Tank not doing well, any help greatly appreciated.

ezcompany

ezcompany

Premium Member
I have a 40 gallon that's been running over 2 years.
Temperature 77-80 daily, Alk at 7.5-8, Ca 420, Mg 1290, Salinity 35ppt, or 1.0026. could be slightly lower but I've had higher salinity before with no problems.
2 MP10s for flow, Skimmer, siporax and matrix in the back chambers.

The only changes I've recently made was a water change a month ago, where I switched to Aquaforest Reef Salt (from Reef Crystals) using 0 tds water from a 5 stage Maxspec Spectrapure unit from my apartment. (in which the Spectrapure rep said would take care of chloramine no problem)


The corals that are most affected:
Tenuis, dying or bleaching/stn from tips, Candy cane just melting away, Orange monti with yellow polyps dying from the middle, Cats Paw turning white at base, Greg Carol bleaching from the top, purple austera that was growing super fast died the fastest.
All other corals are seemingly doing well with good to great PE, including Red Planet, Red Goniopora, pink lemonade, o tort, red robin, acans, blasto, and other sps. All fish are fine. no changes in feeding schedule. I have three anthias, three chromis, and one mandarin. the last Anthia was added in September.

Something is clearly going on and I can't figure it out. I'm guessing it has to do with the last water change, which was a month ago. Either that or the water starting to get too dirty from the third Anthia? At this point I'm a little scared to do another water change the same way. I'm starting to really stress out :mad2:
 
ezcompany said:
I have a 40 gallon that's been running over 2 years.
Temperature 77-80 daily, Alk at 7.5-8, Ca 420, Mg 1290, Salinity 35ppt, or 1.0026. could be slightly lower but I've had higher salinity before with no problems.
2 MP10s for flow, Skimmer, siporax and matrix in the back chambers.

The only changes I've recently made was a water change a month ago, where I switched to Aquaforest Reef Salt (from Reef Crystals) using 0 tds water from a 5 stage Maxspec Spectrapure unit from my apartment. (in which the Spectrapure rep said would take care of chloramine no problem)


The corals that are most affected:
Tenuis, dying or bleaching/stn from tips, Candy cane just melting away, Orange monti with yellow polyps dying from the middle, Cats Paw turning white at base, Greg Carol bleaching from the top, purple austera that was growing super fast died the fastest.
All other corals are seemingly doing well with good to great PE, including Red Planet, Red Goniopora, pink lemonade, o tort, red robin, acans, blasto, and other sps. All fish are fine. no changes in feeding schedule. I have three anthias, three chromis, and one mandarin. the last Anthia was added in September.

Something is clearly going on and I can't figure it out. I'm guessing it has to do with the last water change, which was a month ago. Either that or the water starting to get too dirty from the third Anthia? At this point I'm a little scared to do another water change the same way. I'm starting to really stress out :mad2:
Click to expand...

Did you use the first few gallons that came from the new RO/DI system? If so, there may be some contaminants from the new media/membrane that got into your tank. Running carbon might be a way to get that stuff out without causing any big stress to your tank. Just a thought.
 
Did you test your fresh batch of AquaForest salt? I had a bucket of bad salt that had physical contaminants in it -- It looked like pieces of sand paper that had been used on metal.

Make salt and test it ---- Alk, Cal, Mag, ph.
 
bblumberg said:
Did you use the first few gallons that came from the new RO/DI system? If so, there may be some contaminants from the new media/membrane that got into your tank. Running carbon might be a way to get that stuff out without causing any big stress to your tank. Just a thought.
Click to expand...

I ran about 5 gallons of water when it was new and threw it away as recommended.
 
Rakie said:
Did you test your fresh batch of AquaForest salt? I had a bucket of bad salt that had physical contaminants in it -- It looked like pieces of sand paper that had been used on metal.

Make salt and test it ---- Alk, Cal, Mag, ph.
Click to expand...

I did test the new batch and it was all within stated range. I will do another test for redundancy.
 
ezcompany said:
I did test the new batch and it was all within stated range. I will do another test for redundancy.
Click to expand...

Cool, probably not necessary but 10 minutes + a little redundancy can't do any harm. Look for foreign objects in your salt too, just in case (mine has a few pieces....)

Additionally --- I would get the PenTak Chloramine filter for sure. SpectraPure recommend and sell them even. It's like $20 on amazon and it's significantly more effective than a regular carbon block. SpectraPure makes great stuff, but airing on the side of caution, the PenTek should be much better (I am by no means an expert though).

Plan Z -- The Nuke of answers: Un-arse $50 for a Triton test. They will find out what it is. Sometimes it's stuff you could never know, like a water tight seal on a magnet has a pinhole leak, or some corrosion resistant thing corroded. You can cut 99.9% of the bullshart definitively if you send water to Triton.
 
Jin,

I'm sure this isn't the issue but did you also test for nitrates? IMO, some of the amino acids and coral foods tend to pollute the water in my tank. I absolutely hate feeding my corals certain foods because of it. That's my two...

Larry
 
Rakie said:
Cool, probably not necessary but 10 minutes + a

Plan Z -- The Nuke of answers: Un-arse $50 for a Triton test. They will find out what it is. Sometimes it's stuff you could never know, like a water tight seal on a magnet has a pinhole leak, or some corrosion resistant thing corroded. You can cut 99.9% of the bullshart definitively if you send water to Triton.
Click to expand...


Triton is definitely useful but the problem is it takes a couple of weeks (at best) to get a turnaround... at least that's what I've found.
 
Yeah Monkie, that's the one. Regular Carbon blocks fail to remove chloramines. I would absolutely add one of those to your RO/DI unit.

At spectrapures website they say it's like .8mm longer than the one on Amazon.. But i'm 99.9% sure it's the same damn one. It fits my RODI perfect, at least.
 
I'm still doubting it's chloramines.

this is what Spectrapure said in regards to my unit:
"The chloramines are typically at a low level in your area thus the system that you ordered should work well. The only difference is that the other system has two carbon filters instead of one. (The water purity from both systems is identical; any chloramine residual that may get through the carbon filter will be removed by the DI stages."

The test strip is not available on amazon. Does a chlorine test also test for chloramines?

I am going to break down my tank equipment tonight and give everything a look over. I've definitely thought of Triton, but as someone already mentioned it takes time. I feel like I should still do it. How does one send water to Triton? Request via email?

Thank you for all the suggestions so far. Will also test for Nitrate as soon as I can. I am also considering adding some Seachem Prime to the water, any thoughts on this?
 
Basically, you're going to the doctors, and you're being told you have a very high chance of having a disease and to get tested, and you just shrug and say no, this aspirin will be fine.

- Add Prime -- Never hurts

- Triton test -- In that two weeks other stuff might RTN, and you'll probably end up buying new products anyways, all of which may be useless.

- You wont necessarily be able to see rust, sometimes its deep within the unit, that's what triton is for. They can, and have, even took an inventory of the customers tank and told them exactly which pump was rusting according to that pumps materials vs their test results.

- Have you ever heard of Unique Corals? Their system designer who designed, built, and maintains all their prop tanks is having a massive problems because his city JUST started dumping in more chloramines without any warning. If the guy who runs one of the biggest online coral vendors in the US is having the same problems you are, from chloramines, you really should consider it important. Of course they're based in California too.

- Carbon blocks do not stop chloramines. Full stop. There is no discussion. This is very old news. And though I use and recommend spectrapure, they have no guaranteed idea of what is in your water this exact minute (go back to unique corals -- He definitely runs RO/DI)

You might get lucky and stop whatever is happening. But what you're describing points to a foreign contaminant in your aquarium. If you don't know what it is, you can't stop it.
 
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