Ken Hahn
New member
I would appreciate some of you looking over my shoulder and helping me see what I am missing.
I had my latest reef tank setup for about 4 years. It was an upgrade from a 70 to a 225. Many of the corals were 5-8 years old that I had grown from frags and I have been in the hobby a lot longer than that (20+ years).
I was starting to have an algae problem when the tank got overcrowded with corals and I was neglecting it's maintenance. I did two knee jerk things. One is that I did large water changes with the new (at that time) Oceanic salt and I added a large amount of Phosban to a media bag in the sump even though I had no detectable phosphates to see if it would help knock the algae back.
After a few weeks, I noticed that my large orange and purple rimmed Cap corals were dieing. It did not look like normal bleaching, but rather like the tissue was just slowly dieing and being overtaken with cyano. I then noticed that the tips of some of my SPS corals (mainly acropora) were showing signs of dieing. The tissue would die on the tips and the tips were being overtaken by cyano or algae growth. The rest of the coral looked normal other than the polyp extension was poor. It did not have the looks of normal bottom up RTN and the rate of the die back was very slow (months). After I started to take the problem seriously, I did some on-line research and discovered that early batches of Oceanic salt had some defective mixes that had caused tank crashes. I also discovered that heavy use of iron based phosphate removers had caused large scale SPS crashes. I also recognized that I had some red bugs in the SPS and I treated for them. I changed my salt back to Kent and removed the Phosban, but the die back continued until I lost all SPS corals in my tank. I also lost my large clams and a couple of LPS like a large hammer. My fish, RBTAs, bubble coral, sinularia, ricordia and a few other misc corals survived the crash fine.
I subsequently removed all my live rock and replaced my sand bed in case something bad was going on there or something had gotten into the tank and poisoned it. I cleaned the live rock and replaced about half of it back in the tank. I let the tank run without any new corals for about 6 months in case the issue had been a bacterial infection or something.
With everything seemingly stable, I then did serveral large water changes (totaling about ~150 gal of the 220 gal or so in the system). I vacuumed all the sand to make sure there was no detritus build up and I rebuilt the reef. I cleaned the sump. I replaced the old AB 10K MH bulbs with new 15K XM 400W bulbs. I added a small amount (250ml) of RowaPhos to a Phosban reactor. I replaced all the power heads on the wavemaker with new MJ1200's. I verified that there were no significant stray voltages present in the tank (<1VAC). I added several cupfuls of carbon in the sump. With the large water change-out, the water parameters were all at starting Kent salt values (calcium about 420, Alkalinity around 2.6 / 2.8), salinity at 1.025 and zero nitrates. The calcium reactor is currently left shutdown since there is very little calcium demand in the system and I have been doing large water changes.
I added a couple of 'canary' SPS coral frags to the tank to see how they fared. The Cap died within a couple of weeks. It just slowly faded in color and died. One of the 3 other SPS corals (an Acropora) has started to die back at the tips the same as before. The other two (Teal Millipora and orange Montipora digitata) look OK so far. I'm really starting to scratch my head. I have replaced virtually everything that I can think of. It feels like something is in the water that shouldn't be, but I can't figure out what it is. About the only things still in common with the old setup are the MAG pumps that I use to drive the skimmer (Mag18 on a Bullet2) and two Mag9.5's as return pumps and the heaters. They are all operational and without any corrosion, so I don't think they are a factor. I am running a little bit of iron based phosphate remover, but the quantity is fairly small and the corals were introduced after it had been running on the tank for a few weeks. Also, most people seem to equate a rapid RTN type problem with it's use and not this slow tip down recession that I am seeing. Any other ideas?
The entire tank setup is outlined in an on-line journal. http://www.reefcorner.com/big_tank_journal.htm
It has not been updated recently with the tank crash because the website source files had been corrupted and I am still working to repair them.
I had my latest reef tank setup for about 4 years. It was an upgrade from a 70 to a 225. Many of the corals were 5-8 years old that I had grown from frags and I have been in the hobby a lot longer than that (20+ years).
I was starting to have an algae problem when the tank got overcrowded with corals and I was neglecting it's maintenance. I did two knee jerk things. One is that I did large water changes with the new (at that time) Oceanic salt and I added a large amount of Phosban to a media bag in the sump even though I had no detectable phosphates to see if it would help knock the algae back.
After a few weeks, I noticed that my large orange and purple rimmed Cap corals were dieing. It did not look like normal bleaching, but rather like the tissue was just slowly dieing and being overtaken with cyano. I then noticed that the tips of some of my SPS corals (mainly acropora) were showing signs of dieing. The tissue would die on the tips and the tips were being overtaken by cyano or algae growth. The rest of the coral looked normal other than the polyp extension was poor. It did not have the looks of normal bottom up RTN and the rate of the die back was very slow (months). After I started to take the problem seriously, I did some on-line research and discovered that early batches of Oceanic salt had some defective mixes that had caused tank crashes. I also discovered that heavy use of iron based phosphate removers had caused large scale SPS crashes. I also recognized that I had some red bugs in the SPS and I treated for them. I changed my salt back to Kent and removed the Phosban, but the die back continued until I lost all SPS corals in my tank. I also lost my large clams and a couple of LPS like a large hammer. My fish, RBTAs, bubble coral, sinularia, ricordia and a few other misc corals survived the crash fine.
I subsequently removed all my live rock and replaced my sand bed in case something bad was going on there or something had gotten into the tank and poisoned it. I cleaned the live rock and replaced about half of it back in the tank. I let the tank run without any new corals for about 6 months in case the issue had been a bacterial infection or something.
With everything seemingly stable, I then did serveral large water changes (totaling about ~150 gal of the 220 gal or so in the system). I vacuumed all the sand to make sure there was no detritus build up and I rebuilt the reef. I cleaned the sump. I replaced the old AB 10K MH bulbs with new 15K XM 400W bulbs. I added a small amount (250ml) of RowaPhos to a Phosban reactor. I replaced all the power heads on the wavemaker with new MJ1200's. I verified that there were no significant stray voltages present in the tank (<1VAC). I added several cupfuls of carbon in the sump. With the large water change-out, the water parameters were all at starting Kent salt values (calcium about 420, Alkalinity around 2.6 / 2.8), salinity at 1.025 and zero nitrates. The calcium reactor is currently left shutdown since there is very little calcium demand in the system and I have been doing large water changes.
I added a couple of 'canary' SPS coral frags to the tank to see how they fared. The Cap died within a couple of weeks. It just slowly faded in color and died. One of the 3 other SPS corals (an Acropora) has started to die back at the tips the same as before. The other two (Teal Millipora and orange Montipora digitata) look OK so far. I'm really starting to scratch my head. I have replaced virtually everything that I can think of. It feels like something is in the water that shouldn't be, but I can't figure out what it is. About the only things still in common with the old setup are the MAG pumps that I use to drive the skimmer (Mag18 on a Bullet2) and two Mag9.5's as return pumps and the heaters. They are all operational and without any corrosion, so I don't think they are a factor. I am running a little bit of iron based phosphate remover, but the quantity is fairly small and the corals were introduced after it had been running on the tank for a few weeks. Also, most people seem to equate a rapid RTN type problem with it's use and not this slow tip down recession that I am seeing. Any other ideas?
The entire tank setup is outlined in an on-line journal. http://www.reefcorner.com/big_tank_journal.htm
It has not been updated recently with the tank crash because the website source files had been corrupted and I am still working to repair them.
