I have been having some trouble with SPS and trying to narrow down the cause.
It all started about a year ago when my Hydnophora started to recede. It turned out my nitrates had spiked pretty high to around 65. I have been working to bring them down and they have finally reached about 2. The Hydnophora has slowly started to return.
While I was lowering the nitrates I lost a staghorn that was huge, and hadn't seemed to mind the high nitrates. The tissue basically just started to disappear from it until there was nothing left. During the same time I had an Encinata that didn't really grow much, but was fine until very recently it died.
In the past couple of weeks my montipora started growing a lot again, the Hyndophora started to come back slowly, a purple stylo seems to be growing well and a pink birdsnest seems to be doing mostly well.
I bought a captive bred "raspberry lemonade" because they are supposed to be similar in requirement to stylo's I read. It has basically started to die in a little over a week.
I am running NO3PO4X to keep the nitrates down. I have a very large RBTA, and a rock that has exploded with a bunch of large hairy mushrooms. Is it possible the mushrooms are causing some problem with the SPS? Another change I made around the time the first two corals started to go die was, moved from two constant Hydora powerheads to a sort of tidal simulation with two tunze 6095. I used to run carbon 24/7, but it seems to have been interfering with the NO3PO4X. Also a bunch of those corals were already dead before I stopped using the carbon.
Stats are as follows:
SG 1.025 currently, I usually have it at 1.026
PH 8.2-8.3
Temp: controller says 78.5 other thermometers say 80ish
As of last night (also pretty typical)
ALK 10
Cal 480
MG 1300
NO3 ~2
PO4 ~.1
I am running an AquaticLife LED XS fixture on a mid depth program at about 70% This hasn't changed since I setup the aquarium.
It all started about a year ago when my Hydnophora started to recede. It turned out my nitrates had spiked pretty high to around 65. I have been working to bring them down and they have finally reached about 2. The Hydnophora has slowly started to return.
While I was lowering the nitrates I lost a staghorn that was huge, and hadn't seemed to mind the high nitrates. The tissue basically just started to disappear from it until there was nothing left. During the same time I had an Encinata that didn't really grow much, but was fine until very recently it died.
In the past couple of weeks my montipora started growing a lot again, the Hyndophora started to come back slowly, a purple stylo seems to be growing well and a pink birdsnest seems to be doing mostly well.
I bought a captive bred "raspberry lemonade" because they are supposed to be similar in requirement to stylo's I read. It has basically started to die in a little over a week.
I am running NO3PO4X to keep the nitrates down. I have a very large RBTA, and a rock that has exploded with a bunch of large hairy mushrooms. Is it possible the mushrooms are causing some problem with the SPS? Another change I made around the time the first two corals started to go die was, moved from two constant Hydora powerheads to a sort of tidal simulation with two tunze 6095. I used to run carbon 24/7, but it seems to have been interfering with the NO3PO4X. Also a bunch of those corals were already dead before I stopped using the carbon.
Stats are as follows:
SG 1.025 currently, I usually have it at 1.026
PH 8.2-8.3
Temp: controller says 78.5 other thermometers say 80ish
As of last night (also pretty typical)
ALK 10
Cal 480
MG 1300
NO3 ~2
PO4 ~.1
I am running an AquaticLife LED XS fixture on a mid depth program at about 70% This hasn't changed since I setup the aquarium.
