Need help, losing all sps corals

C

cchase231

New member
Unfortunately for the first time in my reefing career I am having a problem that I just cannot figure out. My plating montis were the first to go, slowly losing tissue until they were nothing more than skeleton. Then a few acroporas followed suit, starting at the tips and moving down the coral to the base over the course of about 2-4 weeks depending on the size, necrosis rate seems similar on all corals. Over the past 5 months I have lost about 8 pieces and ALL of my remaining sps corals are showing symptoms now. I have tried dipping some corals in coral rx and medicoral. It seemed to help on some, make some worse, and have no effect on others. I have inspected the corals as close as I could and see no signs of flatworms or redbugs and havnt seen any critters eating the corals night or day. Here are the tank specs.

Tank: 156 gallons, WM k2 skimmer w/rdpw, 30 gallon sump
Flow: 2 tunze 6105 on controller
Alk: 8dkh and kept stable by profilux doser
Cal: 440 same as above
Mag: 1500
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10-15
phos: not detectable on salifert test-dont have anything better to use
inhabitants: melanospilos angel pair, yellow tang, royal gramma, 3 lyre tail anthias, orange spot rabbit fish, 5 blue chromis, mandarin goby, yashia goby, a pair of percs, and a starry blenny. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-If I left anything out let me know, thats all I can think of right now.
 
For what its worth I am having a similar problem. All sps showing some degree of stress/necrosis, with no smoking gun as to the cause. I am leaning toward potassium deficiency at the moment, but who knows.
 
Your mag seems a bit high. Isn't 1200-1400 the optimum range?

Also, are you sure there's nothing wrong with your controllers/doser? Or maybe your test kit that you are using might be malfunctioning.

Hope this helps you
 
What about your lighting? Are you keeping up with bulb changes and photoperiod?
 
Test kits and doser problems were one of my first ideas, I have had all my test results confirmed and if the doser was off that would most likely be reflected in the test results. I wish that were the problem, it would be a pretty easy fix. Im not sure why the mag is high at the moment, I may have made my last batch a bit strong I suppose, anyhow it tests between 1400-1500 everytime on two different kits and I dont think 1500 is detrimentally high ( I could be wrong though???) I had been dosing potassium at one point in small quantities but never saw any effects positive or negative, that was before this nonsense started, could a K deficiency really cause destruction like this?
 
mags good...
have you carefully checked for metal (plugs, screws, clamps, etc) in your fuge/sump? also- any electrical (current in water?) issues?
good luck!
 
I use 6 t5s and the photoperiod has been 12 hours with 5 hour daylights for the last 2 years and I change bulbs every 9-12 months. The colors of the corals have been great except for the parts that have the stn.
 
mayjong said:
mags good...
have you carefully checked for metal (plugs, screws, clamps, etc) in your fuge/sump? also- any electrical (current in water?) issues?
good luck!
Click to expand...

Ive looked, nothing that I can find and there arent any kids around or anything to throw stuff in. How do you actually check for current?
 
rireuter said:
isn't 10-15 ppm nitrates a little on the high side?
Click to expand...

It is a bit high, I think it has gone up a bit recently due to the tissue death. But I usually attribute high nitrates to brown out rather than necrosis, I have no brown, just white patches....
 
There's some sort of gadget that you can probe your water with to detect any electrical current in it I believe.
 
+1 on looking at a potassium deficiency. 3 years ago I had a similar problem. Montiporas and Seriatoporas just started slowly fading and had tissue death. Acroporas lost their blue color...then started doing the same thing. It's not a common problem, but if your tank is heavily stocked with corals and/or your salt mix is low on K+, then you could have some issues.

About 1.5 - 2 years ago (time flies...) I had a problem I also could not identify where corals (SPS first, then LPS) just started looking bad...then worse and worse until the tissue came off...and then total necrosis. I tried everything...including massive water changes until I ran out of salt. I was using Red Sea Coral Pro...my LFS was out...so I switched to SeaChem...and immediately tissue necrosis stopped and all corals started looking better (PE, color, etc). All corals that hadn't died recovered fully without any further changes. I posted in several forums and found about 10 other people with a similar problem/solution...then contacted Red Sea. Never heard back from them, so who knows. Anyway...my point is, check all of your chemicals & salt for any sort of contamination. Maybe try switching salts.

How old is the tank? I know it's a catch-all phrase, but have you ruled out the common symptoms behind "old tank syndrome?"

At only a 10g weekly water change for an almost 200g system...it sounds like you could definitely have some buildup (especially with higher nitrate levels). If your tank is heavily stocked, a 10g water change without dosing K+ may be leaving your tank deficient. Just my ideas. HTH.
 
cchase231 said:
Alk: 8dkh and kept stable by profilux doser
Click to expand...

What test did you use? I was runnign 8 dkh according to salifert but only 6.5 when checked against api. When I bumped it up to 10 according to salifert I saw a huge improvement in all my corals.
 
MechEng99 said:
+1 on looking at a potassium deficiency. 3 years ago I had a similar problem. Montiporas and Seriatoporas just started slowly fading and had tissue death. Acroporas lost their blue color...then started doing the same thing. It's not a common problem, but if your tank is heavily stocked with corals and/or your salt mix is low on K+, then you could have some issues.

About 1.5 - 2 years ago (time flies...) I had a problem I also could not identify where corals (SPS first, then LPS) just started looking bad...then worse and worse until the tissue came off...and then total necrosis. I tried everything...including massive water changes until I ran out of salt. I was using Red Sea Coral Pro...my LFS was out...so I switched to SeaChem...and immediately tissue necrosis stopped and all corals started looking better (PE, color, etc). All corals that hadn't died recovered fully without any further changes. I posted in several forums and found about 10 other people with a similar problem/solution...then contacted Red Sea. Never heard back from them, so who knows. Anyway...my point is, check all of your chemicals & salt for any sort of contamination. Maybe try switching salts.

How old is the tank? I know it's a catch-all phrase, but have you ruled out the common symptoms behind "old tank syndrome?"

At only a 10g weekly water change for an almost 200g system...it sounds like you could definitely have some buildup (especially with higher nitrate levels). If your tank is heavily stocked, a 10g water change without dosing K+ may be leaving your tank deficient. Just my ideas. HTH.
Click to expand...

Thats interesting, I am using red sea coral pro salt. I upgraded tanks last fall, the problem had started in the old tank which had been set up for about 4 years. I used rock that was all well cured, but the sand bed was replaced. Nitrates in the old tank were consistently less than 5 so I attributed the nitrates to the new sand bed. Most of the corals looked better after the move, but then slowly started stn'ing again.
 
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