SPS STN from bottom up

B

bboudreaux

New member
I know there are plenty of threads on here about this already and i realize i'm :deadhorse1: but i would like to bounce this off a few of the masters here.
Tank info
120g (4x2x2) w/ 40b sump
lights reefbreeders photon 48 with a kessil A-150 over the sump.
3X MP40es for flow running at 40% b/c this is a mixed reef
reef octopus extreme nsx 200 skimmer
doser for ca and alk as well as 1 tablespoon of kalk per gallon in ATO
i also run TLF biopellets in a reactor
i also use chemi pure 2full units
parameters:
ca 440
alk 8.0-8.4 in the morning as the doser dispenses alk from midnight to 3am
7.5 - 7.7 by the time i get home from work at 6pm
mag 1550 i never let it get below 1500 cause my acans like the mag alot lol
NO3 0 - 1ppm depending on when i test.
PO4 .04
all test kits are hanna except nitrate which is sailfert.
You may ask your self why so much nutrient media well i feed my fish alot. i think they have me hypnotized:bigeyes:

Anyway this all started about a month ago when i noticed my garf bonsai was receding a little. I tested all parameters and the only one out of line was phosphate which was .09. I figured this was happening b/c i had just restarted my biopellet reactor about 2 weeks prior. It was in need of a good cleaning and only a 1/4 of the pellets were remaining at that point so i just cleaned it well filled it up and put it back into service. I put in fresh chemi pure at that time b/c i knew it would take a while for the pellets to become active.

After getting the results of that phosphate test and realizing that the chemi pure was having problems keeping up i decided to dose some vodka as i have done before. 1ml in the morning and 1ml in the evening. well since then i have started seeing more recession in other corals. I'm discontinuing the vodka today since my PO4 is down.
Acros seem to be the only SPS affected:
ORA Red and Green planet
Garf Bonsai
Validia
Hawkins
Millis to a lesser extent
Larry Jackson
Joe the coral
Deep water acro forgot the name of it
Purple and green slimers
ORA pearlberry
Strawberry Lemonade

SPS not affected
Birdnests (green, ponape, bird of paradise)
ORA green pocillopora
ORA Purple Stylophora
Setosa
All montis are fine
and of course all LPS and Palys are good with no effect visible.

I have read the majority of threads and it looks as though my corals might be starving. This is the only thing i can think of as all of my other parameters are rock solid. I have adjusted my doser during this time as well so my alk doesn't climb up. Something else i would like to throw out there. About a month ago i traded in 2 large fish (Yellow Tang and a Kole Tang) and replaced them with a 2.5" Flame Fin and similar size Purple Tang. I was wondering if doing this and throwing off the bio load could have affected the acros. MAYBE I'M REACHING HERE BUT JUST PUTTING MY THOUGHTS OUT THERE. Also, i normally feed 6 cubes of frozen over the weekend and have suspended that since i noticed my PO4 had risen a month ago. It seems everything i have done to lower my PO4 has made things worse, which after all the reading i've been doing leads me to think starvation. I would like to add the recession is very very slow but is still continuing.

Please any & all thoughts or advice is appreciated.

Brent
PS Please excuse the scatter brained nature of my post as i'm doing this off and on at work.:dance:
 
If i take your highest and lowest test results on ALK you are going from 8.4 to 7.5 everyday. If you have a doser, you need to change the programming to where it will not swing at all. That is most likely the culprit.
 
So do you think i should break up the dosage of alk more through out the day. You may be on to something here as it has been colder down here this month so less evaporation and less kalk going into the system. Combine that with the fact that i changed my lighting over the summer from t-5s to leds. Maybe since there is less evap i have less kalk going into the system to fill in the gaps during the day.
Do you think i should increase my saturation of kalk or just dose alk more times throught out the day. Right now i dose alk midnight to 3am so maybe spread that out to 12am - 12pm.
 
bboudreaux said:
So do you think i should break up the dosage of alk more through out the day. You may be on to something here as it has been colder down here this month so less evaporation and less kalk going into the system. Combine that with the fact that i changed my lighting over the summer from t-5s to leds. Maybe since there is less evap i have less kalk going into the system to fill in the gaps during the day.
Do you think i should increase my saturation of kalk or just dose alk more times throught out the day. Right now i dose alk midnight to 3am so maybe spread that out to 12am - 12pm.
Click to expand...

This is a tough question, but i think you will ultimately have more control by dosing alk than increasing the saturation of the kalk.

On my older system I used a small amount of kalk in my ATO and dosed ALK from 9pm to 6am and Cal from 9am to 6pm. This was rock solid stability.

My demand has gone down in my new system as I sold off a lot of colonies before i moved and upgraded tanks, but I plan to go back this dosing schedule when my demand grows
 
+1 on that. Kalk just never seems to hang stable enough for acros. A friend of mine tries and tries to dose it ato and always gets stn. But He does have amazing lps and coraline.
 
I dunno 8.4 to 7.5 dkh is not that big of a swing. Yes less swing would make them happier but I am going through the exact same problem right now. All acropora are stn except poc and birds nest. I have been doing a ton of reading and believe it is bacterial and to do with carbon dosing. At one point you were running pellets and dosing vodka. I was dosing NoPoX. Since this has started I have done everything to try and stop it to no avail. I also see a common denominator here as high mg. My Lps are also thriving and my mg is at 1600 which I did with tech m to get bryopsis down. I too noticed stn first and realized I had 0 detectable nitrate and phosphate. I stopped carbon dosing and started feeding asap. That was a month ago now. Stn has only gotten worse. My dkh ranges from 8.5 to 9. All other numbers are perfect and believe me much better then when I first started with sps. But even then before trying to make everything perfect the worst I did was brown out a few acros.

It seems random on which colony it is going to hit next and always starts the same way. The encrusting starts to slime like something is attacking it and next day 1 to 2 mm are white. It keeps going until the whole piece dies. Fragging seems to make it worse. Super gluing the dead tissue sometimes helps. Any frags that stn'd and lived through it by themselves have reincrusted and now thrive right next to same type that is dying away. Recently lost a medium sized colony of blue green tenuis and when I removed the rock it was on I noticed a big clear gob of what I can only describe as jelly type substance.

I think we are doing bad things to our systems with carbon dosing. Now I know there are a lot of people who have good success doing it but I believe you can create a perfect storm like we did.
New Gfo
Carbon Dose
High Magnesium
Low nutrients

These seem to be the common denominators in all the threads on all the forums I have read in the last month or so.

I tried feeding and saw no improvement only cyno. Still reading 0 po4 and no3. But I know the stuff is there as I am over feeding fish and coral or at least I was. And I was only getting little bits of cyno on the dead tissue of the dying pieces.

My system consists of a 40b, 2 40 gallon frag flats and a 40 gallon central sump. Now running a small amount of rowa phos, gac and a dry skim.
 
I believe we either killed off or created to much of the bacteria that carbon dosing creates to break down nutrients. To where it is now breaking down the zooxanthele in the bases of our acropora.
 
his swing is 7.5 to 8.4??? unless hes talking about ph and saying alk but that's almost one point.. i would call that a swing.... much more and acros will throw there skin into the water.
 
hey guys thanks for the thoughts. you have me second guessing carbon dosing and bio pellets for sure, but i would like to add that i have used pellets since i got into keeping sps and this is the first time i'm having issues with this. i have since reprogrammed my doser to dispense the alk over a 12hr period from midnight to noon, and have discontinued kalk in my topoff. i did increase ca and alk channels on my doser by 10ml to offset the kalk. my ph is more stable now. before it might go from 7.7 (7am) to 8.0 (3pm) and now it's 7.9am to 8.09pm.(yesterday's readings) i have checked my alk everyday since changing my dosing schedule and i seem to have it locked down with a range of no more than 7.7 lowest to 7.9 highest.
i think things may be getting better as some of the pieces i fragged are reencrusting the epoxy i mounted them with, and some of the places where i fragged the mother colony are healing. however, where ever the orginal line of stn was occurring there still seems to be some recession. the stn in those areas does appear to be much slower so i'm not sure if this is just my imagination or not. (wishful thinking an all)
Do you guys think i should cut away any remaining lines of stn or just leave them be?
 
I use kalk in my ato and have my profilux set to 24 hour dosings. I don't test hourly but I've got the same alk and calcium readings every 24 hours so something must be working out. I have never had any stn or rtn. I would look at the bio pellets. Those things seem to give a lot of people problems. I like keeping it simple and I also believe there is a little magic in the kalk. Better coloration and growth than tanks I've not used it :thumbsup:
 
Sometimes the STN continues even if you frag, but it's worth a shot.
What else do you have to lose at this point.
 
Very true guys and thanks for the advice. I will try to get some pics but the camera I have isn't very good. I will try and keep this thread up to date as best I can don't always log on.
 
powder_blue said:
I use kalk in my ato and have my profilux set to 24 hour dosings. I don't test hourly but I've got the same alk and calcium readings every 24 hours so something must be working out. I have never had any stn or rtn. I would look at the bio pellets. Those things seem to give a lot of people problems. I like keeping it simple and I also believe there is a little magic in the kalk. Better coloration and growth than tanks I've not used it :thumbsup:
Click to expand...


I agree I have used kalk since day one
 
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