Mike's 200g

Well was gone for 3 days for a family trip. During this time the only thing the tank got was 2 feedings a day of pellets and my AF balling solutions. No change really in appearance of corals or sand bed. However upon testing it seems my nitrate value had gone up a little, which suprised me with so little feeding.
Some of the corals if I turkey baste them the color/pigmentation/tissue...just seems to turn to like dust and blows right off into the water. Its not really the tissue it's more the pigments or something. I will send I sample to triton lab testing today. Then tomorrow perform a water change and then possibly try 3 days of darkness. During this time should I stop dosing all coral foods (a,b,v,e,powder food) and stop dosing pro bio s? I havnt been dosing np pro for a little while now. What about feeding fish? Concerned with having been gone these last few days without fish or corals getting fed and then to do more time like that things might start to starve.
 
Just ran all the tests I have.
Alk. Now up 2 about 8dkh.. This is after lowering dosing pumps already, corals must have really slowed growth.
Calcium 400
Mag 1350
Nitrate up, now 2.5 (did want it to raise but am surprised it did with not being here to feed)
Po4.. Very low... Maybe 0.02 on elos high res but actually a little lighter.
Filled the vials to send to triton, will see what they say.
Couple observations....
Although brown on sand is still there, most gas bubbles on sand are gone. Corals look very dull though and as mentioned before if even gently basted it is as if zooxanthalle just blows off.
While we were gone tank ph made it up 2 8.2! This never happens now we are back I expect it to below again...possible reason gas bubbles are gone? I don't know.
 
I made a water change today with probiotic salt. Slightly larger than normal. I siphoned off the top layer of sand with as much of the brown stuff as I could (unroll I had taken as much water out as I had to replace. Also blew the rocks off, stirred the sand up as much as I could, aggitated all my matrix in the sump, to get as much junk into the water as I could and have cleaned sock 3 Times today since.
This is what the tank looks like now after cleaning the sand up. We shall see if it all comes back



As a whole picture it doesn't look to bad I guess... But up close you can see obvious loss of color and possibly thinking I will loose a couple more acros before this is over.
So what do you think of now performing a 3 day lights out starting tomorrow to see if that can help get rid of any cyano/dino remaining?

I might also stir up sand and blow off rocks daily for a week or so.
 
Sorry to say but stirring the sand was not a good idea. I was doing that for months trying to see if it would help and it only made the problem worse. Even when I sucked out the whole top layer out it came back a day or two later.

After I posted a pic on Perry's thread of how my sand looked. I stopped dosing ProBio S and it has really cleared up. The issue I think is that we are dosing too much bacteria into our system. Try not dosing ProBio S for a week and see if it will help your system better balance itself. When and if it helps, you could start dosing again but I would only dose 1/2 once or twice a week to see if it will relapse.

Even with the issues your having the tank still looks great man. Hope all goes well.
 
Hmm I would of thought removing as much as I could would only be of benefit...maybe I was wrong. It will probably come back.
So I will try just dosing like half doses of np pro, half doses of a,v,e and full doses of b. No dose of pro bio s.
I will continue to feed my fish as I normally do. I will not do the three days darkness yet, I will see if anything happens with these changes.
Pretty sure I have a couple corals I am going to lose though. I could try fragging to save a bit.... But I think I will just leave it and see.
Getting alk etc all back stable is also going to be a challenge as consumption is changing.
 
Sorry, just read my post from last night. I sounded like a jerk. I try not to touch the sand because every time I did it only got worse. Just wanted to share my experiences. I was seeing noticeable reduction a few days after I stopped dosing. Hope it turns around for you. Its definitely sucks.
 
Hey no not at all you didn't sound like a jerk. I appreciate the comments and help. I have stopped pro bio s for now and half on everything else except b. Hopefully this helps and I don't loose everything in the mean time. Right now I'm seeing like 0 polyp extension on anything and almost 0 color on some pieces that were awesome before
 
I hope something works for you , Mike!
Good luck.
It's so frustrating when you can't control what's happening in your tank..
 
reefmutt said:
I hope something works for you , Mike!
Good luck.
It's so frustrating when you can't control what's happening in your tank..
Click to expand...

Yeah like I say I'm not really sure what the problem is to be honest. Wondering if possibly a contaminate got in of some kind.. I don't know. My tests don't show anything that should be causing these problems. Waiting to hear from triton but obviously they won't tell if I got some outside contaminate in water.
 
So things really havnt improved much with the corals. I am losing a few colonies and have 0 p.e on other pieces. The dino/ cyano situation seems a little better though.

Got my triton results back today. Things I noted.

Home test kit read ca at just 400, triton says 433
Home kit reads mg at 1350, triton 1446
K is slightly elvated (435) even though I have under recommended amount of component k strong in my balling mix
Most of my elements were really good, a couple just slightly low but my barium and bromine were elevated with bromine being quite high! Not sure why. Could this be the cause of my problems?

My p04 registered really low 0.009 which I had thought was part of my problem before.
 
Correction it is my ba that is very high, 183 when the set point is 10. Triton say this can come in with "phosphate iron based" I assume the mean removers. I use phosphate minus does any one know if this is iron based? They recommend using their po4 remover to remove barium... But in the next sentence I have too low po4 and they recommend not using po4 remover.
 
Hmm at this point I may lose every acro in my tank. Its not a quick death it's justdaily I see a new piece that is starting to look worse and then slowly it does off. Its like the tissue starts to look really dry and thin, can be almost like blown off even with very gentle basting from a turkey baster.
Alk consumption is down from 400 ml per day to just 100.

Been reading around a bit and high barium seems to happen in many triton tests but usually isn't causing that many problems. So not sure what is going on here.
Component a strong from AF contains barium, but also strontium (which on my test came back as just slightly under the set point). So if I had over doses that you would assume strontium to be high also.

Well I guess if every acro dies I can get rid of AEFW once and for all.
 
Man that sucks. I think that you and I are having the exact same problem. I to have a couple acros that look just how you described. I have a purple stag that was losing tissue and started to grow that damn cyano on the exposed body so I went to blow it off very gently and the surrounding skin went bye bye. So sad. Have no idea what is going on with my reef but it did start after I switched to the AF system. Haven't been using anything from AF in just over a week and corals are looking better. Not much but in the right direction.

P.S. I don't think that the phos minus is iron based I think it is like rowaphos.
 
Hey mike sorry to hear about all your troubles.
Do you think since changing over to the AF products is when the problems started? Maybe going back to previous salt mix and do WCs. Not sure if it's possible cause I'm not that familiar with the AF line butt could the probiotics and the other stuff be feeding the cyano?
Hope you get things turned around.
 
I am seeing more and more about people who use AF starting to have the same issues. After starting AF I ran into the same thing. I seen many people have success with the products so I am starting to wonder if somehow they made a bad batch of something that got out and is now causing havoc.
 
This sucks Mike. I'm sorry to hear this. After my alk drop, as my corals browned, many did exactly as you describe- the flesh lost its colour and then started to look as though it was drying up. Then the coral would die.
I think it's stress related.
Reading your last few posts, my gut reaction was to do the opposite of what your are currently doing.. ignore the problem algea and get your nutrients off the floor. Ignore the triton test as well for the moment.
Personally, I would let N and p drift up a bit and see how the corals react..
Good luck whatever you do! I feel your pain! It's not fun.
 
reefmutt said:
This sucks Mike. I'm sorry to hear this. After my alk drop, as my corals browned, many did exactly as you describe- the flesh lost its colour and then started to look as though it was drying up. Then the coral would die.
I think it's stress related.
Reading your last few posts, my gut reaction was to do the opposite of what your are currently doing.. ignore the problem algea and get your nutrients off the floor. Ignore the triton test as well for the moment.
Personally, I would let N and p drift up a bit and see how the corals react..
Good luck whatever you do! I feel your pain! It's not fun.
Click to expand...
Hey matt, not sure what you think I said I was doing but I have been doing exactly as you are saying. I have been feeding more without rinsing to get po4 up and I am not going to add gfo when I make the next media change. Also am not dosing pro bio s and way cut back my np pro.
For the cyano type stuff I am not really doing anything to rid it and honestly that isn't that bad anymore it seems to be mainly gone.
The only thing I had thought of doing was getting a bucket of the reef salt and making a couple of larger water changes just to maybe try and re balance the system and get the barium level down... Even though from my reading it doesn't seem like it should be causing problem.
The other thing I have noticed is it seems I am suddenly getting a much larger temperature swing than I used to. Temp used to only vary about a degree, now for some reason it's varying 2.5 in a day.
 
Usernam Invalid said:
Hey mike sorry to hear about all your troubles.
Do you think since changing over to the AF products is when the problems started? Maybe going back to previous salt mix and do WCs. Not sure if it's possible cause I'm not that familiar with the AF line butt could the probiotics and the other stuff be feeding the cyano?
Hope you get things turned around.
Click to expand...

No I have been using AF products a while now and things had been going awesome with them.
 
When I read where your po4 level was I sort of assumed you were still trying to strip the water to combat the dynos..
My mistake.
For me, even a month after the shock of the alk swing, some corals continue to look and do worse and worse. Others are recovering.
It's often hard to gauge if what you are doing is helping or hindering after the corals get stressed somehow because it takes so long for them to react to whatever bothered them in the first place.
Do you have any corals that are changing for the better?
 
Hey Mike,
You can reach me personally here or on FB if you want, we can chat and see if the two of us can figure things out, heck I will be happy to even have a chat on the phone if you want. Cheers!
 
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