sps fading, some tips burnt

[EvMiBo]

I tested params this morning...

Ca: 460 (salifert)
Mg: 1260 (salifert)
Alk: 8.512 (hanna checker)
pH: 8-8.3 throughout the day (apex pH probe)
temp: 77.5-79 throughout the day (apex temp probe)
K: 400 (salifert)
NO3: 10 (salifert)
PO4: waiting on new reagents of Hanna ULR 736 Phosphorus checker
GAC: 1.25 cups changed every 4 weeks. It's lignite carbon from brs.
Salt: I'm using Red Sea Salt (blue bucket). I do weekly 15g waterchanges.

Lights: 8x39w ATI Sunpower 10" off the water.
Photoperiod: 2 bulbs 9 hours, the rest on 7 hours.

I am having a cyano issue at the moment. I've decided to use chemi-clean either this week or next week.

I only have 7 fish in the aquarium currently, I feed them 2-3 times a day. I do plan on adding some more eventually.

I've only had these sps coral frags for 2 weeks. My garf tricolor has good polyp extension but the top tip is burnt back/slowly losing tissue. Today I noticed a little die back on the tips of the encrusting portion of the frag - it is about 10" from the surface of the water, did I jump the gun gluing the frag down too soon? I picked up a jason fox mystic sunset monti frag that looked happy for a couple days, but today I woke up to faded tissue, it just looks like it's losing tissue, the frag is about 6" from the substrate (tank height is 27.5" and I have about 2" of substrate). Also, another encrusting monti (unidentified) is losing some tissue, that frag is on a frag rack at about halfway depth.

I know it's still early (2 weeks), but I was alarmed in the difference the mystic sunset frag had from yesterday and today.

Finally, I have a calcium reactor, but the CO2 is turned off currently. Parameters have been kept in check with waterchanges. I will turn the CO2 on when I notice enough ca, mg, alk consumption.

Any tips/hints/advice is welcome.
Thank you.

 

[markalot]

Is this a newer tank?

How often do you check Alk? Stability is key with Alk, and if it's constantly changing a lot of SPS will not be happy.

 

[EvMiBo]

sps fading, some tips burnt

The tank is almost 1 year old (set it up last mid November). I've had a handful of issues prior to this with nitrates and salinity. Now everything is in order (to my knowledge). I check almost everything once a week, sometimes more. For the past two weeks my alk has been 8.5-8.7. Most of my other SPS seem alright.

 

[EvMiBo]

Any ideas? It looks like STN to me. The mystic sunset is looking pretty bad. The tricolor tip burn is very slowly getting worse, and has started STN from the perimeter of where it's encrusted on the plug. I have even noticed that my green slimer is having a small amount of base dieback.

Should I cut my GAC amount in half?

I'm kind of stumped at this point.

 

[markalot]

I would cut everything and simply concentrate on keeping Alk rock steady and feed the corals. This has always worked for me, but that doesn't make it the right answer.

 

[EvMiBo]

I took the GAC offline. I'm hoping to find a happy medium in the future because I strongly believe it's helpful in reef aquariums. I run it passively in a bag right before the return pump so it was as easy as just pulling it out.

Alk has always been steady (over the past two weeks it's been 8.5-8.7 dKH). I feed the corals/tank with KZ Coral Vit twice a week which started about 3 weeks ago. I will probably start with some oyster feast and coral frenzy too, unfortunately my oyster feast expires soon.

I will not even attempt to feed Amino's until my NO3 is <2. Part of me believes the corals can get enough Amino's from fish poop, but would really like to be able to feed Amino's once or twice a week, I guess that's for a different thread and a different day.

 

[EvMiBo]

Looks like I'm probably going to lose the JF mystic sunset.

Besides taking the GAC offline this morning I did a full test...

Ca: 455 (salifert)
Mg: 1275 (salifert)
Alk: 8.512 (hanna checker)
pH: 8-8.3 throughout the day (apex pH probe)
temp: 77.5-79 throughout the day (apex temp probe)
K: 410 (salifert)
NO3: 10 (salifert)
PO4: Received new Hanna ULR 736 reagents yesterday: 11ppb x 3.066 = 33.726 / 1000 = 0.033ppm
GAC: Offline this morning

 

[markalot]

Can you get a closeup pic of it? I wasn't able to kill one and mine is still growing even under constant threat of Montipora Eating Nudibranchs.

That said, sometimes an unnoticed event can kill corals quickly but they become zombie like for weeks or months before finally succumbing. I know when my first tank was new something, still unknown to me, happened and killed most of my SPS. No matter what I did they all just withered away. I finally bought a new frag (acropora) which did fine and even thrived while older corals next to it slowly died.

 

[EvMiBo]

Sorry for the crappu quality. I took a couple with my DSLR (do not have a macro lens and am new to using white balance) and I still need some practice . The first picture is a decent representation of the way it actually looks. Other two (of the tricolor) show you burnt tips and base dieback...

 

[cthedaytrader]

I know you were selling some zeovit stuff, not sure if you recently stopped or started or never used it, but I had the same problem you had when I stopped zeovit too quickly earlier this year. rtn on on a few corals from the base and some burnt tips from an alk spike while running zeovit ( I spiked my alk to 8/5 and had several corals get burnt tops
It didnt effect all my corals, a few of mine didnt recover, the rest I just let heal and cut off the burnt tips. Anything that has rtn from the base I would frag it above the rtn and glue it, some corals will recover some wont.

 

[markalot]

Take raw photos and edit in a program like light room or the free RawTherapee. Looks like bleaching on the Monti but hard to tell. Did we cover light levels and PAR?

 

[Cubed Reefer]

I know you were selling some zeovit stuff, not sure if you recently stopped or started or never used it, but I had the same problem you had when I stopped zeovit too quickly earlier this year. rtn on on a few corals from the base and some burnt tips from an alk spike while running zeovit ( I spiked my alk to 8/5 and had several corals get burnt tops
It didnt effect all my corals, a few of mine didnt recover, the rest I just let heal and cut off the burnt tips. Anything that has rtn from the base I would frag it above the rtn and glue it, some corals will recover some wont.

I am his bro, there were 0 corals in the tank when he did zeo. Nitrates have plagued him for a long time.

CR

 

[EvMiBo]

I know you were selling some zeovit stuff, not sure if you recently stopped or started or never used it, but I had the same problem you had when I stopped zeovit too quickly earlier this year. rtn on on a few corals from the base and some burnt tips from an alk spike while running zeovit ( I spiked my alk to 8/5 and had several corals get burnt tops
It didnt effect all my corals, a few of mine didnt recover, the rest I just let heal and cut off the burnt tips. Anything that has rtn from the base I would frag it above the rtn and glue it, some corals will recover some wont.

Yeah, that's me, I stopped running Zeovit almost 2 months ago. When I started up this tank I wanted to use zeovit and have an sps tank again (I had success in the past with sps, but had never tried zeovit, fwiw I don't blame my failures so far in this tank on zeovit, it was just becoming expensive and I wanted to go back to a more simple form of reefing). I had some issues with nitrates and salinity with this tank (as I mentioned initially) and I thought if I got them in line I should be able to keep some sps, I'm not really interested in lps, polyps, softies, etc.. Nitrates are 10ppm now, salinity is spot on or close to it (tested 52.4 mS today) and I'm obviously slowly killing these sps.

I didn't have any corals in the aquarium when I quit zeovit, well just some zoanthids and that's it, of which I've had since the beginning. I think they'd survive just about anything. Anyways, I thought 4+ weeks, 4+ waterchanges later everything would be alright, especially since nitrates and salinity were in line.

These corals have been in for about 2 weeks and they're slowly dying, bleaching, stn from the tips and/or base. I'm just about stumped.

Take raw photos and edit in a program like light room or the free RawTherapee. Looks like bleaching on the Monti but hard to tell. Did we cover light levels and PAR?

Thanks, I'll checkout RawTherapee. The monti is bleaching, the first photo attached is a decent representation of that actual coloration.

I do not have a PAR meter, but I am running a 8x39w ATI sunpower 10" off the water. I was running it for 9 hours, with all bulbs on for 7 hrs (1 hr sunrise and sunset with 2 bulbs on). As of 2 days ago I am still running 9 hrs total, but instead of 7 with all bulbs on I set it to 6 hrs. The monti is about 18-20" from the water surface in moderate flow. The tricolor acro is about 10" from the water surface in moderate flow.

Finally, today I've noticed that some frags on the small frag rack I have are slowly losing tissue, I would say a slow bleach and some polyp extension has decreased. This hobby is nuts. :facepalm:...

 

[cthedaytrader]

were the corals every healthy in the tank? another issue could be GFO or GAC, do you run GFO. I found when changing GFO too much ore too quickly, or even changing GAC too much or too quickly can stress corals and cause rtn.

Potassium could cause issues as well zeovit can strip it down pretty quick, but yours is 400 is that with the sailfert black box test or the old test?

You might want to just keep things stable do small water changes to make sure your tank is balanced (zeovit strips things we probably cant or dont measure), so water changes over time should rebalance it.

Always check for pests at night with a flashlight just to be sure you dont have pest as well.

 

[EvMiBo]

When I first got them everything seemed fine.

I don't run GFO currently.

I change out GAC every 4 weeks, I took it offline a couple days ago to see if there'd be improvement.

Salifert black box Potassium kit.

Doing a waterchange tomorrow

 

[cthedaytrader]

stability and water changes can do wonders, they could have just been shocked by your system or the lighting. The mystic monti is pretty hardy, it might bounc back, mine used to grow like a weed and bounce back from being in really bad spots of my tank.

 

[EvMiBo]

I hope so. It hasn't been long in the grand scheme of things, but things have been stable. Other corals seem to be slowly losing tissue.

 

[EvMiBo]

Since I last posted in this thread I've performed a chemi clean dosage on the tank (followed by a large, 20-25% 30g waterchange). Cyano issue is almost 100% gone now. I ran GAC after the 48 hour chemi clean dose for about 36 hours, then took it offline again. I'm contemplating using GAC again (would change out every 4 weeks) but instead at a half dose to what I was doing before, any opinions?

I also did another regular maintenance 15g waterchange this morning... And just finished tests this afternoon:

Ca: 450 (salifert)
Mg: 1260 (salifert)
Alk: 8.568 (hanna checker)
K: 420 (salifert)
NO3: 5-10 (salifert) (slowly creeping down still from ~10ppm before)
PO4: Did not test
GAC: Still offline

Strange, but the mystic sunset looked pretty good (in comparison) for 2-3 days after chemi clean, now it's back to looking pretty beat up, faded, low zooxanthellae count.

The tri color I think has stopped its tip and base die back, polyp extension towards the base is alright but in general it could look much better.

Green slimer base stn I think continues, it is very slow. Polyp extension reduced some after chemi clean treatment.

The only coral that has seemed happy nearly this whole time is a 3/4-1" piece of A. loripes. Most other corals seem to have low amounts of zooxanthellae and polyp extension is what I would consider below average. Some of the corals came from a frag tank lit by halide+t5 combo. Others I'm not sure what the prior lighting was. I feed fish 2-3 times a day, only what is consumed within 1 minute, I've also continued KZ Coral Vit (2 times a week) for the past ~3-4 weeks and have started feeding Coral Frenzy 1-2 times a week.

I'm still kind of stumped with the what seems to be slowly dying corals. I wonder if my bioload is too small, if my lights may have shocked the corals? I don't think either is likely... Kind of going crazy thinking about what is not right... So far since I've had the corals the numbers have been stable. :headwally: This has been the hardest time I've had growing corals since I've been in the hobby. My first two years were somewhat flawless and I could grow nearly anything.....????

 

[markalot]

Do you have a par meter? I now have a 60 inch Sun power and vam running it 15 inches above a 24 inch deep tank. All ATI bulbs, no actinics. These fixtures are incredibly bright.

350 par 12 inches below waterline, 200 on sand.

 

[EvMiBo]

sps fading, some tips burnt

No I do not. And the local club doesn't have one to borrow either.

I know they're bright, but these are 39w bulbs. The 60"ers are 80w iirc. Nonetheless I'd really like to get my hands in a par meter.

Also. No actinics here either. 4 ati b+ and 4 coral+.