SPS downhill Spiral

B

Blakestanks

New member
Hello Everyone!

I am having issues with my Reefer 350. About 2 months ago I purchased a 25 sps frag from unique corals and they came in a looked great. In addittion to those I already had a chalice coral, a torch coral, and a birdsnest.

I have had a slow issue from the get go. The sps would slowly strip from the base up. Usually one at a time one per week. I have tried to combat the stripping with the addition of coral foods, amino acids, changing light intensity, changing KH, I havent found any resolve.

Now I am at the point where my birdsnest while not stripping has bleached completely white and almost no polyps left. For this coral I will say the skeleton has been pretty much white since I placed in the tank and has been what is apparently a slow loss of polyps. This is in opposition to the mother colony at LFS which the entire there is a very dark green.

All of my blue sps have faded to a light green/brown. and many are still bleaching/ stripping. My chalice coral which has had nothing but good growth from the beginning has now started to strip as well.

I am at a total loss because some are growing and doing well, other are stripping and fading to nothing.

as I side note I acclimated the corals to the lighting on a frag rack that I slowly moved up to the highest point the rockwork was and then placed around reef where I wanted. the frags have not moved since then.

Tank specs:
Tank: Reefer 350
Lighting: 2 AI Prime HD @ 70% currently, have run everywhere from 30-100 with no changes
Skimmer: Bubble Magus Curve 5
Reactors: BRS GFO and Carbon
Salinity: 1.026
Calc: 550
Kh: 10
Dosing Pump for 2 part
Nitrate: 0

I have 6 3" fish in the tank which I have been trying to feed more heavily to increase nutrient load.

I also run a minamlistic aquascape and have strong flow. So Detritus has nowhere to go,

Theories:

KH and Calc arent stable, but has been on pump 2 weeks and still new coral death.

Low Light + Low Nutrient = coral death: I have increased feeding, used AA, and reef frenzy, while turning lights up slowly to 100% some bleached out at the tips.

No more theories please send help.
 
In addition to this, I cannot grow coralline algae. There is some that came on a leather coral rock that has been doing well, but anything else in the tank that might pop up, turns white within 48 hours
 
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The 3rd picture is of a coral that a month ago was navy blue.

In the last coral you can see all of the growth onto the rocks of the chalice but now its stripping on the edges.

Also the lights are off in this picture.
 
I would definitely stablize the alk and calc, if you dont get them stable in whatever range you choose. you will never have good growth or colors and youll stress out the corals.

I would suggest to get your alk in the 7.5-8.5 range and the calc in the 420-460 range. with this you will need to slowly get down to this level or you will stress out your corals. If you just look around the SPS thread, just find tanks that you like and try to get your parameters in that range. in all the SPS threads I love (high PE acros and millies) they run their levels in the range I just said, most of them in the low range of that and thats around what natural ocean water is too.
 
I don't see a phosphate reading, but considering your nitrates are zero and you also run GFO, I'm willing to bet that it's very low as well.

You are running a fairly high alk and very high Ca (what's your Mg at?) so you'd ideally want plenty of available nutrients for the corals to utilize. People running ULNS are running lower alk in the neighborhood of 8.0dkh. You're basically running the alk and ca of a higher nutrient system without the available nutrients. You need to figure out which method you want to go with. Both of the main methodologies (ULNS and higher nutrient systems) can be wildly successful - you just need to stick with it and understand what your corals are telling you.

In the short term for your situation, it sounds like your corals are asking for nutrients.
I would shut off the GFO reactor and significantly reduce the dosages on your dosing pumps. Test your parameters regularly to monitor the drop. You definitely want your ca to drop well below 500 and closer to the mid-low 400's, but in due time! Don't rush it. In the mean time, get them the nitrate and phosphate they need to grow at higher levels. You could try dosing KNO3 (potassium nitrate) or just shutting down your skimmer for all but a few hours a day. And keep feeding. What I'm suggesting could cause a bit of an algae bloom and a browning of SPS, but that's favorable to the flesh peeling off the skeleton. From there, you can take your time working on dialing in your target nutrient levels and big three parameters so that you can extract the best coloration from your corals.
 
yeah in the first picture what looks like is suppose to be a red dragon is pretty brown and starting to STN and in the last picture, the coral on the right looks in really really rough shape to me.

I definitely wouldnt be running GFO like scar79 suggested too.
 
So plan to be:

Drop alk slowly to around 450 and alk to around 8.5. While that is dropping, increase bioload with feeding and lack of reactor/skimmer. side of praying
 
You should decide if you want to go to ULNS or not and set parameters, light and maintenance routines according to this decision.


Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk
 
Remember mg is more important than calcium. Test your mg make sure it is within specs 1250 to 1350 and stable. If your mg is low your corals will not be able to use alk and cal and will start to die slowly.


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dblue said:
Remember mg is more important than calcium. Test your mg make sure it is within specs 1250 to 1350 and stable. If your mg is low your corals will not be able to use alk and cal and will start to die slowly.


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Click to expand...

im not sure how many people would agree with mag being more important then calc and alk. I bet the majority of successful SPS people havent tested their mag in months on months. If this is the case, I better start testing my mag more because I have not tested that in probably 5 months. I think if your calc and alk are stable your mag is in good range

to the OP: I think your plan on slowly decreasing alk and calc that would be great while increasing feed but not over doing it.
 
Agreed with what has already been said about the big three. Don't turn off the skimmer. Just feed more and or buy more fish. I also think that your light intensity is set to high. When I ran radion gen 3 pros on my last tank they were set at 55% intensity. I started them at 30% and it took me about 2 months to get them to 55%. Led's are no joke these days. Set all of the blue/violet channels to 100% and the rest to 20-30% max. Then set the total intensity to 30% and work up very slowly from there.
 
The stripping from the base up sounds like STN. This is what happened to my first few SPS frags a couple of years ago.

Look up the technique for fragging to combat STN. Also, it seems like you need to dial in your system. With these two things you should be able to maximize the number of frags you can save!
 
Mr.Fishtank said:
Agreed with what has already been said about the big three. Don't turn off the skimmer. Just feed more and or buy more fish. I also think that your light intensity is set to high. When I ran radion gen 3 pros on my last tank they were set at 55% intensity. I started them at 30% and it took me about 2 months to get them to 55%. Led's are no joke these days. Set all of the blue/violet channels to 100% and the rest to 20-30% max. Then set the total intensity to 30% and work up very slowly from there.
Click to expand...



You basically just described the SPS AB+ schedule that Ecotech provides for the Radion.
 
You received some good advice regarding alkalinity and calcium. Do not mess around with magnesium until levels of calcium and alkalinity reach desired levels. Then test for each parameter and make adjustments. How old is your setup? New tanks can be challenging for SPS at times as well. Proceed slowly when making changes to water chemistry. The slower the better....................Jim
 
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