STN: I'm In desperate need of advanced help.

[atrain]

I've been tagging along this thread since I had crashed my sps myself and rebuilt. I have been using aquaforest salt for a couple months and it is awesome

 

[twon8]

STN: I'm In desperate need of advanced help.

Increase your flow in tank, feed your fish more and/or get more fish, frequent water changes (instant ocean for me).

I only add fish food and kalk in top off. I run a large Skimmer and occasionally rox carbon. Lots of flow and lots of fish fed several times a day. If I cut back on feeding the sps start to look bad.




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[happyhourhero]

Yeah I think if you would keep it simple, you would have the success you seek.

 

[Bagabaga]

It's seems very brs160 52 weeks of reefing really got to you on this build. They have years of experience with the products the used in that system and even then it was expensive and unnecessary for the success of their system. That roller mat especially seems like a nice but not needed price of equipment. Throwing money at a system and not learning about what makes hem successful will bring the quick downfall and prompt Craigslist listing of equipment from frustration.

Keep it simple and try and learn from the wonderful and experienced people here. You should see success within a year or so of maintaining your system.

 

[malx]

It's seems very brs160 52 weeks of reefing really got to you on this build. They have years of experience with the products the used in that system and even then it was expensive and unnecessary for the success of their system. That roller mat especially seems like a nice but not needed price of equipment. Throwing money at a system and not learning about what makes hem successful will bring the quick downfall and prompt Craigslist listing of equipment from frustration.

Keep it simple and try and learn from the wonderful and experienced people here. You should see success within a year or so of maintaining your system.

I'm a bit offended by this. I didn't ask for your opinion on money or how much my equipment costs. I like playing with equipment, I work in IT and it's what I do. I enjoy having reactors and hard plumbing, my gear runs perfectly and I never have issues with it. It would be great if you can offer some advice about water chemistry/stability which is what my real issue is, and it has nothing to do with if I spent 50 bucks on a check valve or not.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

Just finished reading through the thread. There's some good advice in there and some questionable advice. I would say your STN issues are related to two things:

1. Your tank is new. I couldn't consistently grow Acros until my tank was 12-14 months old. You need a seasoned tank to grow them. I'm not a scientist, so I won't try to explain why.

2. Your Alk is/was too high. I had similar problems the first year I had my tank and I definitely saw improvement when I dropped my Alk to 7-7.5.

Also, regarding adjusting the levels in your WC water. You'll find some of the most experienced reefers on here just use IO. The reason is because they adjust their salt to match their tank and it costs about the same to do that regardless of which salt you use, so might as well use a cheap salt. I mix up 4 water changes worth of salt at a time (40g). I spend a couple days after initial mix up adjusting Mag, Cal and Alk to match what I want, then it's good for the next two months of water changes. And yes, adjusting Alk with muriatic acid is simple and easy. Just make sure you use it in a well ventilated area and wear gloves. I switched from RSCP to IO about 1.5 years ago and have never looked back. My sps love it.

As many have said, just be patient. You'll get there. We all want to rush to results when our tank is new. I was the same way. Once seasoned you'll start seeing results.

 

[malx]

Just finished reading through the thread. There's some good advice in there and some questionable advice. I would say your STN issues are related to two things:

1. Your tank is new. I couldn't consistently grow Acros until my tank was 12-14 months old. You need a seasoned tank to grow them. I'm not a scientist, so I won't try to explain why.

2. Your Alk is/was too high. I had similar problems the first year I had my tank and I definitely saw improvement when I dropped my Alk to 7-7.5.

Also, regarding adjusting the levels in your WC water. You'll find some of the most experienced reefers on here just use IO. The reason is because they adjust their salt to match their tank and it costs about the same to do that regardless of which salt you use, so might as well use a cheap salt. I mix up 4 water changes worth of salt at a time (40g). I spend a couple days after initial mix up adjusting Mag, Cal and Alk to match what I want, then it's good for the next two months of water changes. And yes, adjusting Alk with muriatic acid is simple and easy. Just make sure you use it in a well ventilated area and wear gloves. I switched from RSCP to IO about 1.5 years ago and have never looked back. My sps love it.

As many have said, just be patient. You'll get there. We all want to rush to results when our tank is new. I was the same way. Once seasoned you'll start seeing results.

That's a good idea. I like the idea of adjusting alk prior to using the mix water. I switched my salt from Red Sea to HW Marine Mix

 

[Bagabaga]

Switching salt rapidly is risky. Can cause more coral issues. If I was you I'd stop dosing whatever is removing phosphates and focus on maintaining rock solid water chemistry. I think you are over dosing the trace elements with this zeovit system. It's meant to boost growing corals not start and maintain an ammonia cycle. Maybe redosing your skimmer collection into the tank for a while would help.

It's hard to get a stable reef under a year old and not all systems touted by major purveyors is going to be a home run.

In fact if anything in this hobby was a home run we would all do it and have colorful corals all the time.

Environmental conservation is also a part of our hobby.

 

[malx]

Switching salt rapidly is risky. Can cause more coral issues. If I was you I'd stop dosing whatever is removing phosphates and focus on maintaining rock solid water chemistry. I think you are over dosing the trace elements with this zeovit system. It's meant to boost growing corals not start and maintain an ammonia cycle. Maybe redosing your skimmer collection into the tank for a while would help.

It's hard to get a stable reef under a year old and not all systems touted by major purveyors is going to be a home run.

In fact if anything in this hobby was a home run we would all do it and have colorful corals all the time.

Environmental conservation is also a part of our hobby.

Yes I've pulled back my dosing schedule in half for the elements and by 30% with the ZEOVit core items. Also I switched Salt but I'm doing small weekly water changes so the salt isn't being switched rapidly but all good points.


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[malx]

Hi, All.

So a quick update here. After a few weeks of just leaving stuff alone, I do have some small acro frags that show growth at the base as well as my plating montipora frag that's growing well.

I did lose the large stylo colony. It just STNed over time and I'm about to pull it out. I did get a chance to get a small frag of it that looks like it's doing well.

My alk is down to 6.2
Ca 470
MG 1350.

Also, after some heavier feedings I got my nitrates at 2.5ppm and my phosphates at .08ppm.

I'm going still leave it alone and proceed as usual and try to keep all of these numbers steady for the next few months. A fellow reefer cut me a few of his aquacultured montipora frags that I will try in my tank and see if they grow.

My fish are still freeloaders and don't have jobs yet.

Slow and steady.

Cheers,
Joey

 

[Browndawg80]

How come you're dosing the zeo products? I notice several people have suggested you scrap the zeo and scale things back a little bit which IMO was good advice. Was your initial goal when setting up the tank to come home from work and have a nice looking tank to look at and watch your corals grow or was it to come home from work and have something to tinker with? The reason i ask is because the 2 options don't usually go hand in hand with SPS. The secret is stability and when you're adding all that extra stuff you are just over complicating things.

I work at a coral farm and maintain some beautiful SPS dominant tanks for a living. I've been doing this for 3 years now and the guy that owns the coral farm has been in the hobby for 20+ and what i've learned is that the KISS method works. In a nutshell what we do is run all of our clients tanks BB with lots of flow ( i'm not saying you cant have a successfull tank with sand in it but the sand will make it harder by storing nitrates and leaching them back into the system over time) , lots of light, and we dose ESV Bionic exclusively because it is the only product on the market that also has all the essential trace elements in it. If you're not doing WC's how are you replenishing strontium, Boron, molydendrum, iron etc? That my friend could be a problem.

My advice would be the following;
1. scrap the zeo stuff for now and go KISS on it. There's no reason you should have to settle for a sub-par tank for the next several months waiting for things to settle down especially with all that nice equipment you have on there which is not the problem IMO.

2. Get over your fear of Alk swings and do a large water change to flush all that crap out of there and start fresh. BE AGGRESSIVE! Don't let the tank sit there with your corals slowly going downhill, take it back! We do 40 gallon water changes on all of our clients tanks every 2 weeks with Reef Crystals with zero ill results despite the fact that the salt doesn't always mix up the exact same. The worst mistake i ever made was accidentally swapping out a gallon of calcium on a clients tank and leaving 2 jugs of alk running on the doser for 2 weeks! when i returned 2 weeks later the alk was at 23.0 and the calcium was down to 125! To resolve the issue i hauled *** back to the shop, filled our water container with brand new SW and went back to his house where i did a 100% WC. When it was all said and done i didn't lose a single coral nor have a single piece in the tank show any ill effects whatsoever believe it or not! I'm not trying to start a debate about the existence of alk burn but when i see someone like yourself having problems and thinking its because of a swing from 8.3 up to 8.9 i laugh my *** off as this completely flies in the face of what i've seen firsthand multiple times in many different systems. After the WC try to maintain an alk level 8.5 - 9 and calcium between 400-450. Your Alk being down around 6 right now is a problem IMO.

3. Stop overfeeding the tank. feed the fish what they can eat in 2 or 3 min and thats it. anything extra is just going to break down in your sandbed and lead to more problems down the road.

Also because i didn't see anyone else mention it do you think the angel could be nipping at the porites? that's about the only reason i've seen firsthand that would cause a coral to only expand its polyps at night. same thing happened in my tank when i had a citron goby irritating all my stony's during the day.

Good Luck!

 

[alazo1]

A few years ago I had problems with sps rtn / stn. I was playing around with pappone which is a mix of fresh seafoods. After doing a series of things to make the system more simple I decided to take out pappone and the problem seemed to have disappeared. Oddly, I got the seafood from Whole Foods.

Maybe far reaching but I would not feed any of the fresh seafood except the Mysis that you mention you are feeding.

Other then that I would completely back off Zeovit. I know alot of people have had success but many have not.

 

[ADVRESOURCE]

Simple and stable. I agree that your alk is Low. Do the brs calculator to increase using soda solution or sodium bicarbonate at 1/10 recommended dose. Do daily, slow, in sump until alk is in range and back off.

Do consistent, small, water changes...with large water changes, you have to consider alk, temp, ph, CA but with small, more often, no worries.

When water is good, make sure you have great flow in tank. I do slow return flow, dry skim mate, and lots of in tank power heads.

Then lighting, leds offer greatness but acclimate and go slow. Metal halides are hot and inefficient.

Lastly, feed your coral. Reef nutrition oyster feast, reef chili and reef plankton are all good! I don't feed fish but once with a cube of mysis and reef plankton. Rest, let the fish pick algae.

I selected purposeful fish. Tangs that aren't ick magnets and get along, 6 line and melanarus, diamond goby and lawnmower blenny. Cuc with blue leg, snails and sea hares.

Hope it's all good for you and your sps'.

 

[ADVRESOURCE]

I agree with browndawg80. Get that water stable by changing with new saltwater. Additives are for those whom prefer to not use a water in port export method. Those guys are seasoned reefers that can make adjustments on the fly. Much easier to replenish trace elements with water changes and add the specific additive to achieve great growth and color, which is coral specific.

And don't forget, testing is king whenever your dosing or adding chemicals to your tank.

 

[Randy27]

I agree with twon8, with the exception of the carbon. Personally, I'd ditch the carbon. Either way, feed that tank, hang tough with the lights, let your nits come up a bit, I use kalk in an ato for Ca and keeping that alk stable, but it looks like you've got a Ca reactor sop you should be good there. I had the same issue when I first got into sps years ago. Feed them corals, homie

 

[malx]

I'm proud to announce that my STN problem has been corrected.

I believe that four things have fixed it.

1: Strictly using aquacultured corals. The corals I have been purchasing before have been mariculated. A local reefer told me that it was impossible for him to get maricultured corals to grow in his system and suggested that I try aquacultured only. He gave me some mini colonies of various kinds of birds nest and montipora. After a week they showed significant new growth on a frag rack. After, I added some different kids of montipora and poccilipora, same deal, lots of growth and great color with no dosing adjustments. Finally, I put in some acros two days ago and they are all showing PE.

2: I got rid of my Clown Goby. He's been in the tank for a few months and I've never seen him pick at corals. Then, I put in a rainbow millipora and he went insane for it. The milli would not show PE. I caught him and gave him away, hours later, the millipora was out in its full glory.

3: I changed my aquascape. For those of you who know my system, my MP40s sit kind of low because of the design of the tank I can't put them higher. Instead of having Pukani rocks, I made a Tonga structure that was low and wide. This allows the flow of the pumps to push the water over the coral and not at it. If a coral grows enough where it's getting directly blasted, that is it's own choice and since i'm using smaller frags now, the coral will probably grow in a way that's beneficial for it rather than an entire colony having to adjust.

4: The solution in #3 also solved another issue. Vermetid snails... they were everywhere. I didn't see them directly bothering any coral, but it was only a matter of time. I was sick of picking them off rocks and gluing them shut where I couldn't reach. I made a point when switching out the aquascape to do it in a way where the snails on the old rocks couldn't affect them. My Maxima clam got a few cleanings.

I'm going to let some stuff grow and and fill out with new corals over the next few weeks and then I'll ask my friend to borrow his camera so I can take some good pics.

Thanks for all of your help. It's been such a ride!

Cheers,
Joey

 

[malx]

You guys can read Aquascape thread here: http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36164

 

[bif24701]

I'm proud to announce that my STN problem has been corrected.

I believe that four things have fixed it.

1: Strictly using aquacultured corals. The corals I have been purchasing before have been mariculated. A local reefer told me that it was impossible for him to get maricultured corals to grow in his system and suggested that I try aquacultured only. He gave me some mini colonies of various kinds of birds nest and montipora. After a week they showed significant new growth on a frag rack. After, I added some different kids of montipora and poccilipora, same deal, lots of growth and great color with no dosing adjustments. Finally, I put in some acros two days ago and they are all showing PE.

2: I got rid of my Clown Goby. He's been in the tank for a few months and I've never seen him pick at corals. Then, I put in a rainbow millipora and he went insane for it. The milli would not show PE. I caught him and gave him away, hours later, the millipora was out in its full glory.

3: I changed my aquascape. For those of you who know my system, my MP40s sit kind of low because of the design of the tank I can't put them higher. Instead of having Pukani rocks, I made a Tonga structure that was low and wide. This allows the flow of the pumps to push the water over the coral and not at it. If a coral grows enough where it's getting directly blasted, that is it's own choice and since i'm using smaller frags now, the coral will probably grow in a way that's beneficial for it rather than an entire colony having to adjust.

4: The solution in #3 also solved another issue. Vermetid snails... they were everywhere. I didn't see them directly bothering any coral, but it was only a matter of time. I was sick of picking them off rocks and gluing them shut where I couldn't reach. I made a point when switching out the aquascape to do it in a way where the snails on the old rocks couldn't affect them. My Maxima clam got a few cleanings.

I'm going to let some stuff grow and and fill out with new corals over the next few weeks and then I'll ask my friend to borrow his camera so I can take some good pics.

Thanks for all of your help. It's been such a ride!

Cheers,
Joey

You had a clown goby!? Did you see him in or near your acros? They are well known to nip at SPS and other corals as well. This could have been your #1.

 

[ClownNut]

I'm proud to announce that my STN problem has been corrected.

I believe that four things have fixed it.

1: Strictly using aquacultured corals. The corals I have been purchasing before have been mariculated. A local reefer told me that it was impossible for him to get maricultured corals to grow in his system and suggested that I try aquacultured only. He gave me some mini colonies of various kinds of birds nest and montipora. After a week they showed significant new growth on a frag rack. After, I added some different kids of montipora and poccilipora, same deal, lots of growth and great color with no dosing adjustments. Finally, I put in some acros two days ago and they are all showing PE.

2: I got rid of my Clown Goby. He's been in the tank for a few months and I've never seen him pick at corals. Then, I put in a rainbow millipora and he went insane for it. The milli would not show PE. I caught him and gave him away, hours later, the millipora was out in its full glory.

3: I changed my aquascape. For those of you who know my system, my MP40s sit kind of low because of the design of the tank I can't put them higher. Instead of having Pukani rocks, I made a Tonga structure that was low and wide. This allows the flow of the pumps to push the water over the coral and not at it. If a coral grows enough where it's getting directly blasted, that is it's own choice and since i'm using smaller frags now, the coral will probably grow in a way that's beneficial for it rather than an entire colony having to adjust.

4: The solution in #3 also solved another issue. Vermetid snails... they were everywhere. I didn't see them directly bothering any coral, but it was only a matter of time. I was sick of picking them off rocks and gluing them shut where I couldn't reach. I made a point when switching out the aquascape to do it in a way where the snails on the old rocks couldn't affect them. My Maxima clam got a few cleanings.

I'm going to let some stuff grow and and fill out with new corals over the next few weeks and then I'll ask my friend to borrow his camera so I can take some good pics.

Thanks for all of your help. It's been such a ride!

Cheers,
Joey

- nothing is always. i have no problem keeping and growing maricultured acro whatsoever. just a bit more works(cut off the base, dips, check and remount) i try to get fresh cut frag unmount, lessen the chance any pest hitchike. then all i need to deal with is dips and mount.
- no clown goby, even they don't nip, they will sit at the base of the coral, that might cause issue.
- love the equipment. I am hard plumbed all the way, nothing wrong with love nice equipment. I am an equipment junkie as well.
- every tank is unique, there is no "only" way to skin a cat. no need to wait 12-14 months for acros. as long as you know what you doing and the system is stable. i had done day 1 acro, no issue.(live rock pre-cured) but if you are new to the game, 1-3 months is a good amount of time to let the system stable a little bit more.
- i have luck with peppermint and cleaner shrimp eating vermetid snails, also i only find myself have a vermetid snails problem when i overfeed a lot.

 

[malx]

You had a clown goby!? Did you see him in or near your acros? They are well known to nip at SPS and other corals as well. This could have been your #1.

I had issues before I got the Goby and he didn't bother any of the corals until I put in acros. I had some test colonies of Monti and Serriatipora growing nicely a few weeks ago before I added any acros. He showed no interest in any corals until the acros went in. I got rid of him in less than 24 hours.


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