Slow Painful Crash...

[MHG]

You mentioned the salinity is 35, do you mean 1.035?

No I mean 35 ppt = 1.0264

 

[Haleyf1024]

Ah, that makes sense now!

 

[MHG]

I find it easier to read the right side...

 

[rovster]

Wow, I had such a similar experience. I had a crash that I attributed to a bacterial bloom. Before the crash everything looked great except my GSP. Very curious!

I did end up getting a full blown bacterial bloom with cloudy water and lost 90% of acros. Now I'm post crash and after things were starting to look great things are getting iffy again. All my levels look great. My hammer is irritated and mostly closed but my zoas and palys look amazing, something strange for me because I've never had them thrive for me. I am noticing some burnt tips and maybe some base recession. I do notice the acros have a greyish lackluster look to them despite looking great a month ago. I did start prodibio 2 weeks ago in an attempt to stabilize my bacterial population given the recent history.

I do find it rather interesting that we shared a lot of the same symptoms down to the specific corals.

My alk is around 8.5 and I'm slowly bringing it down to 7.5. Nitrates are indetectible and phos ranges from 0.04-0.05. Not ULNS by any stretch but not a dirty tank either. No algae but some cyano and brown snot, maybe a not so terrible strain of Dino?

Anyway thought I would share my experience. Hope you are on the up and up.

 

[MHG]

Well I have been vacuuming the travel, removed 90% of the rock. Then re aquascaped. Dosing prodibio again to get some bacterial diversity. Copps across is still growing like a weed. Added a couple of cheap frags to see what happens.

 

[MHG]

Still looking good. Added a frag of forest fire digi... Getting some diatoms after about a week but every time I vacuum the gravel it seems to take longer to come back and less of it. So I am hoping focusing on the gravel more is helping...

 

[MHG]

Woo hoo.... Alk consumption is increasing....

 

[Phildirt]

This has been a good read. Thanks for the up dates. So many threads just drop off with nothing further.

 

[MHG]

Found this in my salt water mixing tank...same tank used for frag system and more water changes helped my DT so I doubt it was the cause...

 

[MHG]

Ordered my Triton test today.... Lets see whats hiding in the water. although the tank is looking good lately... But before I go investing more of my sps frags in there from my FT, I need to know...

 

[MHG]

The triton results are in... Only TIN is elevated. Looking for a source. PVC piping? Food? I may have already found it in a corroded pump magnet in my mixing barrel. I will probably run this again in a few months to see if it goes up... at $50 a pop. its a pretty penny to do it regularly...