Tank isn't well, please help!

ctopal

ctopal

New member
My tank seems to be going downhill quickly and I'm not sure why/what I can do. I'm hoping someone smarter than me sees something in all of this. I know it's long, but wanted to try and give as much info for trouble shooting as possible. Thanks in advance for your input.

90 gallon tank, I think the sump is a 30. Running new LEDs and a decent sized tunze skimmer, live rock and live sand. I'm pretty good about changing 10 gallons out every two weeks along with passive carbon and phosguard. I add pickling lime to my auto top off.

At least a month ago started having an algae problem, a lot of long thin GHA, particularly off my new mag rocks. Some tufty stuff off of one other rock and some fan like stuff off some of my equipment and one other rock spot.

7/31 got a blue zoo order in to boost up my cleaning crew, also a sea hare and two new fish a blenny and pyramid butterflyfish. I didn't quarantine, used safety stop on them. All seemed well, a little fighting between my kohl tang and the butterfly but it died down quickly. A day or two later my tang stopped eating. Found him dead on 8/3 - no apparent markings or disease. I changed 15 gallons out after this.

On 7/31 my alk was low 2.5 meg/l and dosed reef buffer, my calcium was low at 375 and my magnesium also low at 1200 which I dosed with seachem mag. I've noticed trouble with mag lately, I need to get into a routine with this due to my kalkwasser I believe.

8/9 - Noticed a few corals losing color. White patches showing up on my newer red monti cap and my orange digitata definitely lightened. Some softies were closed up, mainly Kenya trees, but most corals looked good. Long hair algae looked crinkly and different. I don't bother testing phosphate, I must have it with the algae but it eats it anyways so I think those tests give misleading results. Water Parameters:

Nitrite, Nitrate, Ammonia - 0
PH - 8.2 (always seems stable here)
Mag - down to 1180, started dosing again
Calcium - 400
Alk- 4 meg/l - just right according to test
Salinity 1.023
Temp 80.8

Changed out 20 gallons since corals looked bad. I got the idea to add pickling lime to my makeup tank water to try and boost calcium. I think this was a bad idea. It didn't settle well and then clouded up my tank a bit. Nothing seemed to react bad to this directly though.

8/10 - I come home and the monti cap is looking worse, digitata seems better still have softies retracted and my nice yellow monti confusa which looked fine last night has all polyps retracted and patches of the body look discolored/dead. My sea hare I believe was eaten by my anemone today. The anemone looks totally shrunken down and I can't find the sea hare.

I change out about 7 gallons, all I've got left. After, I dumped out and cleaned the makeup water tank of all the pickling lime. And the long green hair algae in my tank has totadlly changed condition, it's crinkling up, brittle and dry, not slimy anymore and breaking off of the rocks as I grab it. I changed my carbon and phosguard too.

All fish seem well (2 clowns, hawkfish, butterflyfish, blenny) many corals seem unaffected: zoas. all acans, elegance coral, hammers, chalice, toadstools, mushrooms, bubble coral, gsp - Only thing really getting affected are my montis.
 
Tank age... Lighting schedule ... ? Temp is high by my book but not super high and salinity is a little low again by my book I target 77.5 & 1.025 .... When did you get the "new LEDs" could be lighting shock what is your water source how old are your filters
 
seems like your doing a lot of different things to keep this tank going. a few questions to start off with.

1. when was the tank set up?
2. how much rock do you have and what kind. lbs?
3. what kind of reef are you trying to keep? soft, mix, sps?
4. what kind of salt do you use?
5. list all chemicals your dosing.

one thing you will notice right off hand is there will be a lot of suggestions on what to do but pick the suggestions from those who already have successful tanks long term to keep your sanity. i used to follow all suggestions and gave up until i learned to only follow success instead of options =)
 
Set the tank back up in Jan or Feb, transferred my 30 gallon livestock to it in March after cycle.
I use the reefbreeders calculated light schedule that simulates real daylight, it ramps up and down. Lights were new with setup this year. Water is well with a rodi, all new filters back in March or April. Resin is still green. I'll check the tds tomorrow. I'm wondering if all the mag fluctuation and low calcium is the culprit for the coral. Thank you.
 
first thing i did notice is 10g every two weeks is not enough.
10% a week
20-25% every two weeks
carbon will reduce/prohibits soft coral growth.
salinity is low for a reef.
 
Sounds like you need to get tank stable. Weekly 10% water changes with blowing out the rocks and siphoning the sand will not only help get rid of the algae but help with keeping your parameters more stable.
 
You mentioned your montis are the only ones being affected. Have you bought any montis recently? Do you dip everything before you put them in your tank?
Check for monti eating nudis.
 
I'm going for mixed reef. I''ve used IO reef Crystals only. Only regularly dose pickling lime with my ato. Need to get consistent with the seachem magnesium. I dosed the seachem reef buffer, it's old, maybe that's an issue. Not sure on rock, but a decent amount, it's built up.
 
I can go to weekly changes for stability. I''ve recently purchased montis, but from very nice tanks. I did use coral dip. My month confusa definitely has dead spots, there are whole areas no longer fluorescing under my blue lights :(
 
mix reef is cool but theres disadvantages to it. a mix reef will sway one way or another. more nutrients means awesome growing softies and brown sps, low nutrients means nice looking sps but slow growing softies.
To get it perfect go for easy to keep sps that keeps its its colors in hight nutrient tank. birdnest, montis, digi, ect.

to get rid of the hair algae the best mag to use is kent marine mag. theres something in that solution besides the mag the kills off the hair algae but you need to raise it to 1600-1800. Mexican turbo snails is also a good solution. you may be experiancing the hair algae due to the first year cycle.

theres 4 types of blooms you should expect with in your first year after setting up.
Hair algae
bacteria
cyno
sometimes biosis
 
also, newer leds over sps means pastel looking sps until they get used to it because most leds give off a completely different spectrum then any t5 or mh.
 
a few other things i noticed from your first post. the sea hare is dangerous to keep, if it dies it could give off more toxins then what your system can handle at one time. 2, most butterfly fish arent reef safe so make sure that one is. 3. the safty stop solution- check the bottle to make sure theres no copper to that medicine. 4. is the 90g and sump brand new or used? if its used make sure copper based medicines were not used to treat fish illnesses in the past.
 
ctopal said:
I can go to weekly changes for stability. I''ve recently purchased montis, but from very nice tanks. I did use coral dip. My month confusa definitely has dead spots, there are whole areas no longer fluorescing under my blue lights :(
Click to expand...

Sounds like it could be monti eating nudis.
 
maybe give this a try for a month or two to see if your tank conditions will stablize, stop dosing all solutions and just do 10% weekly water changes for two weeks. if things look better then do it for another 2 weeks. while your doing this, add some macro algae to your fuge if you have one.

after the two weeks have past and you still low on cal, mag and alk. pick up bulk reef supply 2 part along with mag or use kent marine mag for the hairalgae. i only used bulk reef supply for the past 8 years with no issues. The only other two part solution i trust is b-ionic but that raises your salinity over time if you dont check it.
 
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