Painful watching my tank nuke... Advice?

[deputydog95]

I know this is probably just one of those watch and wait things but here goes.

A few months back I was running a 62 gallon mostly SPS tank. Everything was doing pretty well. Had been dosing the tank with an AB up until a few months leading up to shutting this tank down. About 3 months before shutting down we switched to simple regular water changes to combat a hair algae problem. Last ditch effort.

Anyway, we setup the new 112 gallon and let it run for a week or two with live sand. Then we added dry life rock and let that run for a few weeks, maybe 4.

Everything was ok. Since I was selling the old setup we started moving the corals over to the new tank over the course of a week. Everything looked good.

We let all that run for a 3-4 weeks before I started dosing again. We were barely getting an alk reading of 7.8 and low calcium so I was knew it was time to start gentle dosing. It should also be noted that I went from T5's to LED's on the new setup.

So for a week or two, I gradually upped the dosing 5ml a day or so until we got to a reading of 9-9.2 dlk and a calcium of around 400. Mg is around 1250 although I think I'm going to bump that slightly as my expectation of dosing over the years is that the Ca should be higher with the equal dosing of AB.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago I started see some orange Setosa bleach out. Next were were the acro bases. Soon after, a large easter egg chalice was showing it's skeleton and the underside in that area has lost all it's tissue.

It was interesting that when I moved a hammer and a frog spawn over together in the same day, the hammer opened immediately and the frog spawn has barely opened and seems to be retracting even more.

Light cycle is 12 hours where it slowly ramps up to 50 percent intensity and is a mostly blue spectrum. Tons of flow with the Grye, return pump and two ET MP10's. Skimmer is jamming away. No presence of nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, or phosphates. Even added a poly filter to be on the safe side...

It should also be noted that I added some more frags from WWC and my local LFS. They seem to be ok.

Thoughts? Am I missing something? I feel iike we've done everything so gradually and kept the numbers fairly modest that this shouldn't be happening but it is...

I have a 3 year old acro colony that is about a foot wide and a foot deep. Heartbreaking to watch it bleach out day by day....

 

[Taahirs]

If you have unreadable nitrates and phosphates you shouldn't keep your alk so high. 7-8 will be better. Also in the long run no nitrates and phosphates is bad, try raising it slightly.

 

[deputydog95]

As I was typing that.... I was thinking the glaring difference between the two tanks was nutrient levels. The old tank wasn't horrible, but for sure easily detectable.

So now I've turned the skimmer off completely, added reef chili and a couple other phyto powers in a blend, fed the fish, and left the Apex on Feed Mode B which basically keeps the gyre and MP10's running for 30 mins with the return pump off. Should let the corals grab something to eat while at the same time spreading some food around into the crevices to hopefully add some nutrient levels.

This new skimmer is a beast. Which I'm sure is just stripping the water of nutrients. That was also a new edition a few weeks ago after the tank had been running for a month or so.

I've tracked my dosing and alk readings. I was reading about 8.1 at 35ml/day, so I've turned the doser down to that level to allow the tank to drop on its own from 9.

Any other suggestions?

I've never experienced this before. If it stops, will the base eventually color back up again?

 

[Taahirs]

Depends if the bases get enough light to enable them to colour up again. If the top branches block the light getting to the bottom then probably not.

 

[deputydog95]

The lights are spread across the tank fairly evenly and the corals are up high getting lots of light. Using wide angle LED's. Fingers crossed.

Any other suggestions other than letting the Alk drop and feeding the tank more to get nutrients up?

 

[Pittsburgh]

From own experience, I agree that Alk should be between 7-8 with ULNS. For me, 8-9 was the unhappy zone and 9-11 was the disaster zone. However, I would double/triple test for nutrients in the new tank, with different test kits if at all possible.
If nutrients are indeed undetectable, I would start testing Alk every other day and adjust dosing to bring it down below 8. I wouldn't try to bring nutrients up, too much of a risk on an already stressed system. Also, what's the water temperature in the tank?

 

[deputydog95]

FWIW, this is designed to be an ulta low nutrient tank. It's just new enough where not enough detritus etc has accumulated I guess...

Fish are fed pretty much daily.

We've tested with a couple different kits and gotten zero. Again, not intentional, just so new where I haven't screwed it up yet by overfeed LOL.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

There are lots of discussions regarding low nutrients tanks, and there are definitely people who can get corals colored up in that environment, though it seems they're usually dumping lots of expensive supplements into the tank to make it happen. In my personal experience, once I let my nutrients (Nitrate) rise, that's when I really started to see more healthy and colorful SPS.

I'd say your basic issue is new tank syndrome. You have a brand new tank with zero nutrients which you put a bunch of SPS into. The outcome may be bad. It looks like you're on the right track with feeding, etc. But I think the key is to get your nutrients up. The other problem is simply that it's a new tank. I found that my SPS didn't really start doing well until around the 1 year mark. I don't know the science behind it, but it definitely seems that SPS require a "seasoned" tank to do well.

 

[deputydog95]

There are lots of discussions regarding low nutrients tanks, and there are definitely people who can get corals colored up in that environment, though it seems they're usually dumping lots of expensive supplements into the tank to make it happen. In my personal experience, once I let my nutrients (Nitrate) rise, that's when I really started to see more healthy and colorful SPS.

I'd say your basic issue is new tank syndrome. You have a brand new tank with zero nutrients which you put a bunch of SPS into. The outcome may be bad. It looks like you're on the right track with feeding, etc. But I think the key is to get your nutrients up. The other problem is simply that it's a new tank. I found that my SPS didn't really start doing well until around the 1 year mark. I don't know the science behind it, but it definitely seems that SPS require a "seasoned" tank to do well.

When you nutrients, are you referring to phosphates or nitrates?

 

[DivingTheWorld]

When you nutrients, are you referring to phosphates or nitrates?

Both really should be above 0. That said, Nitrates should be higher. I usually shoot for phosphate around 0.01-0.03. I shoot for nitrate around 10-20.

 

[reefmutt]

There are lots of discussions regarding low nutrients tanks, and there are definitely people who can get corals colored up in that environment, though it seems they're usually dumping lots of expensive supplements into the tank to make it happen. In my personal experience, once I let my nutrients (Nitrate) rise, that's when I really started to see more healthy and colorful SPS.

I'd say your basic issue is new tank syndrome. You have a brand new tank with zero nutrients which you put a bunch of SPS into. The outcome may be bad. It looks like you're on the right track with feeding, etc. But I think the key is to get your nutrients up. The other problem is simply that it's a new tank. I found that my SPS didn't really start doing well until around the 1 year mark. I don't know the science behind it, but it definitely seems that SPS require a "seasoned" tank to do well.

I would agree with this 100%..
Can you add some clean live rock from your old system to help re establish sponge and bacterial populations?

 

[Reel North]

It can also be that it's a new tank, couple with totally different lighting. Through lower nutrients in and you are creating a very stressful environment.

My sps was growing, but not spectacular. I started feeding more, and added an auto feeder, and took wc back to every 3 weeks from 2.

PE is much better, and coloration is much improved.

Get it dirty.

 

[nmotz]

What everyone else said....regarding low nutrients, here's what I've found: with low nitrates/phosphates, growth stagnates for me, coloration also plateaus at a level that is tolerable but not really desirable. I'm one of those that has to feed a lot of supplements because I don't have any fish to crud up the tank. My skimmer removes all the nasties and I have very high flow in the tank to prevent detritus from settling out.

You'll have to give it time. I agree about the 1 yr thing too. Honestly, my tank wasn't enjoyable at all until about the 9month mark. Then it turned a corner and by the 1 yr point really began to take off. Who knows, i may actually have a respectable tank yet, hahah, yeah right!

 

[kevlow]

Agree with all said above. Low nutrients has been a plague and worse then high nutrients for me. Especially when you see LPS receding. I use ESV water and used to try to stay at it's 9.5 or so dkh that it mixes at. Can't do that. I must stay around 7-7.3 for my nurient load. I use LEDs on a very shallow tank. I am feeding heavy, ocassionally dosing nitrate and still must keep the alk low.

Good luck and will follow along.

 

[biggles]

If your skimmer has a drain hose from the cup like mine Kev, try putting the hose into the sump near the return pump and let the skimmer run as per normal but it will slowly drain a concentrated fresh skimmate back into the water.
This is not the same as tipping a day or two worth of skimmate into the water because the bacteria that normally go nuts in your cup causing the stench are not getting a chance to 'destroy' the fresh nutrient rich skimmate liquid.
Turning off your skimmer is nothing at all like doing what i described above and if you watch the night time PE during this process you will see obvious improvement if indeed low nutrients in your water column is the root cause of your acro ills.

The LPS should react crazily happy but who really cares about them.......... :blown:

Try the skimmer thing before you start dosing nitrate and phos chemicals etc, you're tipping out your own home made nutrient raising potion.

 

[Wazzel]

You have a couple of things going on from what I can see.

New tank with low nutrients, moving stress and different lighting.

I just swapped tanks a few weeks ago and had to deal with the moving stress and clean tank portion. At 5 weeks post transfer things are starting to look better.

Feed the tanks and stay on the maintenance. If you suspect the lights, turn them down to be safe. Even tho I stayed with the same lights I did a 40% 2 month acclimation just to be safe.

 

[deputydog95]

Appreciate all the great advice!

I was very cautious with the lighting. The kessils are extremely powerful. Kept the light in the bluish spectrum the entire time and then spent a few weeks slowly ramping up to a max of 50 percent for about a third of the day.

Running a hose from the skimmer cup to the sump is a great idea. The skimmer will keep aerating the water but the skimmate will put some nutrients back in. I"ll look into that today.

I tested again yesterday, 1280mg, 400Ca, and low 9's on the Alk. I turned down the dosing yesterday (it drips 8x/day), and then turned it off completely via the apex last night to let it drop some overnight on it's own.

I'll test again today to see where I'm at and then set the dosing at very modest level to try to maintain that 7's Alk goal, at least until the tank seasons up some.

I actually noticed a couple the new frags that seemed to be doing fine, starting to show stress with light base bleaching yesterday. Grrrrr.

I'm hoping some aggressive feeding and getting the Alk down will turn this around. I've been doing this a long long time but never transferred a seasoned tank before. A lot of good lessons here.

Here's to hoping that it stabilizes and reverses itself!

I'll keep you guys posted.

Do you think even though I'm running the lights at a modest intensity, it would help to turn them down further and make them even bluer?

 

[biggles]

Running a hose from the skimmer cup to the sump is a great idea. The skimmer will keep aerating the water but the skimmate will put some nutrients back in. I"ll look into that today.

I run a hose out a window to the skimmer to prevent pH swings during winter over night so turning the skimmer off is something i would never consider anyway. Plus like you i like to see the aeration 24/7.

 

[ezcompany]

If your skimmer has a drain hose from the cup like mine Kev, try putting the hose into the sump near the return pump and let the skimmer run as per normal but it will slowly drain a concentrated fresh skimmate back into the water.
This is not the same as tipping a day or two worth of skimmate into the water because the bacteria that normally go nuts in your cup causing the stench are not getting a chance to 'destroy' the fresh nutrient rich skimmate liquid.

So you let your skimmer collection box naturally overflow into your sump via tubing? how wet do you skim to do this?

 

[biggles]

So you let your skimmer collection box naturally overflow into your sump via tubing? how wet do you skim to do this?

I don't do this as a matter of course, it's something i mentioned as an easy and effective way to help increase the 'richness' of your water borne coral nutrition. It keeps a constant supply in the water rather than throwing some bottled BS in once a day etc.
I always skim wettish - dark tea color like most guys. There's no need to adjust anything and over think things, just let whatever you normally remove cycle back through the system and watch your reef to see how things react.
If you see positive signs from doing what i suggest - stop the skimmer draining thing and start adding a food that will quickly increase your nutrient levels such as mysis.

The only way you can not get a reading from your water is by not feeding your bio filtration the amount of food it can handle. I feed 5 mysis cubes a day, nori and multiple pellet feeds and my nutrients are still dropping - i will feed more until i reach a balance because the more food i can process daily the better my acros look.