Mike's 200g

[FarmerTy]

Sorry for the SPS woes! I've only been skimming the thread but seen my fair share of acro issues over the years. Anyway to just get back to the basics? Do some good scale water changes with just a regular salt and no more dosing of any kind other than for the foundation elements?

FWIW, the only time I've ever seen the skin fade and basically disintegrate like what you describe is when my salinity was at 1.031. Double check that perhaps?

 

[MichaelW]

Sorry for the SPS woes! I've only been skimming the thread but seen my fair share of acro issues over the years. Anyway to just get back to the basics? Do some good scale water changes with just a regular salt and no more dosing of any kind other than for the foundation elements?

FWIW, the only time I've ever seen the skin fade and basically disintegrate like what you describe is when my salinity was at 1.031. Double check that perhaps?

You mention salinity and for some reason salinity is the parameter that gives me the most (mental) problems. I use a refractometer and it always reads 1.026.. I have calibration fluid I use... But my apex probe NEVER reads 35...So I start wondering is it the probe not reading right, is my refractometer off, is my calibration fluid bad... Drives me nuts.

 

[MichaelW]

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!

Thanks a lot Perry. So nice to have, not just just great reefers, but, great people, willing to spend their time offering help. Really appreciate it. I will likely message you on fb. Not sure if we are Facebook "friends" or not but I will add you.

 

[MichaelW]

I may mix up a bunch of balling solutions without the components strong (trace elements) and use that for a while, however from my triton test most of them were just slightly under normal anyway (except barium, bromine, and I think potassium was just a touch higher than I expected at 435)

 

[FarmerTy]

You mention salinity and for some reason salinity is the parameter that gives me the most (mental) problems. I use a refractometer and it always reads 1.026.. I have calibration fluid I use... But my apex probe NEVER reads 35...So I start wondering is it the probe not reading right, is my refractometer off, is my calibration fluid bad... Drives me nuts.

Yeah, if seen every form of STN and RTN over the years for various reasons and it never looked anything like when I had high salinity. The flesh just kept getting thinner and thinner and then it would basically disintegrate. So when you said you were seeing something similar, just wanted to mention just in case. I ended up getting a digital refractometer to take the guesswork out of it. It just reads me a nice pretty number.

Maybe take a water sample to a LFS to double check?

 

[SeargentSlice]

Any updates ? Did u stop dosing AF products? Alot of people having trouble with Cyano and elevated heavy metals from overdosing AF ...

 

[MichaelW]

I have not stopped my dosing but have lowered amounts. Really the only elevated level I had was barium.
I do not have the cyano/dino any more it went away when I raised nutrients a little.
Tight now nutrients are around 2.5-5 (salifert) no3, and 0.04 po4 (elos high res) so I have got them up a bit now, lighting has been turned way down in an attempt to not stress the coral so much. However losses keep happening, the loss of my pearlberry that I grew from a tiny frag to a beautiful colony has been the hardest so far.
I don't know what else to do really my parameters are good, nutrients are up than normal but that's because I needed to get them up to help (hopefully) with coral health. I am pretty sure my problems started with nutrients dropping too low when I was away from the tank.
My triton result showed no excess is unwanted heavy metals, as I say the only thing that was way to high was barium, most other things were a little under if anything.

 

[SeargentSlice]

I have not stopped my dosing but have lowered amounts. Really the only elevated level I had was barium.
I do not have the cyano/dino any more it went away when I raised nutrients a little.
Tight now nutrients are around 2.5-5 (salifert) no3, and 0.04 po4 (elos high res) so I have got them up a bit now, lighting has been turned way down in an attempt to not stress the coral so much. However losses keep happening, the loss of my pearlberry that I grew from a tiny frag to a beautiful colony has been the hardest so far.
I don't know what else to do really my parameters are good, nutrients are up than normal but that's because I needed to get them up to help (hopefully) with coral health. I am pretty sure my problems started with nutrients dropping too low when I was away from the tank.
My triton result showed no excess is unwanted heavy metals, as I say the only thing that was way to high was barium, most other things were a little under if anything.

I'm really sorry about your losses that has to be tough... The Hobby can be very humbling at times .. Just curious how fast will your nutrients drop if you stop dosing? Are you running zeolites carbon and GFO ? I saw back in the thread you were using bio pellet reactor ..Do you think any of those changes may have contributed ?

 

[MichaelW]

Right now I have taken gfo and zeolite off line, but continue with carbon. Took the bp off a while ago and tank was doing awesome with just AF for a while. Color was great, growth was crazy. I don't think any issue is with the AF products.

 

[SeargentSlice]

Gotcha good call on pullin the Gfo and zeolites for now ....

 

[Myka]

Hi Mike. Sorry to hear about your troubles. Fwiw, Triton reports high Barium in many tanks when the actual water column level may be very low. The reason is that there are many compounds in our tanks that use up barium. The Triton test break up these compounds and measure all of it. Barium is not soluble in typical saltwater at levels higher than about 50 ug/L so your Triton result is an impossible water column level.

Think of it like this: you take a test vial and put a bunch of calcium carbonate sand in it then top it up with saltwater. You test the water with a Salifert calcium kit and you get a reading around say 400 ppm. You give his same test vial to Triton and the testing method breaks the calcium carbonate into ions and reads the calcium at 800 ppm.

Know what I mean?

My last Triton test showed barium at 267 ug/L.

If you're really concerned you can send a sample to ENCLabs (Google for a link) and they can test the barium in the water column. It's about USD$50 for the test I believe.

 

[MichaelW]

Hi Mike. Sorry to hear about your troubles. Fwiw, Triton reports high Barium in many tanks when the actual water column level may be very low. The reason is that there are many compounds in our tanks that use up barium. The Triton test break up these compounds and measure all of it. Barium is not soluble in typical saltwater at levels higher than about 50 ug/L so your Triton result is an impossible water column level.

Think of it like this: you take a test vial and put a bunch of calcium carbonate sand in it then top it up with saltwater. You test the water with a Salifert calcium kit and you get a reading around say 400 ppm. You give his same test vial to Triton and the testing method breaks the calcium carbonate into ions and reads the calcium at 800 ppm.

Know what I mean?

My last Triton test showed barium at 267 ug/L.

If you're really concerned you can send a sample to ENCLabs (Google for a link) and they can test the barium in the water column. It's about USD$50 for the test I believe.

Thanks Mindy. What you are saying is the same as much of my reading and research that barium isn't soluble at that high concentrations. It was literally my only parameter that was way off though however most likely not the cause of my coral death. Not sure where else to look for the issue, triton test didn't really give me any other area for concern or that I havnt already fixed (low po4). I wouldn't have expected the po4 getting low to just completely start killing corals like this though. Po4 is now 0.04.
The only other thing I can think of would be some kind of contaminate got in the tank somehow that isn't tested for. I don't know, just sucks how a tank can go from going so good for so long to corals losing tissue, some of which I have had since very first started reef keeping.

 

[MichaelW]

So how about this for frustrating....
My Steve Elias stag that I have had for ages, has always grown well, colored fine but was maybe green, well with all my is issues, it suddenly has the best most incredible robin's egg blue color I have ever seen in it....BUT is losing tissue in the base and will be dead soon!

 

[joshky]

So how about this for frustrating....
My Steve Elias stag that I have had for ages, has always grown well, colored fine but was maybe green, well with all my is issues, it suddenly has the best most incredible robin's egg blue color I have ever seen in it....BUT is losing tissue in the base and will be dead soon!

I hate hearing that you're still having issues with your tank Mike, hopefully now that the algae problem has been corrected your tank will start to bounce back.

 

[MichaelW]

The cyano / dino dissappeared when I got nutrients up a bit. Just tested and nutrients are rising more, higher than I have ever had, so I may start building my np pro and pro bio s dose back up. Also will start rinsing my frozen food again.. Don't want nutrients to get much higher. Currently sit at 5 no3 and 0.09 po4. Alk has risen to 8.1 again, must be due to amount of corals that have now died and the ones in there are just not growing. Dosing pumps have been turned off for now. Performed 3 water changes last week (one with probiotic salt, 2 with reef salt) hoping if somehow a contaminant did get in the tank I am diluting it.
Who knows what's going on.? Tests don't say I should be losing anything but I am. Only have 3 acros showing any kind of polyp extension (even at night). Most likely will have to have a complete acro reset (at least I could get rid of AEFW then)

 

[Myka]

Thanks Mindy. What you are saying is the same as much of my reading and research that barium isn't soluble at that high concentrations. It was literally my only parameter that was way off though however most likely not the cause of my coral death. Not sure where else to look for the issue, triton test didn't really give me any other area for concern or that I havnt already fixed (low po4). I wouldn't have expected the po4 getting low to just completely start killing corals like this though. Po4 is now 0.04.
The only other thing I can think of would be some kind of contaminate got in the tank somehow that isn't tested for. I don't know, just sucks how a tank can go from going so good for so long to corals losing tissue, some of which I have had since very first started reef keeping.

Michael, about a year ago I tried NaNO3 dosing. PO4 tested usually between 0-5 ppb amd NO3 was 0.00-0.25 ppm. One of two things happened - either I hit absolute zero PO4 from adding the NO3 or there was a contaminant in the NaNO3. My corals didn't react the same as you describe (I got burned tips), but I did lose quite a few and browned out most of the tank.

I don't think your problem is PO4-based. To me it sounds like a bacterial issue which can be extremely difficult to diagnose and correct. If it was me I'd try switching to a different brand of bacteria & organic carbon to see if different strains may help. I've had good luck with Prodibio in situations like this. I think one of the reasons is because it gives a big "Pow!" dose and then nothing for 15 days. Prodibio is not very strong for lowering nutrients though so you may have to look at other options...maybe feed less and clean the tank more effectively.

 

[MichaelW]

Michael, about a year ago I tried NaNO3 dosing. PO4 tested usually between 0-5 ppb amd NO3 was 0.00-0.25 ppm. One of two things happened - either I hit absolute zero PO4 from adding the NO3 or there was a contaminant in the NaNO3. My corals didn't react the same as you describe (I got burned tips), but I did lose quite a few and browned out most of the tank.

I don't think your problem is PO4-based. To me it sounds like a bacterial issue which can be extremely difficult to diagnose and correct. If it was me I'd try switching to a different brand of bacteria & organic carbon to see if different strains may help. I've had good luck with Prodibio in situations like this. I think one of the reasons is because it gives a big "Pow!" dose and then nothing for 15 days. Prodibio is not very strong for lowering nutrients though so you may have to look at other options...maybe feed less and clean the tank more effectively.

Hi mindy, the reason I think it was to do with nutrients was because it all started when I made an increase to my dosing amounts (np pro and probios) and increased my phos minus and zeo mix... Then unfortunately was unexpectedly absent from tank for a few days to feed. That was when the dino stuff arrived and things went downhill. Now nutrients are up all dino stuff is gone, but corals are still colorless and stn'ing still. Maybe it is a bacterial type thing, maybe it's just they were too stressed to recover. I don't know at this point. Basically all I'm going to do is try keep things stable and see what happens. If everything (acro) dies I will probably turn lights off for like 5-7 days (hope this will kill of any remaining bits of acro that didn't die) then run acroless for a few months to rid tank of AEFW, perform a series of large water changes to reset the tank then start again, still using the AF method because I have been exceptionally happy with the results I was getting before this crash. I think the products are good and don't blame any of my issues I am having on the products, more of a bad timing of events and stress situation caused by me.

 

[MichaelW]

Well things are continuing to die, even things I thought were impossible to kill, like my setosa and other montis that I have had for ages and grew anywhere are now struggling. Really don't know what the problem could be anymore, if it was just nutrients got too low I would expect things to be turning around now. Nutrients are actually rather high now (maybe due to all the coral die off?) however there is now 0 algea anywhere and it takes longer to build up on glass than I had when measuring low nutrients.
Really beginning to wonder if it is a contaminate now.

One coral starting to have problems on the tips has very veryy brittle tips that had lost tissue and the tip would basically crumble if even just touched. Most corals are not like this though however, and the tissue loss does not start at tips on all pieces.

 

[markalot]

Sorry Mike, I've been there as well.

Are you using any media to lower po4? One of my mistakes when PO4 got too high was trying to use GFO, having it drop, exhaust the media, and rise again. Using a Lanthanum product has worked well for me since I can do drops to consistently lower and hold rather than bounce all around. I'm hesitant to recommend it since we don't know what long term Lanthanum exposure will do to the tank but so far it's worked wonders with no coral or fish stress.

 

[MichaelW]

I took phosphate minus off a while ago when things were having some problems, to let po4 come up a bit. Po4 was 0.008 according to triton. Now po4 is up around 0.08 or something. I have purposfully got more nutrients in the to try help the corals while stressed. However I know from my experience my tank was easily looking best when I kept 0.02 po4 and 0.2 no3. I ran my tank for most it's life with those numbers and it looked fantastic. I will eventually go back to those numbers.
I pretty much am Only running my skimmer, carbon in a reactor, feeding fish, and half doses of np pro and pro bio s. That's it. No comp1+2+3+, no additives, no coral food, no po4 remover, no as I mix. Since doing this nutrients have gone up from my usual low numbers to no3 10 and po4 0.08-9.
Lighting has been turned way down, to hopefully provide less stress to corals. Still daily I come home to new coral death. Pretty much assuming it's going to be a total restart. Really feel like it has to be some kind of contamination now.
I have set up a 50 gallon frag tank in garage, was going to try move stuff in there, it's 100% new water and has not been through any cycle yet... But the way things are in the display I guess it can't be any worse. Just need a heater for it and to hang the light.