SPS corals dieing, can you help me solve this multivariable problem?

[Taqpol]

I've been trying everything I can do to rectify this situation on my own, but I've finally come to the conclusion that I definitely need some help. Unfortunately, so many things have gone wrong over the past few months it has become increasingly difficult to pinpoint a single problem, or even the most pressing problem, for me to fix. Here's a brief run down on the system.

Display Tank: 220 gallons
Lighting: 120 Cree XR-E DIY LED Fixture. PAR Readings on this later.
Skimmer: SWC250A
Other filtration: Warner Marine EcoBAK pellets, Carbon (both in reactors)
Cal/Alk: Automated BRS two part dosing
Flow: 2x Vortech MP40's, 2x Tunze 6045's (~1000gph each), ReefFlo Dart

Stats as of 12/10/2010:
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm
Calcium: 440ppm (API)
Alk: 7.8 dKh (Red Sea Pro)
Magnesium: 1140ppm (Salifert)
Phosphate: 0ppm (Salifert)
pH: 8.23 APEX

Fish:
Blonde Naso Tang
Chevron Tang
Singapore Angel (Potential problem)
Carberryi Anthias
3x Chalk Bass
2x Randalli gobies
1x Tailspot Blenny


I know the large majority of this forum probably believes that the LED lighting is to blame for my coral losses, but with so many good LED lit SPS tanks (Sammy113's, for one) out there, I am inclined to look past any LED issues unless they are an issue that would pertain to my tank specifically.


Finally, here's what happened: I added my corals back to my tank at the very end of august once I got my DIY lights hung up. I had heard many stories of people bleaching their corals with LEDs by ramping up the light too fast or otherwise not using proper light acclimation techniques. My LEDs are dimmable (with a range of 0-255, 255 being full power) and after seeing the total PAR output at full power I decided to start my corals under half intensity. My corals had browned out a lot during their stay at a friends house until my tank was setup, but under the LED lights they started coloring up and encrusting. I increased the lights power by about 10 units a week until in the beginning of November I peaked out at 210/255. About halfway through this process I noticed that some corals were beginning to get very light in color. In the beginning of November, at the peak brightness, a large number of my SPS corals got burned tips and I found out that my Alk had slowly risen to over 10 dKh. I don't know if this counts as an Alk spike or not, but my corals definitely had the burned tips associated with high alk in a low nutrient system.

After the alk incident things started to really go down hill. I found red bugs on a colony of ORA tricolor, and instead of treating the tank (because of hard to catch shrimp) I dipped the coral for 1 hour in interceptor. So far I have not seen any more red bugs. On top of that though many corals started bleaching and losing flesh. As if things couldn't get worse, one of my heaters stopped working and I started getting day to night fluctuations of almost three degrees (78 to 75). Needless to say, my tank is not happy with me. Pictures next.

 

[Taqpol]

PAR readings from all five of my LED fixtures at full blast. Don't worry, that's not the actual color rendition:

Overall these numbers are definitely not spectacular, which is why I was surprised that I appeared to be getting such a drastic lightening/bleaching effect on some of my corals. My current theory is that optics do something to that light that intensifies it in a way that the apogee PAR meter I used cannot read. This might have something to do with the actual degrees of optics being measured in FWHM instead of what most people would think of as a trigonometry type of degrees.

ORA Plum Crazy:

This is what i mean by lightening. The base of this coral is encrusting extremely well and has a nice purple hue to it, but the branches are almost turning white between the polyps.


Here's a before shot of an Orange Monti Cap in my previous tank:

Heres the same Cap after the entire middle section bleached:

It was a hard picture to take because of the angle, but even before the alk spike this coral had lightened so much that it wasn't even orange and the middle died away. In the above shot you can see that algae has taken over the entire middle of the plate.

Old ORA Green birdsnest in the old tank. This coral grew a LOT while it was in holding for me:

Green Birdsnest in this tank before I had to frag it to pieces because it was losing so much flesh:

Here's a close up of the coral:

Zoomed in digitally for a really close look? Can you see anything wrong?

 

[Taqpol]

ORA Cali Tort in previous tank. Blue body with green polyps:

Same coral in this tank right before it completely RTNed:

I don't see any bite marks or pests...

Both the Green Birdsnest and the Cali Tort could have been exasperated by the picking behavior of a Singapore Angelfish I added to the tank in late September. I watched him nip the polyps of both of these corals before, but never enough to hurt them in the short term it seemed. For the last two or three weeks of the Cali Torts life I didn't even see any polyp extension.


The hardest hit of all my corals seem to be the Montiporas (plating or digitate). Heres a red Monti digi from the old tank with great color and polyp extension:

I don't have a picture of the same coral in the new tank, but it and all of my other monti digis have faded to the lightest of brown colors and have zero polyp extension.

I also noticed this on a Monti digi in my frag tank the other day and snapped a few pictures, but whatever was on the coral is completely gone now.

Zoom:

Is this some type of pest?

 

[Taqpol]

Based on these pictures and descriptions can anyone help me out? My best guess so far have been:

-Lighting too intense. I immediately cut the lighting back down to half intensity and shortened the photo period by one hour. This does seem to have stabilized things.

-Alk Spike. You can clearly see the burned tips in the Cali tort picture above.

-Temperature swings.

-Potential pest/disease.

Or any combination of the above. Am I missing something? Anything you guys would have me check?

 

[MammothReefer]

your mag is low, and verify your salinity. Make sure to calibrate your refractometer.

 

[huskysglare1]

sorry to hear about your problems. Changing carbon filter might improve things a bit. I don't think Alk around 10dk is high. Also, increase the amount of water change. Dim the light down, if you think it might be because of the lights. If you still have the old fixture, use it. That's all i can think of.

 

[overklok]

I have this exact same problem!! Your pictures look like what is going on in my reef. I run Aqua Illumination Sol Blue LEDs. This has nothing to do with the LEDs. It is the due to the alkalinity spike you experienced. The white thread-like strings you see on the montipora are mesentery filaments, definitely have seen this scenario. The corals are irritated and this is one of the stress mechanisms they use. What will happen next is all of the SPS corals that were affected by this will slowly wither away and die. Seems like faster growing corals are affected the most by this, bali-tri colors and fast growing montiporas really show the affects quicker than other SPS, but all the SPS will succumb to this and die off. I assume that the SPS corals higher in the water column were affected the most? LPS don't seem as affected but they don't like it either. You need to keep kh in the 7-8 range with ULNS, at least that is what I have been reading. Right now my kh is at 9.0 and drops about .3 every day, so by next week I should be in the sweet spot.

BTW I know this is an alkalinity issue because it affected two aquariums attached to the same water system, one running AI's, the other running a Solaris I-5 setup that had not changed parameters in many months. It was showing great growth prior to the alkalinity spike, everthing went downhill, the only SPS to survive was a Bali green slimer, (they are tough!!).

 

[krazysps]

Looks like a classic case of alk swings to me. sorry about your losses.

 

[Chrisrush]

Alk swings is probably.

Also, perhaps all the changes in tanks since you left WA might be part of the culprit. Don't see any pests, as all of your corals are affected.

Do you have any non-SPS corals? How are they doing? If they are unaffected, then it probably isn't the light.

 

[crvz]

I was also thinking an alkalinity burn, or some sort of inconsistency in that area. Do you have a history of alk levels going back for the past few weeks/months?

 

[Allmost]

have you double checked the flow ? any power heads clogged ?

I would check flow, and do a couple of larger water changes (15% range ? ) and replace the GAC, 1-2 days apart. I would run GAC in 2 different bags, and replace one bag every 1-2 weeks.

big water changes will get the toxic out, and get your alk.CA++ /.mg back in range and test to recalibrate your dosing

make sure you skimm super wet to get all the proteins released from RTNed SPS out.

good luck

 

[Taqpol]

your mag is low, and verify your salinity. Make sure to calibrate your refractometer.

I've been trying to get the Mag up with the BRS mag solution, I'll make up a new bottle tonight.

sorry to hear about your problems. Changing carbon filter might improve things a bit. I don't think Alk around 10dk is high. Also, increase the amount of water change. Dim the light down, if you think it might be because of the lights. If you still have the old fixture, use it. That's all i can think of.

I change my carbon in the reactor every two weeks, but it is time to change it anyways. I dimmed the lights right before Thanksgiving, but the corals that were already bad continued to fade.

I have this exact same problem!! Your pictures look like what is going on in my reef. I run Aqua Illumination Sol Blue LEDs. This has nothing to do with the LEDs. It is the due to the alkalinity spike you experienced. The white thread-like strings you see on the montipora are mesentery filaments, definitely have seen this scenario. The corals are irritated and this is one of the stress mechanisms they use. What will happen next is all of the SPS corals that were affected by this will slowly wither away and die. Seems like faster growing corals are affected the most by this, bali-tri colors and fast growing montiporas really show the affects quicker than other SPS, but all the SPS will succumb to this and die off. I assume that the SPS corals higher in the water column were affected the most? LPS don't seem as affected but they don't like it either. You need to keep kh in the 7-8 range with ULNS, at least that is what I have been reading. Right now my kh is at 9.0 and drops about .3 every day, so by next week I should be in the sweet spot.

BTW I know this is an alkalinity issue because it affected two aquariums attached to the same water system, one running AI's, the other running a Solaris I-5 setup that had not changed parameters in many months. It was showing great growth prior to the alkalinity spike, everthing went downhill, the only SPS to survive was a Bali green slimer, (they are tough!!).

Good to know someone else has experienced similar issues in a similar sounding tank. I knew Alk swings could burn corals, but I didn't think a slow rise from 8 to 10 dKh constituted a true swing.

have you double checked the flow ? any power heads clogged ?

I would check flow, and do a couple of larger water changes (15% range ? ) and replace the GAC, 1-2 days apart. I would run GAC in 2 different bags, and replace one bag every 1-2 weeks.

big water changes will get the toxic out, and get your alk.CA++ /.mg back in range and test to recalibrate your dosing

make sure you skimm super wet to get all the proteins released from RTNed SPS out.

good luck

Flow appears good, though it is probably about time to clean the coraline off of my vortechs. I definitely don't think my return pump is good enough long term. With all the head pressure, running my manifold, and feeding a frag tank my poor little Dart seems to only be getting about 500gph to the tank. Not really amazing turnover but its been like that since August.

I plan on upgrading to a ReefFlo Hammerhead when I can find the free funds.

 

[Taqpol]

Looks like a classic case of alk swings to me. sorry about your losses.

Alk swings is probably.

Also, perhaps all the changes in tanks since you left WA might be part of the culprit. Don't see any pests, as all of your corals are affected.

Do you have any non-SPS corals? How are they doing? If they are unaffected, then it probably isn't the light.

I was also thinking an alkalinity burn, or some sort of inconsistency in that area. Do you have a history of alk levels going back for the past few weeks/months?

Crvz and everyone else., I have the excel spreadsheet at home that I updated weekly but nothing here. For over a month I saw it slowly rise from 8 to 8.5 to 9 to 9.5. When I really noticed burned tips on some corals I checked Alk again to find that it was over 10 dKh but less then 11 dKh, which was the best resolution I had with my old API test kit. Since then I have gotten it back down to 7.8-8 dkH.

Could this small of a change, and a relatively slow change, cause a true alk spike that would kill corals? Does it make more sense that the alk was the tipping point coupled with all the other problems I had above?

 

[StarF]

get a prober testkit for po4.. it looks liek the truble i had some years ago. Try one of the new hanna meters, i am pretty sure u got more po4 than 0..

the alk swing also is one of the isues here, and get your mg back to 1350 or so..

the temp shouldent be that big of a deal, but when a system is stressed even small things can make it tip, and go from bad to worse.

to sum it up:
get a prober test for po4 (hanne meter or rowa)
double and triple check your salt level
get your kh stable again, and slowly bring it down.

i am pretty sure your main problem is po4 though.

 

[ackerman]

Im having the exact same problem. A few corals rtn'd, birdsnests look like crap and green monti cap and monti digis have bleached and look half dead. I tested my po4 and it ended up being at .374. Ive slowly been lowering it and started vodka dosing over the last month.

So far everything is looking way better and my digis and green cap are starting to color back up and grow some new tissue.

 

[StarF]

Im having the exact same problem. A few corals rtn'd, birdsnests look like crap and green monti cap and monti digis have bleached and look half dead. I tested my po4 and it ended up being at .374. Ive slowly been lowering it and started vodka dosing over the last month.

So far everything is looking way better and my digis and green cap are starting to color back up and grow some new tissue.

usaly when running pure sps, people are running some kind of po4 remover, like rowa, gfo and so on. pure vodka / vvs wont do it alone. Ofcource this also depens on your bio load

 

[krazysps]

Could be the pellets also. Pellets make your alk drop, those 2 combined is probably the majority of the problem. How long has all this been up and running?

 

[john rochon]

very strange, almost looks like a cycling tank?

 

[Allmost]

usaly when running pure sps, people are running some kind of po4 remover, like rowa, gfo and so on. pure vodka / vvs wont do it alone. Ofcource this also depens on your bio load

Hey, sorry dont want to start an argument or anything but VSV was designed to remove N along with P

close to how Zeovit works

of course, not pellets though ...

 

[Taqpol]

I've never been able to get a phosphate reading with my Salifert kit. I definitely have been wanting to get a Hanna photometer for phosphates for awhile, so this might move that purchase up the list a bit.

All the rocks in this tank have been in an established tank or kept wet for a full year before I set this tank up (they were shipped air freight in garbage bags with saltwater to keep them humid), and then the tank was running with rocks and sand only for two full months down here before I added my fish back in. It was then another month (we are now up to the beginning of September of this year) when I put my corals in. Everything really started going down hill in late November as my light intensity peaked and my alkalinity raised.

I was under the impression that biopellets did remove phosphates. In fact, Warner Marine advises against using GFO or other phosphate removers due to the fact that often phosphates are the limiting factor for bacterial growth. Since bacterial growth, incorporation of nitrates and phosphates, and subsequent removal of said bacteria by skimming was the entire principle of vodka/biopellet dosing this made a lot of sense to me.