Sps turning brown and bleaching

[kupadupapupa]

So I just tried 2 sps frags in my 125, a birds nest and purple acro and both are slowly dying. The acro turned brown and is slowly bleaching, and it looks like the bottom most polyp tips are disintegrating. The birds nest polyps also turned brown and then the flesh looked like it blew off leaving the white skeleton.

On top of that my chalice and acan flesh is also receding. Last I checked my alk was 9-10, mag was 1500 and calc was 500. The corals are under 30 watt multi chip led with 3 watt cree royal blue supplementation. My soft corals are doing ok, but growth is very slow.

Does anyone know why this may be happening? It's getting really frustrating to see my corals disintegrate one by one. I've tried running the leds for 2 hours for a few days then upping the time but no matter how much or how little light the corals get they don't stop receding.

 

[epicurus84]

We can only guess with this information.

Turning brown on corals usually means not enough light, or high nutrients. Especially the last one can also cause bleaching.

So i'd like to know the phosphate and nitrate values.

In any case i would start of with a fairly large (15-20%) water change with a good quality salt.

 

[kupadupapupa]

We can only guess with this information.

Turning brown on corals usually means not enough light, or high nutrients. Especially the last one can also cause bleaching.

So i'd like to know the phosphate and nitrate values.

In any case i would start of with a fairly large (15-20%) water change with a good quality salt.

Phosphates and nitrates are undetectable. I been using gfo since tank start up and I do something like 25-30 percent water changes every two weeks. The last water change was 3 days ago using seachem reef salt.

 

[sasharotty]

Possibly too clean then. I was running gfo and always had 0 and 0 po4 and no3. My birdsnests always slowly did exactly what your saying. It seems birdsnest at least for me are very sensitive. I would take the gfo offline for a few weeks and see how they react. I took mine offline and color in all sps have slowly gotten better and birdnest also responded good. Especially with that high alk reading. If you don't want to take gfo offline drop alk to 7-8 imo.

 

[rbp 4 135]

How many 30 watt chips are you running, and have you checked the PAR? To me browning and then STN (from what you describe) from the base up could be an indication you have to little light.

 

[kupadupapupa]

Possibly too clean then. I was running gfo and always had 0 and 0 po4 and no3. My birdsnests always slowly did exactly what your saying. It seems birdsnest at least for me are very sensitive. I would take the gfo offline for a few weeks and see how they react. I took mine offline and color in all sps have slowly gotten better and birdnest also responded good. Especially with that high alk reading. If you don't want to take gfo offline drop alk to 7-8 imo.

The high readings is because I was running a kalk reactor through my ato and had no way of controlling the dose. I took it off last week though because I didn't realize that you need a ton of hard coral to justify kalk use.

I didn't think about the gfo thing though and you're probably right, my water may be completely stripped of phosphates and nutrients because my lps doesn't look so good either and they need allot of nutrients. I have no algae growth either so I also just quit running it today. If too much algae starts growing I just hook it back up and the algae goes away?

How many 30 watt chips are you running, and have you checked the PAR? To me browning and then STN (from what you describe) from the base up could be an indication you have to little light.

I am running 4 chips supplemented with 48 royal blues and 12 violets on my 125 gallon. The par is good enough for softies at least but it seems my softies don't even fully expand like they are capable of. The thing is the birds nest doubled in size in the month when I first put it in then all of a sudden the flesh started receding. The same is happening with my acan and chalice after they were doing so well for a while.

 

[kupadupapupa]

Here are the pics of the corals as well as the par readings I got. You can see on the acro where right at the tips it's bleaching/greying. Some of the tips around the base and the top most tip also look a little frizzy almost like someone took a fine grit sandpaper to them. Which I'm assuming is the start of what happened to my birds nest?

 

[danil]

It's really hard to see the PAR number but I assume you should have plenty of PAR.
I can see your tank is pretty clean of any algae so +2 to possible lack of nutrients for your SPS corals. Along with high Alk it will cause STN/RNT. I would recommend switch to two part dosing or dosing Kalk manually in your ATO tank to slowly drop ALK to 8 or even 7.5 and keep it stable there. This will fix your nutrients/alk ratio but you still have to feed your corals. You have many choices here... you can downgrade your "export" or you can "upgrade" your feeding. For feeding look into Zeo coral food 'blue bottles' they are probably the best among others though expensive. They've been designed for use in ULNS but work just fine in LNS too. I've got positive response from 'Fuel' made by Seachem so you can try it out or you can get more fish and feed more. To reduce your export you can do less WC, run skimmer less then 24/7, take offline your reactor(s). The trick here is to get the right balance of nutrients for corals, alk and lighting (PAR). For SPS it's a pretty thin line unfortunately.

 

[MHG]

When my nitrates were undetectable that would happen whenever my alk went over 9.... I would suggest if you are running kalk to get your nitrates up to like 1 or 2... This will allow your alk level to fluctuate when dosing kalk...

 

[kupadupapupa]

It's really hard to see the PAR number but I assume you should have plenty of PAR.
I can see your tank is pretty clean of any algae so +2 to possible lack of nutrients for your SPS corals. Along with high Alk it will cause STN/RNT. I would recommend switch to two part dosing or dosing Kalk manually in your ATO tank to slowly drop ALK to 8 or even 7.5 and keep it stable there. This will fix your nutrients/alk ratio but you still have to feed your corals. You have many choices here... you can downgrade your "export" or you can "upgrade" your feeding. For feeding look into Zeo coral food 'blue bottles' they are probably the best among others though expensive. They've been designed for use in ULNS but work just fine in LNS too. I've got positive response from 'Fuel' made by Seachem so you can try it out or you can get more fish and feed more. To reduce your export you can do less WC, run skimmer less then 24/7, take offline your reactor(s). The trick here is to get the right balance of nutrients for corals, alk and lighting (PAR). For SPS it's a pretty thin line unfortunately.

I've already taken the reactor offline, so do you think I can just keep proper alk/cal levels by just doing the bi weekly water changes? Or would those water changes still take away too many nutrients?

I've also stepped up my feeding a week or two ago by feeding reef chili as well as feeding frozen twice a day when I can because of my anthias.

 

[kupadupapupa]

By the way thanks for all the help. So far from you guys I've gotten the most helpful answers and it makes me more confident I can save my existing corals.

 

[ashish]

How long has your system been running? If your going to do bi-weekly water changes do about 15%. Every 2-3 days I would test/record calcium, alk, Ph, salinity until you feel comfortable you can keep it very stable. Make sure you record your reading and dosing so you can get a general idea of how much dosing your tank per day (could be a stability issue). You water might be too clean, It could be many things since these sps corals are very tricky animals. Could be your bi weekly water changes! could be lack of turbulent, pest, random flow. Could be to much flow. Could be not enough light or to much light or wrong placement. If everything is stable and parameters are good might just need to move the coral. But I will tell you the birdnest looks pretty bad (are the bleached polyps still there?). The other one might still have a chance. I've had a birdnest that bleached from the base gradually but the tips still grew. If it get's worst I would remove some tips of the birdness and glue them, see what happens. Good luck

 

[kupadupapupa]

How long has your system been running? If your going to do bi-weekly water changes do about 15%. Every 2-3 days I would test/record calcium, alk, Ph, salinity until you feel comfortable you can keep it very stable. Make sure you record your reading and dosing so you can get a general idea of how much dosing your tank per day (could be a stability issue). You water might be too clean, It could be many things since these sps corals are very tricky animals. Could be your bi weekly water changes! could be lack of turbulent, pest, random flow. Could be to much flow. Could be not enough light or to much light or wrong placement. If everything is stable and parameters are good might just need to move the coral. But I will tell you the birdnest looks pretty bad (are the bleached polyps still there?). The other one might still have a chance. I've had a birdnest that bleached from the base gradually but the tips still grew. If it get's worst I would remove some tips of the birdness and glue them, see what happens. Good luck

The system has been running for around 7 months. I've tried everything with flow, turning it up and down but it didn't help. I also tried raising/lowering the lights, running them less time then more time but with no luck. I also tried moving the coral. I do have some coral revive coming so I will dip and eliminate any pest potentials.

I will do less of a water change as you say from now. I have also been recording my readings and the only thing that fluctuates is my mag which I've started dosing now. It went from 1600 to 1440 in 2-3 days. At one point it was down to 1080 within two weeks.

How could I tell I'd the birds nest polyps are still there? The thing is so white I can barely tell. If there was polyps would they still be pink and sticking out from the white skeleton?

 

[epicurus84]

You can take a picture and zoom in for the polyps.

If you can't see them they might be gone...

 

[ashish]

when my birdness started growing algae on it's bleach section - thats when you know they are dead for sure. I have a magnify glass and this really helps zoom into there polyps. Since your tank is fairly young you might just need to wait before adding more sps. I would add some colorful easier LPS first. I personally love hammers, brain warm, deresa clam, etc. These will live with no problem with swinging parameters and lack of biological filter (aslong as your lighting is good, which it is). They also don't lose color as fast as sps or need constant monitoring of parameters. They say all your parametes can be stable and your tank is clean but sps do best in a mature aquarium (this is true). Birdnest can be easy for some tanks and hard for others, all depends on what specie you get lucky with. When your ready to try some sps buy larger pieces that are more hardy such as monti's cap/digita and stryopora, if you want acro's start with bushy kind as they tend to do better then the others (also easier to see if they are getting good flow).

Don't feel discouraged because everyone runs into problems. I'd purchase easier to keep corals based on how they respond to actinic lighting. The one's I mentioned are stunning and more interesting then my sps.

 

[kupadupapupa]

Well there was definitely some green calcerous algae growing on the birds nest. I just fragged of the tips and glued them to some rubble, hopefully they'll survive.

 

[danil]

I've already taken the reactor offline, so do you think I can just keep proper alk/cal levels by just doing the bi weekly water changes? Or would those water changes still take away too many nutrients?

I've also stepped up my feeding a week or two ago by feeding reef chili as well as feeding frozen twice a day when I can because of my anthias.

Every tank is unique and no one can tell you how many ml of alk/cal you have to dose. Plus this amount is dynamic value and could change. You have to come up with numbers by testing your water parameters. The problem with Kalk reactors - you can't control it if used along with ATO. So that's why I was saying you should be better switching to other system you can dial in for your needs with easy.
About nutrients. Take it slow and don't overshoot your target of few ppm of nitrates. When you get your ALK under control you can skip WC but keep testing your water for ALK, Nitrates and Phosphates.

 

[kupadupapupa]

Every tank is unique and no one can tell you how many ml of alk/cal you have to dose. Plus this amount is dynamic value and could change. You have to come up with numbers by testing your water parameters. The problem with Kalk reactors - you can't control it if used along with ATO. So that's why I was saying you should be better switching to other system you can dial in for your needs with easy.
About nutrients. Take it slow and don't overshoot your target of few ppm of nitrates. When you get your ALK under control you can skip WC but keep testing your water for ALK, Nitrates and Phosphates.

Ok I will test my water and see what I come up with. If in fact I do have to dose and water changes aren't enough I will look into buying some dosing pumps.

I will post my test results probably this weekend since I'm working alot of overtime currently. I can barely get one hour of tank viewing this week, lol.

 

[kupadupapupa]

So I did my tests and here is what I came up with. The only thing I dosed was magnesium because that falls approx. 20ppm per day.

4/10- mag 1600, alk 9, cal 480
4/21- mag over 1600, alk 7, cal 500.
Phosphates and nitrates still undetectable after two weeks of not running gfo. I also don't change filter socks for a week at a time, you'd think there'd be some nitrates showing.

I was out of town for 3 days and when I got home I figured my mag was low so I added some but a little too much. I finished the bottle so it was probably all the concentrate that settled at the bottom of the bottle which caused the magnesium to skyrocket like that.

What I find weird is that the calcium actually went up over these two weeks. Could it have been the chloride in the magnesium that raised the calcium 20 ppm?

 

[danil]

It's a good start. Keep checking your levels and you will get your tank consumption. You can use BRS calculator http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/reef-calculator to get some idea how much should be added to compensate let's say one week of consumption.
Your magnesium is kinda high. The ideal value for a reef tank is 1250-1350. Since Mag, Alk and Cal are all related I would recommend to bring Mag to it's normal level first then start working on Alk and Cal. Your Mag level is not deadly but some fish/corals can be irritated and Mag level will effect how much Alk/Cal you have to put to change their levels. I would do few WC to get everything in balance. It's an easy way. Also most of us don't dose Mag at all or do it manually once a week or once a month. It does get low eventually but nothing compare to Alk or Cal so once in proper range you can stop testing for it for some time. Usually once per months is enough.

For some basic (no graphs! ) tutorial about Mag vs Alk vs Cal check this BRS video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI52IyBtjp0

GL