Reeferhead's 150DD Build

Losing Acros :(

Losing Acros :(

Not sure if I should blame it on NTS, unstable Ca and ALK, or something else but during the past few weeks I've been starting to lose acros. Blue Tort was the first to go but now almost all my acros look affected. Everything else in the tank (clams, acans, etc) look great.

Its confusing me a bit as most of my acros really started to color up under the Radiums and looked really great for close to a month. The tissue loss is rather random, for some acros it starts at the tips, others the base, still others all over. However, I would still classify it as STN. Some corals I've tried to save by fragging but haven't been very successful. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears otherwise I'm going to chalk it up to NTS or perhaps my unbalanced Ca/Alk and wait until things settle before trying again.

Temp 78.0-79.5
Salinity 35 ppt
pH 7.95-8.15
Alk 8.5 (currently, I've been bringing it up from around 6.5 slowly over the last month)
Ca 465 (currently, bringing it down from 520)
Mg 1430
NO3 undetectable
PO4 undetectable
 
Unstable Ca/Alk would be my guess, what is causing these to swing, are you still dialing in your 2 part dosing? How have you been adjusting the levels, are you just adjusting the output from the dosing pumps?
 
smoothdog said:
Unstable Ca/Alk would be my guess, what is causing these to swing, are you still dialing in your 2 part dosing? How have you been adjusting the levels, are you just adjusting the output from the dosing pumps?
Click to expand...

I had it pretty stable initially but then I added a lot of recently fragged SPS all at once. I've been away from home a lot recently and didn't test and make adjustments as often as I should have. The dosing is done by peristaltic pumps that come on for a few minutes each hour. I make adjustments by changing the length of time each pump stays on for a given hour. For example, my calcium pumps for 4 minutes and 24 seconds every hour at 2.0mL a minute, so roughly 211mL/day

I'm still dialing it all in but there weren't really any huge spikes or drops to speak of. I had way worse in my old tank without nearly the loses I'm seeing here.
 
I remember you saying you had a nudi out break in the smaller tank, have you treated the new tank for any pests? Any chance there is a new pest (red bugs)?

I am with smooth and grabbing straws here, the only thing that really comes to mind is alk swings, but from the sound of it, your swings have not been big enough to cause the sps to die. Did you test your water at the lab for alk or just at home? May just need a new test kit.......

good luck, hope you figure it out!
 
Just read back through your post about losing the blue tort first, that was the first coral in my tank that would always show signs of an alk swing and I did finally loose the whole coral when the ca reactor was down for a couple days and I didn't catch it. The tort was fine (not dead any way) until a week or so after the reactor was going again, I went from around 7 or so alk to 9.5 in that same time frame.
 
smoothdog said:
Stray voltage? Any chance your auto water change system is causing fluctuations? Just grasping at straws here.
Click to expand...

Stay voltage is possible but I haven't added anything electrical since I started the tank and everything looked so good for the first month. Logik brought this up last week so I added a grounding probe but I haven't checked with a voltmeter yet. The salinity has stayed very stable since adding the auto water changer.

kraash said:
I remember you saying you had a nudi out break in the smaller tank, have you treated the new tank for any pests? Any chance there is a new pest (red bugs)?

I am with smooth and grabbing straws here, the only thing that really comes to mind is alk swings, but from the sound of it, your swings have not been big enough to cause the sps to die. Did you test your water at the lab for alk or just at home? May just need a new test kit.......

good luck, hope you figure it out!
Click to expand...

The tank has remained fallow of all montis and porites upon startup. I haven't had redbugs for several years and have been searching hardcore with my nanoscope but haven't found anything.

I still haven't taken a sample to the lab. I've been out of the office for the last month teaching a class for the Guard but I go back to work next week so I may bring a sample with me. I've been using a Elos kit and its always been reliable for me.

kraash said:
Just read back through your post about losing the blue tort first, that was the first coral in my tank that would always show signs of an alk swing and I did finally loose the whole coral when the ca reactor was down for a couple days and I didn't catch it. The tort was fine (not dead any way) until a week or so after the reactor was going again, I went from around 7 or so alk to 9.5 in that same time frame.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on this. It may be the mild alk swing combined with the new tank parameters trying to settle in, and a bunch of acros that were all fragged up and still trying to recover.

chadfarmer said:
sps can react to change after a few weeks making u grasp at straws
Click to expand...

Don't I know it :rolleyes:


Thanks for all your help guys! All great input
 
I'm still losing acros. I changed out my GFO last week and the old GFO was a solid brick. This leads me to believe that there was an Alk or Calcium spike that went unnoticed during my infrequent testing. I've also noticed that my Alk drops a fair bit in the days following a GFO swap, which is normal I guess but I was really hoping it would stay more stable than it is. Additionally, I have a frag of blue millipora in my sump which is doing great despite the mother colony dying off in the main tank which suggests to me that perhaps my lighting in the main tank is the cause, bad bulb? spectrum shift? I don't know.

On a positive side, the mystery wrasse I got from captainflyingfishguts came out of quarantine last week and is doing great. My red velvet fairy wrasse still chases him from time to time but he's eating and holding up fine. Its kinda cool to see the fairy wrasse when he gets POed as it flairs out and shows some amazing color. With the mystery wrasse out of QT I couldn't pass up a powder blue tang I saw at AT on Sunday. They had him for about three weeks, its absolutely stunning, and eats like a pig. Its about the same size as my sailfin so it will be interesting to see how they get along when I transfer it in about a month or so.
 
Oh yeah, One last update...

So a couple nights ago I came home and the tank looked slightly cloudy. Then I noticed all of these little bright red tentacle things everywhere in the display. It took me a few minutes to figure out what they were before turning on the light to my frag tank (in the sump). Sure enough my pair of clowns were homeless. The RBTA had climbed over the frag tank's weir and crawled all the way through the sump to position itself right in front of the main return pump. It wasn't completely destroyed but almost every tentacle had been sucked into the pump. Essentially all that remained was the foot, clinging to the wall of the sump, which is now fertilizing my lawn. :(
 
Didn't you take par readings when you set the tank up? How did they compare to the old tank? Might be worth measuring again and comparing to your sump lighting since water parameters obviously can't be different.
 
PAR is very similiar. When placing corals in the display I tried to match them to the PAR they were under in the last tank. All SPS sit under 250-700 PAR However, PAR is just part of the lighting story. I'm sure the spectrum is different from the old tank. I'm really just throwing the lighting issue out there as part of my thought process. I think Alk swings are the primary suspect. We'll see because I'm not changing anything other than testing and adjusting my Alk, Ca, and Mg very carefully.
 
I cleaned out all the dead SPS last night. I'm down to just three acros now and they all look horrible: slight STN and zero PE. My frogspawn doesn't look too hot either. All my parameters are spot on and everything else in the tank (fish, clams, acans, etc) all look great.

Sal: 35.6 (probe) 35 (refractometer)
Alk: 8.5 (Elos) 8.12 (Lamotte)
Ca: 430 (Salifert)
Mg: 1340 (Salifert)
N03: undetectable (Lamotte)
PO4: undetectable (Hanna meter)
 
Reeferhead said:
I cleaned out all the dead SPS last night. I'm down to just three acros now and they all look horrible: slight STN and zero PE. My frogspawn doesn't look too hot either. All my parameters are spot on and everything else in the tank (fish, clams, acans, etc) all look great.

Sal: 35.6 (probe) 35 (refractometer)
Alk: 8.5 (Elos) 8.12 (Lamotte)
Ca: 430 (Salifert)
Mg: 1340 (Salifert)
N03: undetectable (Lamotte)
PO4: undetectable (Hanna meter)
Click to expand...



is salinity really 35
 
yeah... so.. the SPS in the frag tank are dying now too, so lighting is probably not a factor. I guess on a positive note, at least I'll have a nice clean slate to start from. :(
 
Those anemone's are pretty to look at but they can be a menace. I had a GBTA that got banished to my fuge for moving towards one of my PH's. In the fuge it decided to raise even more hell and plugged up my return and overflowing the fuge.

He was banished to the landfill.
 
Yeah it sucks. I had that nem for 5-6 years in the old tank and it never came close to the overflow or vortechs.
 
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