Tank is in a funk, need some ideas.....

I'm colorblind but pretty sure it's green. There is still some bright green cyano and brown snot but a fraction of what it was when the tank was doing well, go figure! I'm assuming the Prodibio is helping on that front.
 
rovster said:
That's one of those things that's floating in the back of my mind. Can you get a 0 TDS reading if chloramine or ammonia is making it through? My filters are about 3 months old and I always check the water with a handheld meter both at the beginning and end of the water making session.
Click to expand...

Yes you can still get a 0 TDS with chloramines. You need a separate chloramine test kit.

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/insta-test-free-total-chlorine-strips-lamotte.html

Though, I am not sold on that being the problem --even if you do have them. So many reefers do not test or treat for them. But, it's worth a try.

Here's the link for sodium nitrate too:
http://www.dudadiesel.com/choose_item.php?id=1sn

Do you notice a slight rebound after a water change? Like the above user noted, it will often by the monticaps looking a little less "dusty".
 
I am planning a large waterchange later today. I also took some pics yesterday that I just uploaded this morning. Stay tuned for some pics of ragged coral:(
 
rovster said:
That's one of those things that's floating in the back of my mind. Can you get a 0 TDS reading if chloramine or ammonia is making it through? My filters are about 3 months old and I always check the water with a handheld meter both at the beginning and end of the water making session.
Click to expand...

Yes, chloramines, chlorine, ammonia, etc. will not show up as tds. That's why I used to get confused... My tds would be zero, I know my stuff with husbandry, my tank would be super stable, but corals would decline. Water changes seemed to make things worse sometimes. But changing the rodi filters would show immediate improvement. That's how I tracked it back to the rodi water quality. I know chloramines are not a big deal for some people, but I swear that they have a bad effect on my tank when the chloramines filters are exhausted. It seems like you know what you're doing, and I feel like I've been in the same situation as you... Stable water parameters, not a newbie, know what you're doing, have declining corals no matter what you try, etc.

I've spent so much time in the past trying all kinds of things when my corals start showing signs of decline, but when everything else is in check and stable, it has come down to replacing some/all of the rodi filter even if I didn't think they should be exhausted yet.

FYI... I have not had luck with lamotte's total chlorine test strips to determine when my catalytic carbon cartridge is exhausted. I think my eyes can't see the color differences well... Especially when comparing 1 ppm versus 0 ppm. It all looks the same to me. But my corals let me know.
 
OK, you've convinced me. I appreciate the post, you seem to get what I'm going through. I will change my filters for the next water changing session. I changed them all right after the crash despite them not being but 6 months old. That said, before I started with the chloramine filters, my membrane got shot rather quickly and I would burn through DI resin like no tomorrow. My resin is still that blue color, as opposed to before it would start to turn brown after just a few sessions. Maybe I should just change the carbon block? Thoughts?
 
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Depending on what prodibio you're using, it's just carbon dosing in cute, expensive little glass vials. Dosing Bioptim and Biodigest is just carbon dosing with the superfluous addition of vials of bacteria... You starting this on a tank with already low nutrients and running GFO and GAC 24/7 is the issue in my opinion. Hard to say for sure without knowing your feeding regimen and fish load, but this is what I would be looking at first and foremost.

Your PO4 was probably on the rise because you drove nitrogen so low that carbon dosing was no longer removing much PO4.
 
OK, as promised, some pictures.

First one is my Slimer. It survived the crash, but barely. Lost a LOT of the glow and had some recession.....

Here is POST crash, but looking decent.


Here is yesterday. See how ragged it looks. You can even appreciate some growth but its lost all its glow, and has STN...



Blue Tort Pre-Crash...



Post crash and recovering(about 6-8 weeks)....



Good Bye Tort!



TDF POST crash...


Now with base recession...



More STN...


Looking Flat, Burnt tips...
 
Sunset monti was FULLY recovered after crash and was one of the first to start showing signs that something was amiss...This thing went from almost dead after crash, to looking beautiful again, to looking like this....



PokerStar and Rainbow monti. Same as the Sunset. Survived crash, regained their bright blue bases, and now gone. I think that blue is new. They do look better today, but polyps are mostly retracted....
 
This mille used to be amazing...


Burnt Efflo...


Burnt and flat!


Same coral 6-8 weeks post crash was developing nice yellow tips...



I can go on and on, but these pics should be pretty representative of what's going on...
 
Peter Eichler said:
Depending on what prodibio you're using, it's just carbon dosing in cute, expensive little glass vials. Dosing Bioptim and Biodigest is just carbon dosing with the superfluous addition of vials of bacteria... You starting this on a tank with already low nutrients and running GFO and GAC 24/7 is the issue in my opinion. Hard to say for sure without knowing your feeding regimen and fish load, but this is what I would be looking at first and foremost.

Your PO4 was probably on the rise because you drove nitrogen so low that carbon dosing was no longer removing much PO4.
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I started the Prodibio because I wanted the bacteria just in case I was in for another bloom. I was hoping that would sort of combat that. I also had the feeling my nutrients were high given the overall darkening of all my acros.

This tank never registered nitrates. To be honest, I was feeding the tank excessively. I had introduced 2 queen anthias and I was dumping food in there to get them feeding. My nitrate was registering 0 and at the time my phos was still holding at around 0.04ish. Once I started the Prodibio, I backed off the GFO and that's when I saw it rise.

Fish load is pretty heavy:
Powder Blue (med/lrg)
Yellow Tang (med)
Flame angel
2 clowns
2 b/g chromis
Purple chromis
2 swissguard basslets
2 purple queen anthias
2 helfrichi firefish
Possum wrasse
Yellow goby
Royal Gramma

I feed usually 2 small feedings during work days, and 3-4 on weekends. Nori every day for tangs. At night depending on how the tank was looking, Acropower, Pohls, CoralVit. I add ReefRoids to my "Food Blend". Food consists of a base of home made food, and I add mysis, bloodworms and sometimes baby brine. For a while, I thought I was feeding an obscene amount, but corals were looking good and my tests were reading fine. I also do not have a bunch of nuisance algae. I hope this clarifies things a bit...
 
Sorry about the baroge of posts. I did a 40 gal water change today. Tank looks really clean. There is some cyano and brown snot, but I've had cleaner tanks. We'll see how things respond. Tomorrow I will run a bunch of tests again and at this point its a wait and see. I also turned down the flow to pre-crash levels but I doubt that is the issue. There is still awesome flow, just not as chaotic as it was.
 
Those photos totally look like a tank that has too much being stripped out of the water via carbon dosing and "chemical" filtration. STN, muted colors, burnt tips... The sunset monti really suports that for me. As I've seen time and time again with that corals as well as other orange montis, that when nutrients go too low, they start to lose their deep coloration.

So what exactly are you dosing from prodibio? Also, I must say, the whole bacterial bloom causing a crash in the first place doesn't make much sense, nor does the thought of dosing more bacteria to offset or prevent another.
 
Peter Eichler said:
Those photos totally look like a tank that has too much being stripped out of the water via carbon dosing and "chemical" filtration. STN, muted colors, burnt tips... The sunset monti really suports that for me. As I've seen time and time again with that corals as well as other orange montis, that when nutrients go too low, they start to lose their deep coloration.

So what exactly are you dosing from prodibio? Also, I must say, the whole bacterial bloom causing a crash in the first place doesn't make much sense, nor does the thought of dosing more bacteria to offset or prevent another.
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Peter, I respect your opinion and would probably take your advice as gospel. You have one of my favorite tanks. The only thing is all these problems started when I was [what I thought] overfeeding and before the Prodibio. This started maybe 7-8 weeks ago. I started the Prodibio about 5 weeks ago. I do think that with the Prodibio, increased GFO and limited feeding I am stripping the tank currently. I do feel I can do with some increased feeding and as of yesterday I started increasing feeding. I have dealt with starving corals in the past and in general they pale out on me. These corals were darkening. Asfar as the Prodibio, I'm dosing the BioDigest and BioPtim at the recommended doses. I'm not doing the weekly "clean" but bi-weekly. I have always and continue to do weekly water changes. Usually 10-12 gallons. I do think that as of today, a couple of corals look like maybe they are getting better, but this whole time its been a slow decline no matter what I do. Like I said previously, the corals looked like there was too many nutrients. Theyve had that brown grey turdish look. Would love a reply. Thanks Peter!
 
rovster said:
Peter, I respect your opinion and would probably take your advice as gospel. You have one of my favorite tanks. The only thing is all these problems started when I was [what I thought] overfeeding and before the Prodibio. This started maybe 7-8 weeks ago. I started the Prodibio about 5 weeks ago. I do think that with the Prodibio, increased GFO and limited feeding I am stripping the tank currently. I do feel I can do with some increased feeding and as of yesterday I started increasing feeding. I have dealt with starving corals in the past and in general they pale out on me. These corals were darkening. Asfar as the Prodibio, I'm dosing the BioDigest and BioPtim at the recommended doses. I'm not doing the weekly "clean" but bi-weekly. I have always and continue to do weekly water changes. Usually 10-12 gallons. I do think that as of today, a couple of corals look like maybe they are getting better, but this whole time its been a slow decline no matter what I do. Like I said previously, the corals looked like there was too many nutrients. Theyve had that brown grey turdish look. Would love a reply. Thanks Peter!
Click to expand...

It's a tough call... To me, Acropora that are exposed to higher "nutrients" are often less colorful, but usually look happy as can be when it comes to tissue health. It's a bit of a generalization, but it's something I've observed time and time again over the years. I've been keeping SPS since the early 90's, this whole "burnt tips" thing is something I never observed in a single sps in an aquarium until skimmers improved greatly and people started messing with carbon dosing and routinely driving nutrients really low. People want to blame alkalinity swings and higher alkalinity on a number of maladies in this hobby, but that's also something that came to be when we started driving nutrients really low. It used to be routine to keep a healthy SPS tank at 10-12 dKH. So, whats the problem, the alkalinity level, or the nutrient level? Anyways, getting a bit off track... :P

Your timing that you pointed out doesn't really eliminate low nutrients, in particular low nitrogen as not being the problem. Consider this...

1.) Your tank crashes
2.) Nitrogen is driven higher from the die off
3.) This along with water changes fuels corals to recover
4.) As available nitrates and nitrogen are used up corals start to decline
5.) You falsely diagnose this as a reaction to high nutrients
6.) You start carbon dosing and this only makes matters worse

Just something to consider, maybe I'm way off on this. Best of luck getting this figured out!

Lastly, I'd get a cheap API kit and see if it's coming close to lining up with your checker.
 
I am 70-80% certain it's due to NO3 defecit. Dose a little....don't make me beg. Overfeeding did not raise your NO3...tank is too clean! Your description sounds identical to problem I had. Here are some picks of my monti (I don't have any of the other sps, but they looked just like yours):

Before NO3 doss and after....
 

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I'm still getting through the dosing NO3 thread. I did notice that over the last couple of days tank is looking really clean, which may not be a good thing. I did notice that some of the more healthy corals are starting to lean towards the pale side which is what I expected. My phos this morning was 0.03 which is about as low as I'd like to go. Over the last couple of days I did go back to feeding more and started adding some AcroPower. I did notice one coral I've had for a year that hasn't done anything is starting to shoot up some tips. Maybe its wishful thinking. With some corals the damage is already done. We'll see if they recover. My Palmers Blue Mille is back to bright blue and has good polyp extension. All the "burnt" corals are still burnt. I'll keep things updated and possibly post some new pics in a week or 2. Thanks for all the help thus far.

DG, if you don't mind, what did you end up dosing KNO3 or NaNO3? Where did you get it, how did you mix it up and how much did you dose? Thanks....
 
rovster said:
I'm still getting through the dosing NO3 thread. I did notice that over the last couple of days tank is looking really clean, which may not be a good thing. I did notice that some of the more healthy corals are starting to lean towards the pale side which is what I expected. My phos this morning was 0.03 which is about as low as I'd like to go. Over the last couple of days I did go back to feeding more and started adding some AcroPower. I did notice one coral I've had for a year that hasn't done anything is starting to shoot up some tips. Maybe its wishful thinking. With some corals the damage is already done. We'll see if they recover. My Palmers Blue Mille is back to bright blue and has good polyp extension. All the "burnt" corals are still burnt. I'll keep things updated and possibly post some new pics in a week or 2. Thanks for all the help thus far.

DG, if you don't mind, what did you end up dosing KNO3 or NaNO3? Where did you get it, how did you mix it up and how much did you dose? Thanks....
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I don't recall the exact dose...though, I am sure dose varies from tank to tank since some tanks might assimilate it immediately and some might not (clearly the dose in a non-living system is always the same, but I imagine some tanks alter the chemical more rapidly than others). I added one teaspoon of Sodium Nitrate to my 75g and the same to my new 200g and got almost identical bumps in my NO3 testing.

I got NaNO3 from a Dudadisel.com (just make sure u order sodium nitrATE....not nitrITE. I almost made that error in the link).

But I doubt the source matters much. Using such a tiny amount.

I just tossed it undissolved right into my sump.
 
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