Mixed reef, LPS not looking happy

amcvay1979

New member
Hello, I have a 150 tall mixed reef, up and running over a year now and I'm starting to get some really good SPS growth finally. But the alarming thing is that my LPS are looking sadder and sadder, but not ALL my LPS.

I run an ULNS with nitrates around 1-2 ppm and Phos between .02 and .08. I feed heavily and have over 20 fish. I dose vodka and vinegar, bolus dose 12 hours apart from each other daily to get my nutrients targeted low. I keep my ALK lower, around 9.2 ALK and 420 CAL, Mag is typically higher around 1380-1400.

I feed 2-3 times a day and typically feed RODS or LRS foods plus some Rods Coral food, Reef Roids or Coral Frenzy one to two times per week.

So far, I've lost some health LPS Frags that were doing great and all of a sudden just went south. A brain frag I'd had for about 10 months just started bleaching, 2 of my Acans just deflated and one of them bleached and died. The other one is hanging on but its deflated and looking sad. Another I'm about to lose is my dragon tongue chalice. It's slowly shrinking to only a few eyes and it was big not long ago.

Starting to think it's because I keep my tank too clean or my lights are too strong. I have 2 AI 52's 12 inches above the water line. My blues are turned up to 95 but my whites are only at 45-50 and all of my LPS are on the bottom of the tank. I wouldn't thinking PAR would be too high for LPS with a 30 inch tall tank with lights mounted 12 inches above water.

My skimmer produces very foul smelling, black skimmate that fills my Davy Jones skimmate locker in about a week. I run 1 bag of chemipure and 1 bag of purigen, both of them are probably due for a change. And the only thing I dose right now is Vodka, Vinegar and Acro Power Amino Acid. I do have 4 or 5 thriving LPS colonies. 2 hammer/anchor corals, 1 frogspawn, and 1 12-15 head duncans. So it would appear my tank is ok for LPS, but I'm still having trouble keeping Acans, Chalice and flower pot (I know these die for most everyone). I've tried flow changes, lighting changes and placement changes and I'm just about to give up on some LPS species.

Anything jump out at anyone that I'm doing wrong or not doing?

Thanks,
 
Starting to think it's because I keep my tank too clean or my lights are too strong.

This is exactly what I think your problem is. It's a very hard balance to keep both LPS and SPS together where both thrive. I've also got a mixed reef but my SPS are easy ones and they do fine while my LPS are doing great. I've even got a couple of leathers that are doing soso, but not bad. I do run carbon.
 
Almost think it can't be lighting related since I have other thriving lps colonies, I've tried really hard to keep nitrates and phosphates registering on test kits but yesterday my phos fell to 0.00 nitrates .75 ppm. I'll need to cut back on my carbon dose to get the tank dirtier.
 
I've been adding a bunch of corals recently, and all my LPS are doing very well so far. That light is much much higher than I run my. I peak at 60/30 blue/white.
 
Acans & most chalices are the most light sensitive corals I have kept under my 6x T5 w/ ATI tubes. They do best on the bottom & to the sides in general. So my bet is on the lighting intensity if color spectrum.

Your parameters look fine. Alk at 9.5 should be ok, but I am having better results at around 8 Dkh; closer to natural sea water. GL.
 
The less you do the better. Vodka. Vinegar. Vitamins. All not necessary. Swings in peramiters are bad. Slow is better. I hate to say it. I have better luck running eco bac plus bio pellets. Rock carbon. And I only use sea Chem calcium magnesium. And rebuild error for alk. That's it. An ocasional addition of iodine and across power as a gift. And no water changes. Yes. No water changes. It works. 0 algae. Great growth.

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And even orphek. And the winner hands down and best price ever grow. It works. I know a lot of refers will disagree. I don't care. It works

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Rocks carbon from brs. And that was reef builder. Sorry for the typo. They do make a two part called fusion. But that will raise the pH.

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I'll lower my intensity for a month and see if that helps. My fungia plate that was always extended is suddenly not extending any more either.
 
The less you do the better. Vodka. Vinegar. Vitamins. All not necessary. Swings in peramiters are bad. Slow is better. I hate to say it. I have better luck running eco bac plus bio pellets. Rock carbon. And I only use sea Chem calcium magnesium. And rebuild error for alk. That's it. An ocasional addition of iodine and across power as a gift. And no water changes. Yes. No water changes. It works. 0 algae. Great growth.

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Not disagreeing with you but vodka/vinegar is nearly the same as bio pellets, you could argue that vodka/vinegar is closer to carbon biologically than plastic pellets. I don't dose any alk/cal/mag either. I'm very lucky to have a very stable system, so all I add is vodka/vinegar, amino acids both by dosing pump and topff water...and lots of food.

Hoping light intensity is the culprit
 
Maybe try lowering your all slowly to nsw levels as long as you have a ulns. Higher alk levels above 8.3 can stunt growth if there is not a corresponding abundance of food, regardless of whether the coral is spot fed. I have a rainbow trachy that has been with me through several level adjustments, from a dirty system with ca at 450+, alk at 10+, mag at 1500, po4 of.25, nitrates at 25+, and it was absolutely loving it. When I started starving the tank down to nsw levels it stayed shrunk until my ulns system arrived at nsw levels. Now it's back to loving life again
 
I should clarify, and here's a new conundrum; I was using Salifert to test ALK because I got fed up with Hanna ALK checker reagents being off. So I let some time pass, decided to order ALK reagents again and now Hanna is saying my ALK is 7.8 and Salifert is saying 10.5 I don't know which to believe but my Salifert kit is at the very end of it's life, maybe 1 test left in the bottle, so I was hoping my Hanna test was correct.
 
Could, I'm trusting my Hanna checker at the moment. Did a 10 gal water change yesterday and it's now showing 8.01. I use Brightwell low ALK salt so this makes sense.
 
Maybe try lowering your all slowly to nsw levels as long as you have a ulns. Higher alk levels above 8.3 can stunt growth if there is not a corresponding abundance of food, regardless of whether the coral is spot fed. I have a rainbow trachy that has been with me through several level adjustments, from a dirty system with ca at 450+, alk at 10+, mag at 1500, po4 of.25, nitrates at 25+, and it was absolutely loving it. When I started starving the tank down to nsw levels it stayed shrunk until my ulns system arrived at nsw levels. Now it's back to loving life again

^This rings a bell for me as well. There is a very interesting thread in the ADVANCED forum on RC on this topic.
 
Read it, seems my levels are all at or near NSW levels. That being said, when I ran nitrates closer to 10+ ppm, high alk around 11.5 dkh and phospate well over .20 ppm my acans were plump and deep red. Now they're dwindling down to nothing.

Makes we wonder what the line is to keep both LPS and SPS happy
 
Read it, seems my levels are all at or near NSW levels. That being said, when I ran nitrates closer to 10+ ppm, high alk around 11.5 dkh and phospate well over .20 ppm my acans were plump and deep red. Now they're dwindling down to nothing.

Makes we wonder what the line is to keep both LPS and SPS happy

Ahhh, the million dollar question. You can read tons of articles on this, and saying natural seawater is low nutrients is incorrect. It is full of food and looks like snow on the reefs with all the suspended foods. You need to find the balance of plenty of avail foods, good export and low nitrates and phosphates. GL, I have been close a couple times and currently am there again with both acros and lps.
 
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