I have a 90g setup. It uses a DIY LED lighting system of 78 3W LED's. Another member of my reef club has exactly the same setup and his SPS's look great. My optics, PAR, and photoperiod are exactly like his. His SPS's are growing like weeds. I use Neptune's Moonlight LED's. Assume for the purposes of this discussion that the lighting is not the problem.
My tank is controlled by an Apex. It has an ATO that adds about 3 qts of RO at 1AM every night; the RO has no metals, no phosphates, and TDS = 0.
I use an Aquamedic Reefdoser to dose Randy's Recipe Alk. It doses about 6ml of alk every 2 hrs and my alk is ROCK-STEADY at 10.9 DKh. Calcium and Mg are dosed as needed to maintain 470-480 and 1360-1380 respctively.
I have a 30 gal sump that contains cheato and about 20 lbs of live rock that has been cleaned by soaking in a 10% solution of muriatic acid, pressure washed, and then rinsed for 2 hours. Afterwards, soaked in 2 rinses of RO for 2 hours. No pests. I use 4 filter socks in my bubble towers to polish the water; they are washed in a sanitary cycle weekly with a capful of bleach and then washed again with nothing other than water.
My PC lamp on my sump is on when my daylight lighting is low or off to keep the pH stable.
The skimmer in use is a Octopus Extreme 160 and does an excellent job.
I run BRS carbon and GFO in a separate reactor.
I use Red Sea Coral Pro salt, and do about 20 gallons of water changes a month.
Other than feeding Rod's for the fish and LPS, and oyster eggs and rotifers for the SPS's, nothing special is going on.
I use two Ecotech MP40w ES units in reef crest mode day and night; the return pump is a Mag 12. I have plenty of flow. No flow is blown directly on any corals.
The sand is Fiji Pink, the next granular size up from sugar.
Here are the parameters:
SpGr - 1.025
Temp - 79.2 - 79.8 daily swing
pH - 8.15 - 8.30 daily swing
Ammonia - 0
Phosphate - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 1 - 2.5ppm
Calcium - 470-480
Alk - 10.9 This is maintained this high because the RSCP salt comes in at 12-12.8 when made up into salt water
Mg - 1360-1380
No pests other than some hermit crabs. No SPS predators like angelfish and so forth.
My tank didn't used to be this pristine. We had to gut it and change the sand, salt, and get rid of some rock that was leaching nitrates and phosphates into the water.
I am not dosing anything other than alk, calcium, and mg.
HERE IS THE PROBLEM
After gutting the system, cleaning it out, and changing some problem issues, I placed several mille, acro, and monti frags in the tank as "test subjects" after running the tank for a week. Please keep in mind that an ORA Red Planet and a Bali Green Slimer were moved from the old conditions to the new conditions and have been thriving; and still are right now.
The test frags did great, lots of polyps out, good color, and this was better than the old system could ever do. Felt pretty good about this. Then, about a week ago, the green mille pulled in it's polyps, and several days later started turning white at the tips. Not growth, more like bleaching. After two days of this and it getting worse in thise two days, I pulled it and took it to the shop I got it from. The owner states that it is recovering.
Yesterday, my Blue Crayola acro, with all polyps out, started doing the same thing. The Red Planet and Bali Green Slimer are still going great, as is all of my LPS.
Someone at our frag swap today thought that perhaps I need to supplement iodine, as I have shrimp and crabs that are molting.
Someone else thought alk burn, but with alk burn, there's usually a visual loss of tissue that you can see blowing around in the current, or the tips turn brownish and the polyps pull in. Not so with the Blue Crayola, and the tips on both acros are pure white, but not like a dying coral.
I'm open to ideas. I thought that we had all of this fixed when we fixed the unstable tank params before. Now the tank is rock steady; the corals last a few weeks and then I get the white tips starting overnight. The rose mille hasn't done this; neither has the Idaho Grape monti.
Thoughts? Any usable advice appreciated.
Kev
My tank is controlled by an Apex. It has an ATO that adds about 3 qts of RO at 1AM every night; the RO has no metals, no phosphates, and TDS = 0.
I use an Aquamedic Reefdoser to dose Randy's Recipe Alk. It doses about 6ml of alk every 2 hrs and my alk is ROCK-STEADY at 10.9 DKh. Calcium and Mg are dosed as needed to maintain 470-480 and 1360-1380 respctively.
I have a 30 gal sump that contains cheato and about 20 lbs of live rock that has been cleaned by soaking in a 10% solution of muriatic acid, pressure washed, and then rinsed for 2 hours. Afterwards, soaked in 2 rinses of RO for 2 hours. No pests. I use 4 filter socks in my bubble towers to polish the water; they are washed in a sanitary cycle weekly with a capful of bleach and then washed again with nothing other than water.
My PC lamp on my sump is on when my daylight lighting is low or off to keep the pH stable.
The skimmer in use is a Octopus Extreme 160 and does an excellent job.
I run BRS carbon and GFO in a separate reactor.
I use Red Sea Coral Pro salt, and do about 20 gallons of water changes a month.
Other than feeding Rod's for the fish and LPS, and oyster eggs and rotifers for the SPS's, nothing special is going on.
I use two Ecotech MP40w ES units in reef crest mode day and night; the return pump is a Mag 12. I have plenty of flow. No flow is blown directly on any corals.
The sand is Fiji Pink, the next granular size up from sugar.
Here are the parameters:
SpGr - 1.025
Temp - 79.2 - 79.8 daily swing
pH - 8.15 - 8.30 daily swing
Ammonia - 0
Phosphate - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 1 - 2.5ppm
Calcium - 470-480
Alk - 10.9 This is maintained this high because the RSCP salt comes in at 12-12.8 when made up into salt water
Mg - 1360-1380
No pests other than some hermit crabs. No SPS predators like angelfish and so forth.
My tank didn't used to be this pristine. We had to gut it and change the sand, salt, and get rid of some rock that was leaching nitrates and phosphates into the water.
I am not dosing anything other than alk, calcium, and mg.
HERE IS THE PROBLEM
After gutting the system, cleaning it out, and changing some problem issues, I placed several mille, acro, and monti frags in the tank as "test subjects" after running the tank for a week. Please keep in mind that an ORA Red Planet and a Bali Green Slimer were moved from the old conditions to the new conditions and have been thriving; and still are right now.
The test frags did great, lots of polyps out, good color, and this was better than the old system could ever do. Felt pretty good about this. Then, about a week ago, the green mille pulled in it's polyps, and several days later started turning white at the tips. Not growth, more like bleaching. After two days of this and it getting worse in thise two days, I pulled it and took it to the shop I got it from. The owner states that it is recovering.
Yesterday, my Blue Crayola acro, with all polyps out, started doing the same thing. The Red Planet and Bali Green Slimer are still going great, as is all of my LPS.
Someone at our frag swap today thought that perhaps I need to supplement iodine, as I have shrimp and crabs that are molting.
Someone else thought alk burn, but with alk burn, there's usually a visual loss of tissue that you can see blowing around in the current, or the tips turn brownish and the polyps pull in. Not so with the Blue Crayola, and the tips on both acros are pure white, but not like a dying coral.
I'm open to ideas. I thought that we had all of this fixed when we fixed the unstable tank params before. Now the tank is rock steady; the corals last a few weeks and then I get the white tips starting overnight. The rose mille hasn't done this; neither has the Idaho Grape monti.
Thoughts? Any usable advice appreciated.
Kev
