slowly receding LPS... thoughts?

Ken brought up a good point, we tend to leave our lps on the bottom of the tank directly on the sand bed, Sometime the corals and the live rocks cover most of the sand bed and detritus get collected below them. The tank will have raised level of nitrate and maybe even ammonia. This contribute to what people called old tank syndrome aka tank crash. Keep vacuuming those sand bed when you do your water change and your tank will be in a much better shape.

I have even gone as far a replacing some of the sand on a periodic basis to help the buffering characteristic of the sand.

That's why I like the open rocks structure :)
 
Stray Voltage

Stray Voltage

As far as stray voltage goes, I've found the easiest test kit is a hand with a small cut on it. Insert into sump. No tingle, no stray voltage. Yes, this is an extremely caveman approach. I also find it interesting how no cut, no tingle.


Well, I got to experience this test method this weekend, my submersible UV unit stopped working, unplugged it and pulled it out, and put it in the kitchen sink. I flushed some fresh water through it and plugged it in when some junk came out the other end. I touching it and the faucet, and felt a tingle where a hangnail was, and thought "were have I heard about this before?"
Grabbed a volt meter, and touched the wet case and the other end to the faucet, and viola, voltage.

Luckily, this was in my make up drum in the garage.
 
Way to be observant Guy. When I first felt a tingle (powerhead was at fault), I stuck my other hand in and nothing. So I'm squatting in front of my sump like a puzzled monkey sticking one hand in, tingle, then the other, no tingle. Then I noticed the tingling was coming from a small cut. There seems to need to be a break in the skin. Shrek finger / blisters from bristleworm spines is not a sufficient test.

It would be funny if the effect were more visual, say instead of a tingle, one's hair stood up. :lol:
 
Heh - two observations...

1. simply bringing the mag levels up to where they were supposed to be (rather than where I thought they were supposed to be!) has made a very noticeable difference in coloration - pretty cool how quickly the extra mag "took effect."

2. though my sand in the main tank gets stirred pretty regularly by me AND my yellow watchman goby, it finally dawned on me to "play around in the refugium" a bit (something I rarely do)... and I discovered that that sand was AWFULLY bad in terms of "build up." I have since cleaned it up - and added "clean refugium" to my list of periodic tasks to be done on iCal - and things are looking much better in my tank.

No signs of explosive growth yet, but the colors are more vibrant, and perhaps more importantly, the chalices that were receding are at least swollen out over the exposed skeleton again (and hopefully working on retaking that surface area).

Thanks again to everyone who offered up suggestions!
 
Reefbass, I'm having the same problem as the OP with chalices and acans and wasn't maintaining my sandbed because it was a sugar grain sand and I have a diamond goby. Over a week and a half I've removed the 2" display sandbed and the water was gray and didn't smell right. It hasn't helped yet I noticed another chalice started receding last night. The dipping seems to stop it at least for awhile. Tonight I will be removing the fuge sandbed. Do you or Elensius have any sps and were they affected? My sps are fine and I would think they would be more sensitive to water quality issues than the Lps. And some of the affected Lps were up in the rockwork not on the sandbed.
 
I lost two acro colonies that had previously been among my best specimens... and a third piece from the same parent was showing signs of dying off as well, but has since turned around. In addition, I lost a single head of candycane and a blasto, one of my chalices still doesn't look great, and some of my montis lost roughly 70% of their tissue (but the remaining tissue once again looks "as it should," so I am hopeful they will recover).

Since my "bad sand" was in the refugium rather than the main tank, none of my LPS sitting on the sand bed had problems - all of the affected pieces were attached to the rock work in the middle portion of the tank.

and, for whatever it is worth, most of my favia/favites seemed to thrive under the "ugly" conditions :)

I hope that helps!
 
My sps are in another tank but are part of the same water system. I believe they lost some color as a result of the lps tank's sandbed issues.

My faviids also did better overall than my chalices and acans.
 
question reef bass. how are you gravel vaccing your sand bed without losing sand? I have sugar and crushed aragonite mixture and everytime I try to gravel vac I just end up losing sand. Ive been going through these same issues and am confident I need to do better sandbed maintenance and raise mag levels. Thanks for all of the info guys!
 
Use a freshwater gravel vac and you can just control the flow by kinking the hose as the water and crud are siphoned up. That's what I do.
 
I don't use sugar sand. In your case I'd suggest more frequent stirrings of the sandbed, preferably with a filter sock catching detritus. When I stir my sandbed, I do like a square foot or so at a time and take it down to the bottom of the tank. I move frags over and then take out the next square foot. A fair amount of suspended debris is present in the water column afterwards, though it does not smell bad. And it is easily collected by my 100 micron filter sock.

I use an old school Python gravel vac. I don't try to finesse the flow like some compulsive reef keepers I know (Grant!). I plunge the enlarged end of the Python into the sand and pull it out relatively quickly. The vast majority of sand falls down out of the Python and the detritus disappears up the tubing. There is a tiny amount of sand loss, but such a small amount that after a year or so I don't really notice a difference in the overall depth of the bed.
 
I have found that if you angle the the piece your vacuuming with the sand falls to the side of the tube and back into the tank. I stick the vacuum in and when the sand starts to creep up I pull it out and lean it over and let the sand fall out.
 
Ok I see that now in the 6th post. Read this 2 weeks ago but skimmed it yesterday. I'm glad you seem to have figured out your cause. Reefbass that gives me some hope with my sps being ok I've read a lot of Lps receding threads and so far this matches my issues the best. My only other possibility is a bacterial infection hopefully with dips and better water quality will resolve it. There's a white slime around the receding edge. Personally I can deal with problems when I know why, but not knowing the cause is driving me up the wall. I removed the Fuge bed yesterday and it didn't smell that bad, but was really dirty. The only positive change so far is the zoas that were reaching are getting shorter and wider. I always though that was a light issue. Thanks guys. Pipebash I couldn't believe how dirty my sugar grain sandbed was, and the smell was not right. I removed it with a siphon and turkey baster. I wonder if how small the grains are make for less oxygen and was possibly creating some toxic gases that were slowly leaching out. Be careful when you disturb it. Even if its shallow.
 
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