Tank about to crash!!!! Please help with any ideas

jayblock

New member
In the past few week ssome corals were doing great while others are dying . It started when my mature green star polyps completely died off and my pulsing xenia started burning off too. i figured it was just xenia doing its thing since it always seems to die off and come back twice as fast. anyway i also watched a mystery acro completely died too yet its sister ( the other half of the same colony) sitting right next to it survived and is doing fine. my zoooz, mushrooms, leathers, other acro's, monti cap, are all doing great. the other day my garf bonzai crapped out and i just noticed one branch to another acro colony is starting to die. now that you have gotten the point with some acros dying and some thriving, i have tested all my levels and cacium is at 400, KH 9.0, Salinity .026, nitrates undetected, and my phosphates are high, last time Joe tested them they were at 2.5 I figure the phosphates to be the problem overall. I bought Rowa phosphate remover after last using Phosban. I figured the Phosban was completely used up. I filled the entire 500mg container of Rowa into the bulk reef 2 stage GFO unit. I figured i would see results in no time. I tested the Phosphates with after a week and it seems they are not lowered at all. What can you guys reccommend i do? should i try dosing with Vodka, i never tried it but at this point i must do something before my entire tank is wiped out. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. feel free to ask questions regarding this thread..
Thanking you in advance
Jay
 
If you have the same species of coral in the same tank and one is dieing and another is doing fine then it would sound to me that it is a parasite or some other type of infestation? Although I would do water changes once a week anyway.

Good luck.
 
What have you done different lately?
Change food, start a new container of salt, chemical?
Are you regulating the temperature?

Your kh and ph seem good.

I agree with Wally and would start by doing water changes, but a lot of them.
Just not one big one at once. The animals are already stressed out from something.

It could just be that something caused the GSP to die and the ammonia spike from that is causing further death like a domino effect.

If you use carbon, do not go too aggressively. You will bleach all of your corals.

Post pictures when you can.
 
I already started doing some water changes and i havent done anything different in the past few weeks. If anything I changed out my phosphate remover.
 
Do you have MH? If so check the bulbs possibly a crack in the protective lense? How about current leak? Do you have a picture of the stuff that is dieing?
Do you have an Anemone?

Agree with Reef Junkie on the carbon. My coral really started growing when I started using carbon. It got rid of the yellow tint and let alot more light in I assume and also cleaned up any poison from coral or anything else in the tank. This may not be a direct fix but anything that helps is worth doing.
 
Is it a possible overdose of Rowaphos? A whole container of the 500ml treats 500 gallons of water. I am not sure if this could be it but you may want to research it as a possibility.
 
2.5 ppm for Po4 is extremely high. Heck, any level above 1.0 ppm is kind of devastating for SPS in general.
High high is your water temperature?
If your running 81 or above combined with high Po4, this could be your mitigating factors.
 
I would defintly run carbon, you never know if a contaminate got into the tank, even from buring food etc can harm a reef tank.

I always do water changes not big ones but small ones when I have a problem, every day or every other day.

You could have easily shocked your system by bringing phospates down so quickly, I really think the key to reef keeping isnt always the levels but keeping whatever levels you choose to keep them at. When Rowaphos first came out I started using it, and it shocked my system, it pulls the phosphates out so quickly.

Are you sure all your test kits are ok, I hate test kits sometimes they are the problem.

Did you test ammonia or nitrites, the dieing off of corals could have sent your tank into a mini cycle. In which case the small water changes should help over a week or two.

Good luck.
 
Everyone has some very interesting questions, starting from the top, here it goes...
my phoshpate levels now are 2.5 which i belive to be higher because when my salifert test kit read 1 joes spectrometer read 2.5 so i expect them to be at the worst level now. my MH are fine and only a few months old. I dont have an anemone. I thought the point of the Rowa was it doest put phosphates back into the water, i did use 500ml which i read would bring the levels down by 2ppm. my water temp. has been running around 81degreees, i already run carbon on my 2 stage bulk reef GFO/Carbon reactor, and i dont know how it could have shocked the system besides being higher than before, definitely not lower unless my PH salifert kit is way out of wack and having sometimes reads high and other times reads low. i also have seen a little red slime on a few rocks, after blowing it off with a sea squirt it came back a little again nothing overwhelming and none found on the sand but i figured it was all due to a raise in my Phosphates. I am thinking of taking out half of the ROWA and maybe its just too much for the flow to run through all the ROWA media. i do 15 gal every 2 weeks and always have, its a 90 gal tank, so i always opted to do smaller changes more frequently. thank you for all your questions and comments, keep them coming!!!
 
I don't know exactly why they say to use carbon at lower volume when first starting? However it is written on every container of carbon I own. ESV tells you to slowly add more carbon and to not over do it. It probably has to do with changing parameters too quickly.
Are you sure your ph bounce isn't too extreme? Getting a Pinpoint ph monitor was one of the best investments I made. I never realized my ph was so high in the evening when I add my 2 part. Now I add the two part in the morning and or late a night which keeps the ph between 8.1 and 8.4. I also had a reaql hard time reading those test kits for ph, not sure they are very accurate?
How are you testing your SG? I was using one of those mechanical float arm things and found out that it was reading .03 lower than the true reading. Only use a refractometer now.
 
I have added carbon months ago, i filled the carbon to the top of the reactor, but i dont expect that the carbon is a problem in this situation, One problem i do have is low PH but if i try to raise the PH my KH and Calcium get out of wack, i have been using a refractometer for a long time now. And i hear ya on the salifert Phosphate kit but i dont have the money to buy a spectrometer to test my phosphates. Does anyone suggest dosing with vodka to gradually lower my phosphates? if so please explain because i am not even sure how to properly dose.
 
i woul.d reduce the ROWA asap and get on somme water changes @ 10%daily till you see some good results .and then begin to get some carbon in the equasion . anything missing that was near the tank? something spill ? sprayed perfume or cleaners ? my wife is notorious for that stuff and i can "catch"her when she sprays just by the look of my corals so there is certainly something that the corals dont like . i also wouls get that 81 degree water down into the 70s but that just my liking ,probably not hurting anything there .
 
Jayblock, If you are thinking the phosphates are a problem I would imagine you should have some sort of algea growth to support the theory? How about a refuge, do you have one?
I put a bunch of cheatos in my 29g reef when the phosphates and nitrate were hard to keep up with (begining of cycle). I didn't have a refuge so I put them in a hangon breeder tank right inside the main tank. Believe it or not it grew and seem to help keep my numbers under control.
 
yes i a refugium and i switched out my calerpa with cheato because i was told they eat up the phosphates quicker and grow better since my calerpa was not growing so much.
 
The container of rowaphos says 500 ml removes 2ppm of phosphate but inside the instructions state how much you should use per gallon of aquarium volume. If you use the suggested amount it will lower them overtime not all at once. Definetatly take some out.
 
Instructions:
Use media a very fine filter bag or sandwiched between two layers of fine filter floss (on the incoming or outgoing flow).
In new or established aquariums where the phosphate levels are high, first measure the level in the water. Assume that 2-4 times that amount may be bound up in the substrate and adjust by dividing the recommended aquarium size by 2-4 times.
Freshwater Tanks: 100 ml treats up to 200 gallons, 250 ml treats up to 500 gallons, 500 ml treats up to 1000 gallons, and 1000 ml treats up to 2000 gallons.
*******Saltwater Tanks: 100 ml per every 100 gallons *****(250 ml treats up to 250 gallons, etc.)
Do not rinse before use. In some cases the use of this product can turn the aquarium water slightly brown in color due to the dislocation of finer particles of the material. This is completely harmless for fish or any other organisms and will disappear after a short period. Do not sprinkle product directly into the aquarium. Never place directly into water without first surrounding it with a sponge or filter floss.
 
One more thing to add what are the TDS coming out of your RO/DI system? I had red slime and xenia dieing a couple of months ago when I noticed the TDS coming out of my RO system for the makeup water was = 046. What reminded me was the fact that I just checked the system and it was 025 tds coming out. Strange because the three mech filters are only 2 months old and the membrane is 8 months. Checking on how to back flush the membrane now.
 
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