sps corals dieing from bottom!

[TurtleSoup2]

over the past two weeks ive discovered multiple sps colonies and frags are turning white from the bottom and dieing. i recently added a radion and BM doser, but i slowly turned the radion up to prevent bleaching. nothing besides 3 fighting conch snails and two sand sifting starfish have been added in the past two or three months. The tank is almost 3 years old with lots of SPS, LPS and a few zoas and ricordia. this morning i pulled all the infected corals and dipped them in coral RX, except for my birdnest colony which i cannot remove. I'm afraid of loosing those colonies and loosing my healthy enchinata and red planted colony.

ca-460
alk-7.7
mg-1260
running carbon and gfo in a reactor
preformed a 40% water change Sunday.

 

[dentdominator]

It can be one or a combination of the parameters posted. Gfo, carbon and low alk can cause stn on sps. Not to mention flow, phosphates and nitrates. The list goes on and on but, I would slowly raise the alk between 9 and 10dkh as long as your not carbon dosing. Try not to do to many things at once.

 

[Allmost]

have you recently changed out po4 removers ? or done a large cleaning ?

 

[dentdominator]

have you recently changed out po4 removers ? or done a large cleaning ?

That's a great point! I've noticed some stn after a large cleaning. I'm sure that's from stirring up the filth and that would cause high phosphate levels.

 

[TurtleSoup2]

have you recently changed out po4 removers ? or done a large cleaning ?

No not recently, just a 25% water change about 2 weeks ago. And GFO replacement 4 weeks ago.

 

[TurtleSoup2]

It can be one or a combination of the parameters posted. Gfo, carbon and low alk can cause stn on sps. Not to mention flow, phosphates and nitrates. The list goes on and on but, I would slowly raise the alk between 9 and 10dkh as long as your not carbon dosing. Try not to do to many things at once.

So its stn? Could this be caused by the Bm doser? because before I would forget to dose sometimes and now its on a cycle to properly dose.

 

[Allmost]

ok next I would check the KH. not the value but how stable it is.

so keep at 7.7, and test daily or multiple times a day to be sure its stable. and adjust doser accordingly.

what else have you started dosing with the BM doser ?

 

[TurtleSoup2]

ok next I would check the KH. not the value but how stable it is.

so keep at 7.7, and test daily or multiple times a day to be sure its stable. and adjust doser accordingly.

what else have you started dosing with the BM doser ?

So keep alk at 7.7 DKH? And I've started dosing calcium, alk, and magnesium

 

[Allmost]

So keep alk at 7.7 DKH? And I've started dosing calcium, alk, and magnesium

keep alk Stable, at the value you want.

if you use salts that have higher alk, slowly rise it to 9 or so.

if not keep it there.

8 is good, you have wiggle room both sides but stability is the key

if you are carbon dosing, then kh of around 7 is better.

 

[TurtleSoup2]

keep alk Stable, at the value you want.

if you use salts that have higher alk, slowly rise it to 9 or so.

if not keep it there.

8 is good, you have wiggle room both sides but stability is the key

if you are carbon dosing, then kh of around 7 is better.

I'm not carbon dosing, so I will raise it slowly

 

[animalkingdom]

To me it looks like its an alk swing or flow related from the pictures...
if it was an alk swing there is often not much you can do but frag and pray.
I lost 80% of my acros colonies once to a massive kalkwasser ro/di overdose that = about 15% of my total tank volume. Some of them took weeks to show signs and others RTN'ed immediately. I've learned redundancy and failsafes are a must

 

[TurtleSoup2]

Update: I've lost my bottle bush, rainbow milli, large green stylo, pink green stylo colonies. Tonight I discovered My blue Hawkins tips had brown stuff on them and after a closer inspection, some tips are dieing.
Thankfully My red planet appears fine but the plum crazy was showing signs at the tips and base. once I cut the tips off it bounced back.
I tested my alk tonight and it was 8.1 DKH. I've developed a love-hate relationship with Sps

 

[TurtleSoup2]

Also the STN was seeming to be slowing down, I guess not...

 

[dg3147]

any results that seemed to work?