralline algae growth? If tank cant grow coralline algae, the conditions are not optimal for stony coral growth as well.

Alk at 10dkh is high for my liking. But people can keep it at that range with P and N high. But I would still let it drop around 8dkh and look how things look.

Why do you dose alk and Ca? With corals dying, there should be very little consumption unless you have massive amounts of coralline algae. If you dont dose, do they drop?

Mg at 1500ppm is high, but I dont think it would be an issue with corals. It might cause snails to die though.

You might want to check potassium (K), carbon dosing can sometimes deplete it and I had issues with low K and STN in the past.

 

[Alfrareef]

What puzzles me it's the Xenia loss, because only time I've seen that was with zero NO3 and PO4 or chemical warfare, but that's not the case and the GSP are growing well.
I would think about the light being the culprit. Did the decline started before the light change or before? Did the Acros start browning before dying?
Also the PO4 has been at those levels all the time?
What about Alk ,has had swings?
For now I would stop phytoplankton and do a major water change (50%) and after 1 week another 50%.

 

[chunders]

MG is too high. 1260-1360 plenty, let it fall on its own
Alk is too high with nitrates at 10ppm, 8.0-8.5 would be more balanced, again, will fall on its own.
Phosphate is way high, s/b say 0.02-0.07 max, your three times that. Mop it up with a GFO

Stability is key.

I had too much trouble with vinegar and vodka, using NoPox now 26 months, holds my nitrate at 5ppm and some sporadic use of ROWAPHOS to maintain phosphate at .04-.07.

NOPox is actually cheaper than vodka.....at least in Canada, dose about 10 ml per day, once per day.

Got it on letting MG fall. I don't dose it now, although it def replenishes with the water change. GFO is running 24/7. What's great is that Nitrates were running 60PPM for the longest time. It wasn't until recently that I was able to get it to get in the low teens single digits. The only thing I can think of there is that it took awhile for vinegar dosing to kick in and skim it out.

Were your corals brown before dying? With N and P that high, I would expect corals to brown. If not something else is limiting zoox growth. This might be the same thing that limits growth of Chateo, they are both algae after all. What is your light? That would be my main suspect.

Other points to consider;

Your P is high, but I have seen people keeping corals with P even that high. What is your measurement method for P? I am skeptical it can be that high with GFO. If your P is lower in reality, you might be starving corals with GFO.

Do you have coralline algae growth? If tank cant grow coralline algae, the conditions are not optimal for stony coral growth as well.

Alk at 10dkh is high for my liking. But people can keep it at that range with P and N high. But I would still let it drop around 8dkh and look how things look.

Why do you dose alk and Ca? With corals dying, there should be very little consumption unless you have massive amounts of coralline algae. If you dont dose, do they drop?

Mg at 1500ppm is high, but I dont think it would be an issue with corals. It might cause snails to die though.

You might want to check potassium (K), carbon dosing can sometimes deplete it and I had issues with low K and STN in the past.

The corals were not brown, but the the acopora for example started to peel and just turn white. The P and N, especially the N, was much higher months ago even when it was running well.

There is a little bit of coraline.

What puzzles me it's the Xenia loss, because only time I've seen that was with zero NO3 and PO4 or chemical warfare, but that's not the case and the GSP are growing well.
I would think about the light being the culprit. Did the decline started before the light change or before? Did the Acros start browning before dying?
Also the PO4 has been at those levels all the time?
What about Alk ,has had swings?
For now I would stop phytoplankton and do a major water change (50%) and after 1 week another 50%.

My lights one of these
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074PL12F...&pd_rd_r=2485e5ef-ca41-11e8-8c12-5507783b5d52

Po4 was higher, and the tank was doing great. They have just started falling recently after everything went.

I have to say though, the aptasia is crazy. Probably over 1000 in this tank. Just a complete take over.

Alk has been 7-8, but I now dose to bring it up.

 

[Alfrareef]

Probably the problem was the sudden and large NO3 and PO4 changes.
As per the aptasia, can't you remove rocks one by one and waste them off with a screwdriver outside the tank? Don't forget the gloves and safety glasses.

 

[chunders]

Probably the problem was the sudden and large NO3 and PO4 changes.
As per the aptasia, can't you remove rocks one by one and waste them off with a screwdriver outside the tank? Don't forget the gloves and safety glasses.

I strongly believe aptasia X screwed me over. Once I started using that, I feel like everything got 10x worse. I purchased the butterfly to eat them, he did not touch them, then died a month later. Then the LFS said to do a filefish, it only ate everything except the aptasia. Now I have nudibranches, and its been a month, and at night I see a few on the walls of the tank etc, but aptasia is still there.

I cannot remove rocks because they are in place and glued.

 

[Alfrareef]

For nature control I use a chelmon but 1000 could be a lot of aptasias for 1 fish...
on the other hand you could try to zap them with a laser or glue them.

 

[chunders]

For nature control I use a chelmon but 1000 could be a lot of aptasias for 1 fish...
on the other hand you could try to zap them with a laser or glue them.

I was hoping in 30 days there would be nudi's alllll over the tank.:bigeyes: