please help before I have to take my tank down

C

CTaylor

Active member
Hi,

If anyone can recommend an expert to look at my tank. I'm in Ft Lauderdale (south FL area). I'd appreciate it. And not just from a regular fish store down here, I need a true expert. See the rest....

I have a 65 gallon mixed reef. I've had this one going since mid 2011. Current conditions check out good, only pH is slighly low at 8.0-8.1. Temp 81, alk, cal is good, nitrate = 0, phosphate = 0, nitrite = 0. Mag is 1400 or so. Reef OCtopus 2000+ skimmer, which pulls fair amount of stuff out. 10 gallon refug as part of my 40 gallon sump. Lighting is LED, mix of wavelengths cool white, few warm white, royal blue, few actinic, fewer cyan and 'blue blue.' Flow is by two Tunze streams 1500 gph? I think.

The tank has gone through rough phases (where corals decline and/or die) every few months for at least the last two years. I had a period of 9 months where everything did great, even my birds nest quadrupled in size. Then all of a sudden it slowly died, and everythign went down hill, esp the SPS. I changed all the water and things came back. I've been using a phoshpate reactor also thinkking that may be it even though salifert had phoph at undectable. I even bought the new skimmer (listed above) thinking I might not be getting enough skimming with my Aqua-c EV120.

**The LPS in my reef tank during this current bad phase are actually doing well. They usually close up when the SPS are dying. But not this time. The only thing I can think it can be is my LED system (since I cant really "test" those wavelengths, etc). I do have a par meter, and that is 220 at least on the bottom of the tank. So PAR at least is ok. Maybe they are too old too soon???
**But I dont remember the tank NOT having bad phases when I first started it with Halide. I just dont recall. But it's very curious that usually (not always) it bounces back to normal with a huge (80-90% ) water change.

I've been in salt water off and on since I was 12, so that's 30 years. I now have a very successful seahorse tank. They are supposed to be hard to keep, and they are doing great.

**I was thinking to swtich back to halide??? But that would be more $$ goign to a dying cause possibly

Thanks for reading this and ANY input!
 
Tanks differ. And honestly, if you are starting to succeed with lps, switch to lps. It may not be the aesthetic you originally went for but an all-lps tank can be very pretty, and very productive.
 
You say CA and KH are good, but what are your actual number? Are they consistent throughout the week? How are you maintaining both? If your KH is fluctuating, that could be part of your problem.
 
Chucko... that's a good point. I'll measure it fresh later. BUT I did add some Mg, and then later Ca (CaCl) as a boost since I use Kalk to keep my Ca/Alk levels. And lately have not used a fan (which increases evap, = more kalk wasser ...). After that is when the current big down turn happened. But in all reality can THAT really do this do the corals. I know they are sensitive, but one of these acros currently dying has made it fine through every other down turn of my tank.
SK8R : thanks also, but that option is not acceptable to me lol, esp when I see all these hobbyists that know only the basics and have not been in it for many years at same time have beautiful SPS tanks. And they often say it's so easy. I deserve sps :) and will feel like a failure if I dont conquer this situation :-D
 
you said the tank does good for awhile then things go bad. What is changing when it goes bad? How big are your temp swings? Even though 81 is an acceptable number to me it is to high. I keep mine at 78 in the summer and 77 in the winter. You have to be very careful when adding kalk, Cal, Mag or anything else for that matter. I don't see what your salinity is, what are you using for water top off, are you adding the water yourself or do you have an ATO. If your adding it yourself I bet your adding to much Kalk all at once. Just some things to look at. I doubt your lighting or your skimmer has anything to do with these issues. The greatest thing you can do for your corals is to keep every thing as stable as possible, there are no quick fixes in this hobby.
 
OK, in this case it may be my alk. It's at 5 dkh! . I must have added Ca+ to quickly this past weekend. My Ca levels now are 410. Mg is 1370. I added 2 teaspoons stirred in ro/di water (8 oz), added slowly to the tank. I will do this daily until alk is raised to normal, while watching Ca and Mg. Hopefully this is it. I shouldnt have assumed alk level was still normal even though evertyhing tested good recently. If 5dkh can be lethal, then hopefully this was the cause, as it's something I can fix.
I'll update when alk level is normal again (in a few days or week, or so, not few hours).
 
I would start getting in the habit of testing and dosing your alk daily if you want to keep SPS. I used to be in the same boat as you but since getting in this habit and understanding the consumption in my tank better I have had much more success.

Good luck to you.
 
please help before I have to take my tank down

Alk was going to be my guess. Any time I've had issues I check alk first, and it's usually the culprit. Best bet is to slowly bring it up, then measure faithfully every day or two for 1-2 weeks to determine your consumption, and dose from there.
 
It might not be the alk. That's a possible coincidence. I have been increasing it by 2 teaspoons a day of Kent Super Buffer. It's at 8 dkh now. Which is not great, but better. Corals not reacting positively. I'll keep slowly increasing it. Though not confident in this at all.
*If anyone knows of a guru in my area and can let me know what is going on with my tank declines, I will pay (a lot as Donald Trump says lol) if I can get this solved.
 
The only other thing I can think: that I use kalkwasser. And I havent been dumping out the remaining Kalk before refilling the reservoir (a 5 gallon drip container by Kent). Is it possible the residue I have left in there from the previous mix is contaminated (some how, maybe reacted with air or degrades, etc???). I thought it could just be remixed, because I thought it was just CaCO3 that drops out and stays in the drip conatiner, and therefore safe. Could be wrong (??).
 
CTaylor said:
The only other thing I can think: that I use kalkwasser. And I havent been dumping out the remaining Kalk before refilling the reservoir (a 5 gallon drip container by Kent). Is it possible the residue I have left in there from the previous mix is contaminated (some how, maybe reacted with air or degrades, etc???). I thought it could just be remixed, because I thought it was just CaCO3 that drops out and stays in the drip conatiner, and therefore safe. Could be wrong (??).
Click to expand...

Doubt it. Kalk has a natural tendency to purify itself. The contaminants you would be worried about are metals that just can't dissolve at that high pH.
 
update.. pic of dying coral

update.. pic of dying coral

Here's a pic of my last acro I have. It's not quite dead yet. If you can see in the pic, it dies top down, not bottom up. When i've had previous acros decline, it's usually been from bottom-> up. There is some death on the underside, but at same time, that is in an area getting more light (angle of coral presently) than the rest of the underside.
**Is this an indication that my lighting is causing this? I've never been totally satisfied with my DIY LED . And was looking to 'upgrade' to kessil.

Thanks again
 

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You said you have a phosphate reactor... is it possible it's stripping ALL phosphate? My understanding is you need a very small amount for coral health. That may explain why everything seems fine for a period of time (while there are trace levels of phosphate) but once your reactor strips all phosphate, you get into trouble?
 
While a part of your problem is the low alk, I don't think it's your whole problem. I'm going to say your water is too clean. You say even your LPS aren't doing well this and your SPS not doing well leads me to believe this. Even SPS need some nutrients in the form of nitrates and phosphates.

As our tanks mature they develop nitrate eating bacteria as a final part of the nitrogen cycle process. So your 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate are actually correct, many times people report both as 0 when they actually aren't because of algae growth.

If I were you I'd stop skimming and let your nitrates and phosphates come up to .03 phosphates and <5 nitrates and see if your corals don't pick back up. I've seen this many times and there is a thread in the Chemistry forum that goes into more detail on it where they actually dose nitrates and phosphates. Do a search and see if you can find it.
 
Hi, the low alk seems to be in order. But the corals continued to die. Is it possible the very low alk was a trigger to a non-reversible condition in the sps? I have a lot of caulerpa that grows in the tank even with nondetectible phosphates and nitrates. So there are apparently still nutrients in the water.
*Any comment on the way the corals die? Looking like icicles, and from top-down.

Thanks!
 
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