So fustrated about to give up on corals in general. Please save me

[Mjrjj23]

Hey everyone. Im getting to the point to where I no longer want to purchase and kill corals and I have no clue what to do. Every single SPS I have STN's. Now one of my chalices is loseing tissue. Maze coral lost tissue, few favias lost tissue. No bleaching just loseing tissue starting on edges moving inwards. Heres my params tank is almost a year old 120gal 48x24x24

Salinity 1.026
Ph 7.95- 8.10 24hr period
Alk 9.4-9.9 steady for last 2 months
Cal 440ish steady
Mag 1350 steady
No3 1-2ppm red sea pro
P04 0-.03 hanna
B ionic 4 stage salt mix.
All salifert test kits. Usually check ALK with Hanna also and always get within .2-.4 from the salifert

All these levels have been stable for awhile and nothing is helping. I have top notch equipment and spare no expense which is making this more fustrating. Equipment as follows
Ecotech m1 reurn pump
Filter socks in eschoppe sump changed every few days as needed
Apex controller. Temp 78.5-79.5 deg.... 3 150watt jagers
Apex WAV set on mavericks ramping up and down from 55-75%
A jabeo rw15 towards bottom to help
Apex DOS and DDR dosing bionic. 10ml of each through out day
Hydor 505 recirc skimmer just installed thinking my eschopps 150 snow cone wasnt big enough
BRS GAC using BRS ROX carbon
120 pounds reef saver rock
60 pounds live sand
Tunze ATO
Brs 5 stage RODI. Changed carbon and blocks several times thinking maybe they where spent already
Kessil A360WEs.
ATI 48" 8 bulb fixture 2bulbs from 11am-730pm all eight from 130pm-430pm.... purchased this few months ago thinking my kessils werent enough. Now I just use kessils as supplemental from 10am-830pm never exceeding 15% intensity
Apex PAR meter 1100 AM - 130pm Par 70 130pm to 430pm par 280-295 430pm- 730pm back down to Par 70... All from dead center of tank.
Dose NOPOX 8ml daily... was running gfo due to cyno and some algae but told by LFS could be stripping water to much. Took gfo off line and run nopox and all algae seems gone. Clean front glass once every 5 days or so.
Checked stray voltage and none,
Just installed co2 scrubber to bump up Ph even though lowest ive got was 7.93. My stocking list as follows
2 peppermints
1 fire shrimp
Random snails and hermits (turbo, nass,astrea, bumblebee, scarlet crabs, No destructive or possibly destructive hermits etc etc
1 tuxedo urchin
1 short spin urchin
1 brittle star
Pistol shrimp and goby pair
2 ora golden basselets
2 kamaroha blemnies
2 dispar anthias
1 sunset anthia
2 azure damsels
1 red solon wrasse
1 ora snowflake clown
1 hippo tang
Trio bellus angels 2 fem 1 male
Feed twice daily mix of LRS reef frency,RE mysis, fish egg (cant remember brand), RE calamasurs (spelling), Thera A pellets. Usually a mix of 3 of those and changed it up.

Only corals I cant kill are a rock filled with gsp and paly/zoas I purchased, have few other paly and zoa frags, tracy morgonian gorgonian that has been thriving, 2 acans that always are open and look good, a hammer coral thats healthy but hasnt grown, and a white pulsing xenia thats doing great. Ive succesfully killed thousands in SPS from battlecorals, unique corals, LFS, from porites, digitatas, millies, favites, and Im just so fustrated and lost I dont know what to do... Im scared to bump up my alk with a little more nutrients cause ive heard bad things about high alk and carbon dosing, Im scared to lower Alk to NSW in fear of losing my acans and lps/softies (understand they like high alk better) I have no signs of pests. Had water tested from AWT and all good except a lil high on the silica which could explain some diatoms on sand bed.. please help I dont no what to do an I have no issue with spending money as you can see but I cant keep losing everything

 

[Mjrjj23]

StN

 

[Mjrjj23]

Was almost gone but this one actully recovering some

 

[Mjrjj23]

Tired of death

 

[Cyberdude]

Was in the same boat for years. Started dosing aquaforest component 1-2-3 and everything is growing like weeds. I am willing to bet your trace elements are depleted.

 

[Zacktosterone]

that alk is super high.... i'm thinking you should stop dosing some stuff until things are under control and just do water changes.... but be sure to check your water of course.

 

[Mjrjj23]

I dose kz coral booster a couple times a week and also reef energy a and b from time to time. Guess that would fall under food though. Ill look into trace elements. Ill try anything at this point

 

[Mjrjj23]

that alk is super high.... i'm thinking you should stop dosing some stuff until things are under control and just do water changes.... but be sure to check your water of course.

9.4dkh is super high? Figured that was a pretty middle of the road number... i have dropped my doseing down to 6ml a day to let it come down slowly. Im gonna go for ~8 dkh just worried about my softies and lps

 

[Mjrjj23]

Also was doing 25 gal water changes weekly but changed to biweekly thinking I was causeing problems with to frequent of changes

 

[GSMclowns]

You have a very good system here.
First of all, most new reefers try to do too many things at once. There is nothing wrong with that but if something goes wrong, it is very hard to figure out the reasons.

So lets start with your light.
8 bulbs ATI sunpower is more than enough light, so take out the LED for now. All 8 bulbs should be all ON for at least 6 hours a day. So for now, keep it simple. Turn all ON for 6-8 hours and keep it there.

ALK, CAL and MAG
The most important thing is ALK, so keep your around 9 which is what you already have. So just keep it stable like that. Cal isn't too important. Anything above 380 is good. Don't let it go up too much above 450 or your pumps will clog a lot faster. If it goes up too high by accident, no harm is done. just let it go down normally by not dosing anymore. MAG is of no important right now if you change water regularly. Don't need to test for it or even dose anything for it. Keep it simple.

PH: Unless your house is air tight in the winter or you are using a Calcium reactor, you don't need to worry about PH. Leave it alone. A little bit up and down during the day and night won't kill your corals. So don't try to manipulate it or control it.

The most difficult issue to address here is the nutrient export.
If you don't run GFO and NOPOX, then your tank will be over run with algae. But if you run GFO and NOPOX, then you run into the risk of stripping too much nutrient from the water and this could kill your corals. So take a step back and only run those things at minimal. I don't run NOPOX, so I can't comment on it.. But for GFO, I only run 1/2 cups of regular Bulkreefsupply GFO in a reactor and change it out every week and I have the same tank 120 gallons full of sps (4'x22x2' dimensions). You mentioned that you run GFO but you didn't say how much you are running and how often you change them out.

Carbon: Too much carbon and run too fast will kill your corals.. Carbon isn't really needed. So as a test, turn off carbon for now.

Is there a local club that you can join?
Join the club and make some friends. Ask the more experiences reefer to look at the system for you. It is alot easier to help if they can see the system.

One of the problem is bad rocks. If your rocks leak phosphate, it will make it alot harder for you to battle algae and grow SPS. The line between running enough GFO to control the algae and running too much that strip the water clean is very small. So you could be crossing that line and kill the corals without knowing it.

 

[Mjrjj23]

I will make the light changes accordingly... with the gfo I took i off line due to thinking i was stripping everything. It did a wonderful job and getting rid of the cyano and some brown algae. I only dose 8ml of nopox which is a fairly small dose for our tank size. When I was running gfo I was at less tham half dose. Think I wS running like a 1/3 cup because I read to build slow. I ran gfo through 2 changes bi weekly to not be to aggresive. Basically I ran gfo for a month with 1 change half way through then took off line. Carbon I run I believe 3/4 cup through my return pump. Ill also turn my carbon reactor off. One thing I will add is I never set up a qt for coral. I recently purchased all that equipment so my next coral purchase will go through 6-8 week qt. I qtd my fish but purchased corals from high end places so wasnt to concerned about pests which is terrible but I didnt even learn of qting coral till recently. Never seen a sign of pest damage btw. One question. Shoulf I just go straight to 6hr light or cut of kessils and manipulate the ati slowly. Guess I dont have really anything left to kill lol

 

[Mjrjj23]

Also I have BRS reefsaver rock so I didnt think leaching phosphates would be much a problem since it dodnt come from the ocean

 

[75mixedreef]

You can drop lighting as much as you want, though in increments is not bad either. You just don't want to raise it quickly.

I don't think reefsaver rock is immune to leeching phosphates. I think it can be stored in the ground for a long time and released into your tank, but I'm not an expert on that. It seems like you have run quite a bit of carbon, try running without it and see if there is any difference.

Xenia can be quite toxic to other corals so it would not hurt to remove it. It also soaks in food and nutrients like a sponge so it can act like a weed and choke other corals out. In any tank with SPS I would be very choosy about which softies you put in there.

 

[Mjrjj23]

Taking my carbon off line the second I get home from work. Did some lighting adjustments while at work thanks to Apex. Lower my nopox to 6ml and see how things go. I certainly appreciate all the advice

 

[IceFire5]

Sad to hear your loses in sps, my thought after read through your post , your lps and softies are doing well, where this are not so demanding corals. But when come to sps, they need lower nutrients water and more light. Your basic reading of water parameter looks ok. How ever, becos you have dose and use others supplements or actitives , mean possible some others parameter are not measured and possible this area is giving you some problems. But before you do more test, back to basic .
1)Increase you light photo period at lease 6-9hrs.
2)Watch out the flow where you place your sps.
3)May use active carbon to absorb any toxic in your water.
4) have you check your Ro/di tds reading?
Monitor your current corals and parameter for next few weeks, if all soft corals and lps still doing fine, try a few easy sps frags like digitata , birdnest.


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[Mjrjj23]

Sad to hear your loses in sps, my thought after read through your post , your lps and softies are doing well, where this are not so demanding corals. But when come to sps, they need lower nutrients water and more light. Your basic reading of water parameter looks ok. How ever, becos you have dose and use others supplements or actitives , mean possible some others parameter are not measured and possible this area is giving you some problems. But before you do more test, back to basic .
1)Increase you light photo period at lease 6-9hrs.
2)Watch out the flow where you place your sps.
3)May use active carbon to absorb any toxic in your water.
4) have you check your Ro/di tds reading?
Monitor your current corals and parameter for next few weeks, if all soft corals and lps still doing fine, try a few easy sps frags like digitata , birdnest.


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Ive thought about flow but i have losses all over the tank, different heights, different areas all over so I cant imagine flow would be an issue. Im removing all forms of media and filtration other than the skimmer. If I go with carbon anytime soon ill toss some in a bag. I e always got zero tds on my rodi according to my meter. My last change will be my water containers, there blue barrels but rated food and water safe, never got a bad reading using them

 

[IceFire5]

In this case, it will down to trace elements and lighting.


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[Cyberdude]

Try 4x50% water changes daily. If it springs back to life. You have an imbalance issue likely related to trace elements.

 

[Voodoojar]

Any chance you could have other contaminants in there like a rusty piece of metal or maybeyour GFO reactor was turned on too high and shot FO all over your tank? Just a thought

Because if your parameters are what you say they are I dont see how all your coral could be so messed up?

 

[crawlerman]

How about your refractometer? I've seen a few people have these hard to detect problems then find out their salinity was way off. Water chemistry and equipment seem on point, so maybe something like that or contaminant.