STN help! and questions

[wrimda]

OK Have STN on more and more corals.

We have a 150 G MIXED reef. Has been set up for 18 months.
Parameters are, and stay pretty stable.
alk 7.3 and stays stable with a couple of spikes at 9 on two occasions over the 18 months.

SG 1.026 stable
Cal 425
mag 1400
Nitrate <.02
all Salifert
P04 0.00 (hanna) was fighting some hair alghe issues about 1-5 months ago. but was not showing on the Hanna meter, but must have been present.

As I said before we have a mixed reef about 35 SPS colonys, 3 frogspawns, mush, Z's & P's, some other various softies.

We have some SPS colony's that have grown from a 1" frag to 8", 10", and 12" nice colony's! Birdsnests, Montapora cap & Digi, Acro frags like Red Prostrata, Joe the coral, Many Stags, and Hawkins, Ice Fire, and some Mille's all growing well.

Had a Red bug problem about 6 monts ago and treated w / interseptor.

Here is my thoughts and questions?

1. 1 month ago we upgraded our skimmer from a RO ext 200 to a RO 3000i cone and the new skimmer pulls much more skimmate!
Hair alge is gone! but some of the ricordias were dying off, maybe less neutrients.
2. Are the acro's being starved? or Softies being stressed and maybe a problem with Allelopathy?

We usually do not run carbon steady. That being said , last week I noticed our Hawkins colony that went from a 1" frag to about 3X2 had a dying branch. Later that eve I noticed the same thing in the middle of our Joe the coral (8") and also our Red Prostrada (8" table) so we cut off the RTN and changed out the carbon that had been in the tank for about 3 months. Things looked like it stopped for about a week.
Now back worse than before spreading to more corals.

We are lucky in a way that we started a Zeo cube about 6 weeks ago and have been putting frags of most the corals in the the ZEO tank as backup.

Any thoughts?????

wrimda

 

[Gumma 1]

Which type of gac are you running? If Kent,I know they had a problem and a recall not long ago.

 

[wrimda]

ROX .08 carbon

 

[wrimda]

Any other sujestions??

 

[Tracey2]

I think I would very slowly raise the alk, when its at 7 there is no room for error. How's your flow, same as usual? Any stagnant area's. I recently had stn, still not 100% what caused it but I did have a snail stuck in my drain pipe slowing flow.

 

[jasimek]

is this stn? pink birdsnest....not pink, but not brown either...kind of in between. placed upper half of tank. under 3 ai sol blue led's. had for about a month and a half. base has a greenish tint to it as well as do a few of the branches? what should i do with this?

cal 450
alk 10.4 dkh
mag 1400
salinity 1.026
temp 78

 

[wrimda]

I think I would very slowly raise the alk, when its at 7 there is no room for error. How's your flow, same as usual? Any stagnant area's. I recently had stn, still not 100% what caused it but I did have a snail stuck in my drain pipe slowing flow.

Thank you Tracey2,
Flow has not changed in the tank, although thre is a couple low flow areas. Flow as far as circulation through the sump and tank has not changed. I will get the Alk back up to 8.
It was sujested on another site to change back to our old skimmer and I think this is a good idea.

Thanks again
wrimda

 

[Gumma 1]

If you are using Salifert to test alk,I would double check your results with a different brand.I found the new Salifert alk kit was reading higher than true reading.La Motte makes a good alk test .