Please help!!!!!

[Jmar101786]

Hello All,

I'm frantic right now so i'm sorry if this comes across as a bit of a mess but i woke up this morning and found that 75% of my sps coral look as though thier polyps have been removed. you can see some color in some of the pieces however most of the pieces look almost white. the water also has what seems to be a haze to it.

As for my soft and lps they seem to be doing alright but a few of them are questionable.

Yesterday everything looked great as always then overnight this happens. I haven't done anything different lately and i dont know what to do.

The tank is 75 Gallons with a 15 gallons sump. i keep the salt at .024, temp stays at a steady 77, i have two 400 watt 20,000 k metal halides (i know its overkill but they have been doing great for the past 6 months with it). all the equipment is working great (skimmer, phosphate reactor, pumps and powerheads)

As for maintence, i do a 20 gallon water change every week with brightwell salt, i dose my tank accordingly.

I really am at a loss here and have no idea what happened. if anyone can offer any advice or information that would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[DopeCantWin]

Do you do anything with Kalkwasser?

 

[Jmar101786]

OOO also forgot to mention, some of my corals (few sps still "OK" and some LPS ) have some stringly slime coming off them.

 

[Jmar101786]

to be honest i dont know what a kalkwasser is, i dose with an A/B dose from brightwell

 

[jarrett shark]

I would do a 30-40% water change to be safe b/c sounds like something was added or something is wrong

 

[Jmar101786]

should i consider these pieces dead and remove them from the tank? i'll try and get some pics up.

 

[DopeCantWin]

Do you know what your pH is?

 

[Jmar101786]

Here are some pics

 

[Jmar101786]

2 more i took

 

[Jmar101786]

I am going to take a sample and bring it to my LFS because i dont trust my test kits. however regardless i'll be doing a 30 Gal water change before i go.

After looking at the pics do you think these pieces are done ?

 

[Jmar101786]

Those pics are only of some of the pieces, i have a total of maybe 18 pieces and 12 of them resemble those symptoms

 

[Norwood IND]

What are your parameters? Did you recently change something or add a new coral???

 

[jp634]

I have had the same thing happen to me. I just left them alone and 6months later they started growing still trying to figure it out.

 

[rtbm]

Probably wouldn't hurt to run some carbon along with the water changes. Not a whole lot more you can or should do at the risk of stressing them out even more. They dont look too bad for the most part. Very much still alive so thats a good thing.

Maybe take a look at your heaters to see if they are all intact.

 

[Jmar101786]

OK so the parameters are as follows:

Salt - .024
Phosphate - Undetectable
Ammonia - Undetectable
Nitrate - Undetecctable
Nitrite - Undetectable
PH 8.4
Alk - 8.5 DKH
Calcium - 375 ppm
Magnesium - 1170 ppm

 

[Jmar101786]

The owner of the store had said to check the equipment that maybe the tank has electrical current running through it. He also advised that if the corals have cavities where the polyps should be that i should remove them from the tank (not sure what to do here as I’m getting mixed opinions)

After the water change and a few hours of the lights being on the LPS have yet to open and my zoas are closed. I'm scratching my head here and have no idea what to do at this point.

All my equipment seems to be fine so i don’t think there is an electrical current going on.


I know and understand that doing too much is not a good thing but I fear that if I dont do enough tomorrow morning will be worse than this morning.

 

[allsps40]

Your mag and your ca is low. You want mag at 1350 ideally and ca from 400-450. Keeping things stable is key to sps success. So those 2 things are for sure a problem. Looking at the pics it looks like something is annoying your corals. The LPS in the last set of pics is letting its stomach out, this is almost always a sign of irritation. The sps in the pics it is hard to tell what is going on but they are not happy for sure. It looks to me like they are light shocked but you said you had been fine with your 400w MH unless you changed your bulbs recently. The other thing I am suspect of is alk burn, have you added any alk in large amounts? If so are you trying to fix a low alk or ph problem? If so mag is directly related to ca and alk levels and stability. Seeing your ca and mag that low I would suspect you would be having alk issues. Correct mag and ca and alk will balance out and stabilize. If you had stray current going through the tank then your fish would be acting weird as well. Yes you dont want to change anything to fast or change a bunch of things at once, nothing in reefing happens fast. Slow and steady with any changes. Oh and kalkwasser/kalk/lime/lime water/pickling lime is a ca and alk supplement for reef tanks, well thats what we use it for anyways. It is also used for pickling foods. It is commonly used in an ATO system to replace evap water and add ca and alk all at once. I use kalk to dose ca and alk IMO it is the best way to dose. It also as the added benefit of adding mag as well, as it also contains some magnesium. I hope this info helps you out. I hope you figure out what is going on. It took me awhile to find out what was happening to my corals when I had some issues.

 

[Jmar101786]

I realize that certain things are a little low, however i have a hard time understanding how those things being low could cause my SPS to do this in just 12 hours

 

[dentdominator]

My personal experience with sps releasing stringy filaments was a cause of phosphates higher than 0.03 ppm. Check phosphates digitally with a hanna meter or the Milwaukee digital meter for better accuracy. Nitrate could also be a concern.

 

[allsps40]

Your mag is more than a little low IMO. having low ca and mag throws the chemistry out of balance. Stability is key for sps.