Sps frags turning a light brown, yet

[Versus]

I am confused as to why? In fact I am already losing a frag of pink jade but that never had been doing well regardless.. I am losing colors rapidly though on everything besides my setosa which just seems to be "Oh hey everything is fine."

I do have some hair algae and water changes (had to bring up my salinity it was 1.21 and is now 1.26 was raised over the course of a few days)


all 8 t5 bulbs are 2 months old 10:30am to 6pm

Salt BW neo
temp 77.4-79
Mag 1200 (A tad low)
Calc 380 (tad low)
new ph probe showing 8.19 (night 7.9x day 8.1x )
Phos low
KH 8.5
Salinity 1.26

I was thinking maybe too much light? Tank isnt mature enough?


Dosing, Food etc.

mb7 / RF ran out of RF so I am going to slowly be changing to vodka this has not taken place yet as I am still reading up a bit.


Daily, 2part , qtr cube mysis/plankton , 3 drops ocean nutri liquid plankton, 2 drop sponge power, 2ml pohls xtra, 2part, 3ml of microvore, bw 50-200 plankton s, bw reef snow.

every 3 days, 5 drops AA, 2 drop iodine.

every 4 days, squirt of mag / 4ml potassium / squirt of strontium.


Seems everything was fine till I did a water change ( was uping the salinity ) and decided to change my lay out and just added the big mass of rock and the sps on top. you can see in the before and after of the rock work. My colors had ALWAYS been fading a bit it seems but recently its gotten pretty bad.


Current

They are encrusting but i dont know if that even accounts for much.

here are the frags when i had first gotten them from rok

(first pic it would be the frag in the back middle, looks more a pink lemonade than the pink lemonade does now)

the frags were on the right side form of rocks... I dunno im just trying to figure out whats happening. i wish i had better pictures prior and now but everything has basically the same color at night the polyp extension is decent but not as great as I would hope.

 

[Bigmike]

Well, IMO there seems to be a lot going on here. Just changing the hieght of the frags to be closer to the lights and the salinity change so quickly would be enough for a lot of frags to stress and brown out. But you also say you think your tank might be too new... how long has it been up and running? Also, I'm no additive pro, but it seems to me that you are adding a whole lot of stuff to your tank that is probably doing more harm than good.

Just my thoughts... but I'd keep it simple and just do some frequent water changes and get everything nice and stable before you start adding supplements again. Maybe just limit it to dosing 2 part and get your parameters stable, then slowly introduce the other products if you wish.

 

[Versus]

Actually its pretty new its only been up since the start of DEC.

 

[Ricunger]

I would look into the window. With that Fl sun and 8 T5 on a ATI that must be crazy amounts of lighting. Also the period that the specific gravity was low would stress the corals. First thing i would do is cover that window if the sun hits the tank hard...

 

[Ricunger]

Also... SWEET TANK!

 

[Versus]

Thanks! Checked again my salinity is actually 1.20 ... Ive never had these issues im wondering (Yeah the light might be much) But the salt? I noticed it also wasnt buffering the PH correctly either. Going to do another water change tomorrow and add some mix into my top off instead of straight RO water.

 

[phoenix001]

Strange that your salinity is so low. How are you measuring it - with a refractometer or hydrometer? Sounds like you already had a low salinity problem once and raised it. Can you describe the process you go through to mix your new saltwater for water changes? Obviously you need to raise the salinity. what I would do is mix up some new saltwater to 1.030 and use the new saltwater as your ATO over the next couple of weeks or until you reach an acceptable salinity level (I keep mine at 1.026). The ley here is to not raise the salinity to quickly, so that's why I say over the next couple weeks. Need to figure out why your salinity drops like that. How are you topping off evaporation with RO/DI? Do you use an ATO system like a float valve in a sump?

 

[VegasRick]

My experience with too much light or moving closer to light is not browning but the opposite, bleaching or colors getting lighter

 

[Ricunger]

I do believe the main reason is the salinity.

The direct sunlight always created algae in my tanks... since you stated you have some hair algae.

phoenix raised a good question with how is the tank being replenished from evaporation.

 

[Versus]

Tunze osmo forgive the mess of wires lol

tds is 0ppm


Salinity is done through a refract\calibrated with 1.264 \ 35ppt or whatever. its coming out barely above 1.20... (used new 1.264 fluid and checked again it was dead on)

No salt creep is happening either.. I am having a fair amount of evap due to the outside weather and inside the house being colder than normal (66-67 at night 72 or so day time)

Anyway I had added 1.30 to my top off I figured this would do the trick but it wasnt really took a bit for it to even get to 1.22.. So I did a pretty good sized water change of about 30% with 1.28.

I check it a couple hours later and it showed like 1.25 I hadnt checked it in 2 weeks? until I made this post and figured to look at it again and its 1.20..


(I do not care too much about the hair algae, as it provides food for my snails and stuff and since I just have frags at this point I am not concerned to much about "looks")

The tank though actually does get some day light and a good amount but its not direct, you cant tell but to the right, there is a good 15 foot over hang or so and then the pool cage. sun sets to the left "behind" the tank.

 

[Bigmike]

Like I said, I think its probably a combination of things that is stressing your corals out. 2 months is relatively new to start a full blown SPS tank IMO. Also the salinity changes and the reason I think light may be an issue too is because they seem to be turnign a lighter brown which makes me think they are being stressed and bleached. Overall, your frags are just not happy, they need more constants and less variables, which is why I would start by just focusing on getting your salinity taken care of and your params in check.

 

[Bigmike]

But like it was stated before... you got a nice set-up there

good luck!

 

[elijaher]

Really nice looking setup.

 

[cwegescheide]

[QUOTE

Anyway I had added 1.30 to my top off I figured this would do the trick but it wasnt really took a bit for it to even get to 1.22.. So I did a pretty good sized water change of about 30% with 1.28.

I check it a couple hours later and it showed like 1.25 I hadnt checked it in 2 weeks? until I made this post and figured to look at it again and its 1.20..


(I do not care too much about the hair algae, as it provides food for my snails and stuff and since I just have frags at this point I am not concerned to much about "looks")

The tank though actually does get some day light and a good amount but its not direct, you cant tell but to the right, there is a good 15 foot over hang or so and then the pool cage. sun sets to the left "behind" the tank.[/QUOTE]

Sps does not handle wicked shifts in salinty IMO. I screwed up my salinity on accident and it really weaked havoc until I realized my refracto was off.

The drastic shift also is not good. Only time will tell now.

 

[VegasRick]

I'd put my money on nutrients causing the browning out of corals. If you have hair algae you have excess nutrients

 

[rkb]

My two cents worth are there is a lot of dosing for the amount of coral that is in the tank. I would tend to think that between a weekly water change and some minor 2 part additions you could provide all that is needed for your frags.

 

[phoenix001]

+1 on the above post. My rule of thumb is always if I can't test for something, I'm not going to dose for it. Looks like you are dosing several things (AA, Iodine, Strontium, mag, pottasium) but do you know if the levels of those items in your tank are low? IMO, you should stop all of that and just let weekly water changes replenish those params. You could be overdosing your tank with any one of those minerals. Stop dosing and concentrate on trying to figure out why your salinity continues to drop like it is. Just my opinion

 

[RRaider]

Why does your salinity keep dropping? Something isn't right there imo. If the ato is working correctly and the water levels in your tank and sump are not increasing by quite a bit your salinity levels should be slowly creeping up with the use of the two part and the mag. Are you sure you don't have a leak somewhere?

 

[barnabus's gimp]

+1 on the above post. My rule of thumb is always if I can't test for something, I'm not going to dose for it. Looks like you are dosing several things (AA, Iodine, Strontium, mag, pottasium) but do you know if the levels of those items in your tank are low? IMO, you should stop all of that and just let weekly water changes replenish those params. You could be overdosing your tank with any one of those minerals. Stop dosing and concentrate on trying to figure out why your salinity continues to drop like it is. Just my opinion

+1 Iodine is a tricky thing, you can quickly accelerate your iodine levels. with just a few drops a month, I was using a mix and was having problems with iodine being high, dose it if you can test for it only.

 

[Versus]

Im going to switch salt I do not have much left in the bucket anyway. I need to put markings on my ato container so I can see just exactly how much I am going through daily.

looks like my 250 dollar experiment is going to back fire in my face, The corals are even lighter today. I stopped dosing everything besides the 3 liquid foods, half a veggie cube for my tang and a qtr of a cube of mysis for my 2 little guys.

I also raised my lights to about 10 inches above the water level rather than 4. and I am making water now to do a 20% water change.

Salinity question, since its at 1.20 should I make it around 1.22?