SPS Coral bleaching from bottom - STN ?

[timvdb]

Just reading thru this interesting post and i think that you are missing one of the most important points in biology: all living animals need NPK. K has been totally forgotten from the equation by the aquarium hobby as a whole and you should try to supplement K and check the reaction of your corals as suggested in the attached article.

http://www.burgerszoo.eu/media/108815/chapter 16.pdf

Summary is that there is a large consumption of potassium in a reeftank and that is not properly measured (it is impossible with the currently available test kits to have a precise measurements as they all depend on dillution of 10x+ which grealty impact the precision of the results).

I would suggest that you add a good wallop of potassium supplement to your tank and check the results in terms of PE, colours and slow down/ improvement of the STN. The article suggests to add 50mg/l which i think is too much. Start with 1/10th of that.

Good luck!


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[gig]

I've been dosing brightwell's potassion for a few months now, seems to have good results and I've heard it helps with the blue colored corals as well (to keep blue).

 

[gig]

I would suggest that you add a good wallop of potassium supplement to your tank and check the results in terms of PE, colours and slow down/ improvement of the STN. The article suggests to add 50mg/l which i think is too much. Start with 1/10th of that.

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would caution that a "good wallop" of anything for a reef is a bad idea!

but your latter statement make sense, start small, build up if necessary.

 

[BradR]

Going to try a refugium and lessen carbon dosing/GFO. And so we come full circle...

 

[Scoobysnack77]

I think GFO is the problem. My SPS started to STN when I added too much GFO.

Im starting to think gfo is the problem too. i recently added a bit extra in my reactor as my phosphates rose to about .08. after i did that ALL of my acros started bleaching from the base. i took my gfo/carbon offline for a few days and its still progressing. all of my parameters are perfect. I'm not sure what else to do but I'm loosing some very gorgeous acros at the moment so I'm quite sad I've done 2 large water changes as well along with removing half my chaeto and denitrate stones to try to get my nitrates to show up on my tests because its currently undetectable. my phosphates are .03 at the moment and I'm just going to use water changes to keep it down for a bit because i have a funny feeling that gfo/carbon strips the water column of trace elements if used in high amounts. ill let you know if things get better

 

[DavidinGA]

Thread resurrection.....


I'm now running into the same issue where sps are randomly and very slowly dying from the base up

 

[markalot]

First check would be a clear macro shots with a camera to make sure you don't have AEFW.

 

[chgoblknazn]

I've been dealing with this for the last few months. I noticed that one of my Stylos was looking dead toward the bottom. I assumed it was because the branches were shading the lower parts of the mini-colony. I didn't really think anything of it until it began starting on another coral...and then another.

The loss of polyps is very slow so I didn't panic but I was beginning to become concerned. A couple month ago several others began to show the same loss and many of my corals were losing color and browning out. My Calcium and Alkalinity were perfect. My Phosphates were not great but not at a crazy level. I bought new reagents and new salt. Nothing changed.

I then decided to take the BRS GFO and the BRS Carbon offline. The tissue loss stopped and in a few weeks the color has come back on many of my corals. My GARF Bonsai went from brown to purple and my Tyree Pink Lemonade went from white to brightish green again. The top of my Cali Tort was gone but there is new growth already growing over the exposed skeleton. My Millies didn't seem stressed but I am not seeing better PE.

I'm attributing the issues with running GFO and Carbon. I don't know which one was causing the issue but I think it might have been the Carbon. I took the GFO offline a couple weeks before I stopped running carbon and during the couple weeks the loss was still occurring and the corals were still brown.

I want to run each one again separately to test but I am scared to give either a try. My system is small so I only ran small amounts. I'm glad I only lost 2-3 frags. The other corals are recovering including a couple that shed half of their skin. I got serious about this when my ORA Pearlberry began to show loss. It began losing skin FAST. I thought it was a goner but I can see live skin under the blues. This was very frustrating to deal with.