My tank doesn't like vinegar?

Something is definitely not right!
Today I come home and my green stylo has ZERO polyp extension!
And my green slimer acro is getting very dull. Not brown, just dull. I have NEVER seen a dull green slimer!
My purple bonsai has gone dull, my efflo has turned brown, my ponape birdsnest is heading that way... :(
 
Also, my frag tank (on the same system) which is under a Radion Pro, is having similar issues.
My mini colony of frogspawn always looks awesome but its all half closed up.
 
Sorry to hear about the troubles!

As with so much else in this hobby, I wish there was a simple scientific answer to your troubles, but alas I can see none. However, based on my past experience I have two thoughts.

First is an event that happened more than once on my own tank. I keep a 180 gallon tank in my basement "fish room" on a lighting schedule opposite to my display tank. On more than one occasion I have either had the light timers fail or simply turned the lights off and forgotten to turn them back on for a period of time. Usually this is just before I leave for a 3 day work trip and the lights end up being off for about 48 hours give or take a few hours. It has been my experience in these instances that I lose tremendous color on some frags that are growing in that tank and even lose a frag or two. So I am not surprised to hear that some corals lost color.

Secondly, and here we get more into guess work than experience, I would wonder at the "death" causing a cascading effect. If your sand was covered with algae and after two days of no lights it was gone where did it go? I have no idea what the byproducts are of red algae die off but I can't imagine they would be good. In addition I wonder what impact lights off had on beneficial bacteria. Clearly it resulted in the death of symbiodinium in some corals so I would not be surprised if it resulted in the death of other good bacteria as well. It might not have even been the result of a lack of lighting but might have been the result of a toxicity. All in all I think your tank is telling you that you dramatically changed the biological balance of your reef and sadly recovering said balance always takes time and patience. I would expect it would be almost like a mini-cycle wherein you would expect coral losses and nuisance algae to reappear.

All this is highly unscientific and one dude's opinion, but more importantly in this instance I do not think your change of light fixtures or bulbs has anything to do with your troubles.

My personal recommendation is to stop dosing, use carbon and change it weekly, use a phosphate remover and change it weekly, keep up with weekly water changes, and most importantly take out any dying corals immediately.

Looking forward if the red algae should return my personal method of attack is manual removal, increased water changes, increased flow, and increase or renewed phosphate removers.

What ever path you choose, Good Luck and I do hope you'll keep us updated on your progress so we can all learn from your experience!
 
JPMagyar said:
All this is highly unscientific and one dude's opinion, but more importantly in this instance I do not think your change of light fixtures or bulbs has anything to do with your troubles.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Joe!
More and more I am leaning towards this opinion as well, that it's a biological issue and not lighting. The vinegar dosing may have been a coincidence, but either way something is not right with the water and the frag tank seems to confirm that. I'm really kicking myself for starting the vinegar dosing at that time! :headwally:

I already changed the carbon Saturday, but will do it again this coming weekend.
GFO I've had issues with in the past so i just turned it off, especially since the tank exhibits zero signs of nuisance algae at this point, except for a little in my fuge.

Those are interesting thoughts about the Cyano.
I had fought it for at least a month, trying to get it out of the tank with manually but finally had to do the lights out. I didn't want to use chemicals for the exact reason of causing problems like I'm now experiencing!

As of last night, no coral seem to be dying... no tissue loss, no stn/rtn... just not looking good.... poor color and PE. Except for a couple heads on my large frogspawn colony. So far that hasn't spread but I'm keeping an eye on it. And some things look as good as ever like the couple chalices i have, some of the montipora, my Scripps Stag, a few other sps...



Randy, I have a couple more questions for you.
Something else I noticed is that my ORP has dropped to just under 200. I run ozone for a few hours after lights on every day. It was higher than 200 last night but dropped much more after the 50g water change. Does running an ozone generator have any effect one way or the other when dosing vinegar?

And second, you mentioned earlier that the chart I was following seemed wonky. What would you have suggested as a starting point for my tank? 200g display with another 150g in sump/fuge/frag tank.
 
JPMagyar said:
I have no idea what the byproducts are of red algae die off but I can't imagine they would be good.
Click to expand...

This is actually a very good point. One I need to kick myself in the backside for not thinking of...considering one of the professors I work with specializes in toxins produced by cyano, which apparently is fairly common place.
 
billsreef said:
This is actually a very good point. One I need to kick myself in the backside for not thinking of...considering one of the professors I work with specializes in toxins produced by cyano, which apparently is fairly common place.
Click to expand...
Yup, that's new info to me! The carbon was a few weeks old so probably exhausted.

HV1990 said:
and some carbon!!!!
Click to expand...
I had changed the carbon a few days ago and will do it again later this week.
Hopefully that helps!

Since I just did a 50g water change last night (350g total system) when I can do another large water change? I'm used to my little 1% daily automatic water changes.
 
I noticed your reading of .07 phosphates. That is a little high. I don't know if your nitrates were higher then the 3 you posted but I would have not opted to carbon dose at that number. Rather I would have run a Gfo media to bring down the phosphates...something I suggest you do now
I would also run carbon to clear out possible toxins or organics that might have been produced from the acetic acid dosing
 
That number was with GFO. I've had p04 as high as .12 with GFO before, yet my corals were going pale/white and as low as .01 with very colorful coral.
All with no visible algae. Maybe the tangs get to it first. haha
 
That's one of the advantages of having algae eaters in your system. :) Sometimes, they'll do some cleanup for you.
 
d2mini said:
That number was with GFO. I've had p04 as high as .12 with GFO before, yet my corals were going pale/white and as low as .01 with very colorful coral.
All with no visible algae. Maybe the tangs get to it first. haha
Click to expand...

A little confusing here maybe it's me but you seem to be stating the exact reason for reducing the phosphate level in any tank
 
capn_hylinur said:
A little confusing here maybe it's me but you seem to be stating the exact reason for reducing the phosphate level in any tank
Click to expand...

Sorry, what I'm saying is that when nutrients are too low, sps go pale. I had this problem suddenly, late last year, and when I pulled the GFO off my system everything recovered right away. And I was also saying that my tank has always had p04 at levels that one might consider high but it has never effected my tank. I generally don't go chasing po4 numbers.

Although solid advice to keep an eye on po4 that starts climbing, I'm pretty confident that my po4 which happened to test at .07 via my low range hanna tester which I don't fully trust anyway, is not the cause of what my tank is experiencing. That's just par for the course for my tank, with sps super bright, colorful and growing.
 
d2mini said:
Sorry, what I'm saying is that when nutrients are too low, sps go pale. I had this problem suddenly, late last year, and when I pulled the GFO off my system everything recovered right away. And I was also saying that my tank has always had p04 at levels that one might consider high but it has never effected my tank. I generally don't go chasing po4 numbers.

Although solid advice to keep an eye on po4 that starts climbing, I'm pretty confident that my po4 which happened to test at .07 via my low range hanna tester which I don't fully trust anyway, is not the cause of what my tank is experiencing. That's just par for the course for my tank, with sps super bright, colorful and growing.
Click to expand...

Okay understood Tks. Just checking out all the variables here. Still feel you should reduce the phosphates to .03 just to make sure they are not contibuting to the problem. Sometimes more then one condition can cause a problem that wasn't a problem in the past
 
On the phosphate removal issue, I know many use Phosban or Rowaphos, but I found my Hereractis Magnifica was extremely sensitive to these "unprocessed" types placed in a reactor so as a result I tried PO4x4 and Brightwell Aquatics Xport PO4 both of these products have been processed in some manner so that they are not free bits of iron oxide that need to be tumbled in a reactor but rather can be placed in an area of low flow in a simple micron-mesh bag. I read years ago a study that showed dust from GAC could cause lateral line disease in fish and so my thinking was that the tumbling reactors were releasing micro sized flecks of Rowaphos into the water column and that by using a "processed" phosphate remover in a low flow environment I would prevent the release of micron sized flecks which MIGHT be adding a certain toxicity to the water column. For the record I did the same with my occasional use of GAC. I should also note I never leave GAC in for more than a week because from all that I have read it becomes saturated within 48 hours in saltwater so other than creating a micro environment for bacteria culture it is no longer removing toxins.


Additionally, I think the reduction in color you saw might not have been the result of too little phosphate but rather due to toxic release of microscopic bits of iron oxide or possibly the reduction of your pH below 7.9. I believe there is an article somewhere that showed that iron oxide lowers pH rather dramatically in the short run, and having struggled with low pH quite often I know how quickly a low pH causes a loss of color. Bottom line I do not think a lack of nutrients causes corals to lose color quickly, but I do think low pH or toxicity can do that and so as a corollary I think if you use small amounts of a processed iron oxide in a low flow non-tumbling environment then you will reap the benefits of having a phosphate remover on your system without the negative side effects and the presence of red algae on your sand was a clear indication that your system has more phosphate than you are detecting with the phosphate test kits. Lastly remember that Randy has shown that food provides the lion's share of phosphate that enters out tank so even if you did have low phosphate as a result of using iron oxide it isn't likely to be a problem since you are loading the tank with more phosphate every time you feed.

Anyways, more rambling but I'm just trying to help by suggesting trying Xport PO4 in a mesh bag :D
 
capn_hylinur said:
Okay understood Tks. Just checking out all the variables here. Still feel you should reduce the phosphates to .03 just to make sure they are not contibuting to the problem. Sometimes more then one condition can cause a problem that wasn't a problem in the past
Click to expand...
Yes, dually noted.
I'll see if I can lower it, and I should test again just to make sure it's somewhat accurate. Maybe the gfo was just exhausted. I can try just a little bit.

JPMagyar said:
On the phosphate removal issue, I know many use Phosban or Rowaphos, but I found my Hereractis Magnifica was extremely sensitive to these "unprocessed" types placed in a reactor so as a result I tried PO4x4 and Brightwell Aquatics Xport PO4 both of these products have been processed in some manner so that they are not free bits of iron oxide that need to be tumbled in a reactor but rather can be placed in an area of low flow in a simple micron-mesh bag. I read years ago a study that showed dust from GAC could cause lateral line disease in fish and so my thinking was that the tumbling reactors were releasing micro sized flecks of Rowaphos into the water column and that by using a "processed" phosphate remover in a low flow environment I would prevent the release of micron sized flecks which MIGHT be adding a certain toxicity to the water column. For the record I did the same with my occasional use of GAC. I should also note I never leave GAC in for more than a week because from all that I have read it becomes saturated within 48 hours in saltwater so other than creating a micro environment for bacteria culture it is no longer removing toxins.


Additionally, I think the reduction in color you saw might not have been the result of too little phosphate but rather due to toxic release of microscopic bits of iron oxide or possibly the reduction of your pH below 7.9. I believe there is an article somewhere that showed that iron oxide lowers pH rather dramatically in the short run, and having struggled with low pH quite often I know how quickly a low pH causes a loss of color. Bottom line I do not think a lack of nutrients causes corals to lose color quickly, but I do think low pH or toxicity can do that and so as a corollary I think if you use small amounts of a processed iron oxide in a low flow non-tumbling environment then you will reap the benefits of having a phosphate remover on your system without the negative side effects and the presence of red algae on your sand was a clear indication that your system has more phosphate than you are detecting with the phosphate test kits. Lastly remember that Randy has shown that food provides the lion's share of phosphate that enters out tank so even if you did have low phosphate as a result of using iron oxide it isn't likely to be a problem since you are loading the tank with more phosphate every time you feed.

Anyways, more rambling but I'm just trying to help by suggesting trying Xport PO4 in a mesh bag :D
Click to expand...
Thanks, Joe... good info.
I'm not sure I've noticed a difference in ph when running GFO. My CaRx is keeping my ph between 7.7-8.0 on a daily basis. When I stop using GFO I don't see any rise in those numbers. At least not enough to notice. I am a little concerned about my ph... I don't like when it dips down below 7.8 but i haven't found a way to raise it yet... without dripping kalk which I'm afraid will throw off my CaRx balance.




So i asked a few posts up.... when should I do another big water change?? I have 50g ready to go.
 
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