Tank isn't well, please help!

[aznnutty]

agree with kb1094 about the monti eating nudi or monti eating flatworms

 

[thoughtIKnew]

Those water changes are more than enough as a general rule I stopped doing water changes started testing and dosing and my tank has never looked better. Been 4 months since a water change

 

[james30ct]

Those water changes are more than enough as a general rule I stopped doing water changes started testing and dosing and my tank has never looked better. Been 4 months since a water change

I dont think skipping on water changes is a good idea for someone who already has algae issues.

 

[thoughtIKnew]

I am not saying not to change water when experiencing an issue but as a general water change schedule what he was doing was more than sufficient

 

[triggreef]

Personally imo alk is the most important thing to watch. I'm not familiar with meq measurements as I go by dkh.

That said, i'm pretty sure 2.5 meq to 4 is a very big adjustment. Much bigger than should probably happen in a weeks time even. I'd say the best you can do is get a good alk test like red sea. Keep the alk within say .04 dkh consistently and you'll watch any issues your having disappear.

As for the algae, lighting could very well bigger playing a part. What is your highest setting percentage wise, and for how long?

Keep in mind, you saw my tank the other day, my po4 was over 1.0 per hanna checker & has been for some time. There's no algae in my display....

 

[triggreef]

Oops double post.

But also just to add... bringing alk up seems to be much more stressful on the corals than when it drops. So when raising it up you really should go much slower.

Also as far as the fish go, that joke tang issue could be anything, or nothing. Shipping can be very stressful on fish, & although some would say tangs are generally bullet proof, they aren't. Never know what could have happened to him but it very well could have just been something during shipping, too many elemental changes in a short period. I wouldn't dwell on it. Just keep an eye on your established fish.

 

[triggreef]

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

I don't agree with the first part of this about the nutrients v. Sps colors even though many people swear by that, my tank & many of the recent rotm winners prove that wrong. But everything else I agree 100 percent. Especially about the out breaks to expect in the first year.

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.

Agreed, & it could take months for them to color up under the leds. But we'll worth it in the end imo.

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.

What is the butterfly? Isn't it a pyramid?

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.

Very good advice. I like c-balance because it has many of the minor trace elements. It can take some time to dial in but after it is easy for anyone to keep everything very stable. I don't do much as far as water changes & still have pretty good results. The cost of 2 brs dosing pumps & a year worth of c-balance is much lower than if I were to change 50g of water a week. I'd leave the hobby if I had to do that.

 

[ctopal]

First off, big thanks to everyone for your responses. I’ll try to comment on everything I saw. For now, the water is clear and the coral damage seems to be contained and the same, I was most worried about that. I think the digitata is going to pull through, I’m betting some of this is definitely due to the alk. Honestly, I only did the initial dose and forgot to do the rest, I was shocked it had raised it so much.

1. Butterflyfish was listed as reefsafe on blue zoo, pyramid butterflyfish. I saw that about the sea hare and toxins, I think the water change after helped. I hope my anemone got a big ole stomach ache off of that! Makes sense on the algae texture changing too. I do have chaeto in my refugium in my sump, seems to be ok. There shouldn’t have been any copper that has gotten into this system, I can rule that out.
2. I’ll research the monti eating bugs, thanks for the heads up, they do still seem to be the only ones of issue. I could take 4 of the 5 out and redip, not sure if that would help at this point. My original, the confusa, is totally encrusting on a big rock and is taking the brunt of this 
3. I looked back on my log and the alk hasn’t been very stable. I like the idea of moving to weekly water changes and not messing with anything. Although I’m going to get my magnesium back right while doing this with my seachem. I’m not going to touch a buffer. I’m making up new water now, I’ll do this at 1.024 to slowly raise my salinity.
4. My lighting schedule is 55% max on blue and 50% max on white for 1 hour, it ramps up and down over 10 hours. I just got the club PAR meter yesterday, so I was going to check the intensities this week.

 

[Masedaddy]

With my LED fixture, I only go up to 35% on my white channel. The blue channel goes up to 85% at its max. The LEDs are only at those max intensities for 2 hours then ramp down. IDK what brand LEDs you have but 50% on the white channel seems high.... What height are the lights over the tank? The PAR meter will help immensely, make sure it is set to the right mode for LEDs....

 

[triggreef]

The par meter will shed a lot of light, pun intended. Get that alk stable and try to report back on par. also list how high off the tank and how deep the tank is, as well as what you have for optics. I'd assume 90's since they are reef breeders if I remember right.

Monti's can tolerate a wide range of lighting. They can do ok in low light but the colors on mine really do explode when I move them up. Problem is I cant keep them too high because that space is reserved for acros in my tank and they need it more.

 

[ctopal]

I found something! I found this red worm on the rock that one of my montis was on. Could this be a monti eating worm? I kind of mangled it getting it off the rock and I can't take a pic to save my life. The length is about the width of my pinky nail. It's red and the brown spots I think are where I mangled it. It seems to have some little hairs around the edges, but hard for me to tell. Thoughts? I'm going to head back down now and check my TDS and try to figure out the PAR meter. My confusa is almost totally dead. The digi is still pretty washed out. The other corals I have are looking fine.

 

[ctopal]

I just found something else, different on the plug of another monti. It's tiny, clear but also greenish. It has a body shape, seems kind of chunky and almost the shape of the outline of the letter 8.

 

[ctopal]

The TDS on my rodi water is 5. Is that bad? Time to change the filters?

 

[ctopal]

, Last post before bed I tried the PAR meter, took readings at bottom, middle and top of tank for full light cycle. I have no idea how to interpret this. Each number represents an hour of my lightcycle, once it peaks it reverses the light cycle. I haven't changed this light cycle since around May.

Top: 156, 294, 415, 539, 621, 661, 675
Middle: 50, 90, 120, 165, 180, 200, 210
Bottom: 23, 54, 77, 95, 112, 119, 124

I'll probably retry the middle and bottom without my screen top as the numbers were bouncing all around and I believe it was due to the screen. When I set the meter on top of the screen I got a solid number each time.

Appreciate any input, thanks!

 

[triggreef]

, Last post before bed I tried the PAR meter, took readings at bottom, middle and top of tank for full light cycle. I have no idea how to interpret this. Each number represents an hour of my lightcycle, once it peaks it reverses the light cycle. I haven't changed this light cycle since around May.

Top: 156, 294, 415, 539, 621, 661, 675
Middle: 50, 90, 120, 165, 180, 200, 210
Bottom: 23, 54, 77, 95, 112, 119, 124

I'll probably retry the middle and bottom without my screen top as the numbers were bouncing all around and I believe it was due to the screen. When I set the meter on top of the screen I got a solid number each time.

Appreciate any input, thanks!

The first pic is a red planaria / flatworm. Harmless but unsightly. They are in almost every lfs I've been to & most people's tanks unless they found remedy. Some wrasses well eat them, it took me quite a few before finding a wrasse that eats them & I have so many wrasses now I have no idea which one is doing the job.

The par values look decent. The jumping is from the water movement / refraction. If you turn off pumps you'll get better readings.

So according to what you wrote, your cycle there is 14 hrs? One thing I'd suggest, is being more aggressive on the cycle as far as how fast the intensity goes up & down. So like the first couple hours, very little par. Then go up quickly to your highest number for like 5 hrs in the middle, then dip down again to lower numbers.

Reason I say that, is every thing I've read here says corals won't benefit from more than 6hrs a day photo period. So figure everything other than those 6 important hrs is only for your viewing, and contributing to algae growth.

 

[ctopal]

Wish me luck, I leave tomorrow for a week long vacation. I just changed 15 gallons and tested. Alk was stable, calcium bumped up to 420, mag hasn't increased much at 1200. I'm going to try the weekly water changes and try to stabilize my parameters before changing up the light. That will be my next move if unsuccessful.

 

[triggreef]

Good luck. I just came back today from a week vacation. All dropped almost a whole dkh & several corals not looking happy. My fault though for changing something too recently before going. At least I know what did it. But it was a $100 lesson so far.