Newbie questions

dabob79

dabob79

New member
Hey all! Sorry in advance, but this thread is going to have a lot in it. I'm not a newbie really, but all the questions I have are issues I've never had to deal with before with my smaller setups, so I'm not sure what to do.

First off, I have a couple corals I'm worried about. My green chalice doesn't look at pretty as it did several weeks ago, areas between the heads that were green are brown now, if you look at the picture below compared to some of my older pictures you'll see what I mean. Also, I have a coral I picked up at Kingdom Aquatics on pizza night, they called it a red torch. It's not looking so hot either, but not sure what the problem is. All my numbers are good and everything else in the tank looks great.

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Next question may be a bit trivial, just wondering what everyone else does. I've been scraping the front two panes of glass, but haven't touched that back ones. I'm starting to get a pretty thick coating of this brown-ish algae on them. Should I scrape this, or let it go?

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And lastly, I target fed my corals for the first time last night with some Doc Ecos Brew. A few of the corals got really nasty and slimy and my skimmer went absolutely apeshit for an hour afterwards. Is this normal??

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Thanks!!
 
First thing is what are your parameters? "Good" isn't going to tell us what we need to know to help you

The brownish algae from my experience indicate phosphates, and I personally like the looks of a tank with the back glass cleaned
 
My phosphates read zero, and there's nothing on the rocks or the sand. When I scrape the front glass it's a greenish, almost powdery looking algae. Here's the rest of my numbers:

Ammonia: 0 (Red Sea)
Nitrite: 0 (Red Sea)
Nitrate: 1 (Red Sea)
Phosphate: Undetectable (Nyos)
Alk: 9dkh (Red Sea)
Calcium: 410 (Nyos)
Magnesium: 1300 (Salifert)
Specific Gravity: 1.024 (Slowly raising to 1.025) (Refractometer)
pH: 8.1 (Apex Lab Grade pH probe)

These numbers were last night. My lighting (in case you're wondering) is a Radion XR30w G2 and four 24W T5s. T5s are running two Coral+ and two Blue+ bulbs. Radion is on a custom graph that's around 14000k at peak, 60% total intensity. I can post a pic of my Radion graph it that would help. Chalice is about half-way down, red torch is nearly on the bottom.
 
Have you tried running some carbon and or gfo? Thats where I would start with parameters like yours

Now when koddie poo gets on here and see my old school tech advice, he will bang something out with the apex :lolspin:
 
I clean my front and sides but my back glas is completely covered in coraline since I cant clean it .
 
That was my plan for the back two pieces of glass (in a corner), but can coraline even grow if all that algae is there?
 
If you have unhappy corals and your water parameters are good, it could be that they don't like either the lighting or the water flow.(or both) After making sure you know what the corals are supposed to prefer, you can try moving them higher or lower to see if they like the new lighting conditions better. Same goes for the flow. Try moving them to a higher or lower flow area of the tank and see if that makes a difference.

I've killed a torch before because I left it in too high a flow and didn't act quickly enough when they expressed their displeasure. I've also had SPS brown on me because I had them too low in the tank. Once I raised them up and got them more light, they colored right up.
 
You said running GFO? Have your outflow going directly into your sump or tank? Get a brownish film/haze in your sump? GFO isnt hard so it quite could possibly be it breaking up. What you may be seeing is the fine dust from your reactor coating stuff. Try getting a media bag from your LFS and tie to the end of your GFO reactor. See how much crap gets built up there.

Ohh, when i put Docs into my tank, i remove the filter floss and turn off the skimmer for the night. When i wake up in the AM and turn it back on, the skimmer foams like MAD
 
Chucklez, I have GFO in the bottom half of the reactor, with a sponge, a small amount of carbon, and another sponge in the top to prevent nastiness from the GFO getting in the tank.

Matt, I thought that too. It's nearly at the bottom of the tank and in a lower flow area, so I don't see how it could be the lighting or the flow killing it if it is an acan.
 
I have a sponge at top and bottom of my gfo reactor and a media bag on the outlet and some particulate still gets through. It pulverizes itself to a fine powder and spreads across the tank.

Either way, just tossing out possibilities
 
There's just enough space between the gfo and first sponge to tumble.

Any Radion users here that can chime in on my lighting question? Obviously my water params are fine, so it's either lighting or flow that's hurting my chalice. I noticed one spot on the skeleton in the middle that's almost white now. What's up??
 
dabob79 said:
Chucklez, I have GFO in the bottom half of the reactor, with a sponge, a small amount of carbon, and another sponge in the top to prevent nastiness from the GFO getting in the tank.

Matt, I thought that too. It's nearly at the bottom of the tank and in a lower flow area, so I don't see how it could be the lighting or the flow killing it if it is an acan.
Click to expand...

You can mix your GFO and Carbon together that way you do not have to tumble your GFO. GFO exhausts faster which is a draw back but I mix mine 2/3GFO to 1/3 carbon because of that fact but I don't have to worry about tumbling the GFO.
 
So my newly acquired purple stylo is looking a bit bleached now. Is bleaching normally too much light? It's 10-12" down from the surface, more towards the back and not directly under the Radion. I've got a green slimer that's up high, probably 6" from the bottom and directly under the Radion, and it looks great. I've also got a red monti about the same placement as the stylo and its looking good. Chalice is looking the same, maybe a bit better. Yellow Fiji leather and zoas are all looking great as well. Any ideas? I've heard of low nutrients being a problem with some sps, but if I have to scrape my glass every day and I see some algae on the rocks is that my problem? My nitrates read 2 and phosphates are undetectable. I am running gfo still. Everything else is as follows as of last night:

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 2
Phosphate: undetectable
Calcium: 435
Mag: 1350
Alk: 9
Salinity: 1.026
Ph: 8.18 at lights out

I did a couple water changes over the last couple days which finally got my magnesium up and my salinity right, and I'm running kalk now to keep everything steady. Are the lights too much? Should I lower the Radion intensity, or put the stylo lower in the tank? I'm sure it's something simple, I'm just missing it. Thanks again everyone!
 
Once again. I believe you are starving your corals. Get some detectable po4s and go from there.
 
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