Time to humble myself

[Dashylock]

Alk / PH seems odd to me, this time off year closed houses with cold temps
PH seems to be an issue,my 2 cents.

He could be in the southern hemisphere.

 

[prop-frags]

I need help 240 gal cube over 150 sps tons of high end stuff recently started having things RTN some stuff STNing. Normally I can correct with no problems been a month no improvement. Tanks been up 7yrs is a down grade that was up for 12 yrs

Current condtions as of last night:
Alk 8.0
Cal 450
mag 1500
Phos ? but run GFO half required dose
Never test for amnonia, nitrites or nitrates
temp 78
Ph 8.5
3 250 watt 20k xm
Little support will help

is that pH reading during your tanks daytime or night? What are you doing to keep pH steady across day and night cycles? Are you running any reactors or doing any dosing? How are you managing detritus build-up? Do you clean your rocks? Sand? Are you running bare bottom? How about some pics - they can help us to help you.

 

[rps3]

Check your RO/DI filters... might be chloramines. I had a big die off and even with water changes it did solve the problem till I changed the filters. Things are back in full effect for me now. Had some nasty algae take off while everything was dying.

 

[AcroporAddict]

This is one of the scariest things about an older tank..im going to assume with the age of the tank the colonies are rather large. Ive seen this happen to a few tanks over time and i can tell you it may b as simple as water flow. If all the params check out ok..i would look at flow first. Once the colonies get really large the whole dynamc of flow in the tank changes..
Ive seen tanks totally colapse as you are describing..but ive seen them come back from the brink also.
Move your power heads etc etc around..add more flow..prune your colonies. Think back to how the flow was set up in relation to the corals when they were smaller...remember what worked and try to emulate it.
I wish u the best of luck.

I would look at your flow situation to start with. I have also seen these type situations described above. Try increasing your flow and pruning your acroporas first first before you make a bunch of chemistry corrections.

 

[1meantank]

Yes I did change all my GFO at 1 time
Flow is 2 tunzes and 2 wp 1 a 40 the other a 60
Sand beed has not been changed in 7 years may be time
ROI just replaced in April
my ph during the day is 8.5 at night 8.3
Skimmer is a SRO 50000
water changes weekly
Fish over past 5 years has been
Queen angel
Blue face angel
Annularis angel
Emperor Angel
Black tang
Yellow tang
Yellow belly Tang
Tomini Tang
Multi color angel
hybrid lemon peel
Trio leopard wrasses
Noakeo wrasse
pair chaotie wrasses
candy can wrasse
red head wrasse
pair semilavartus butterfiles
Couple other fish

I will post pics of the tank and few corals that have RTNing and STNing

 

[1meantank]

I have pruned my corals im not big on large colonirs becuase of this reason. The biggest coral at this time may only be 5-6 inches well 20 inch dia mutli color cap.

 

[nonstopfishies]

Angels start picking?

And that is a large bioload assuming you've had all those a while you have a number of very big fish. So if you are feeling them all properly nitrates could be an issue.

 

[1meantank]

I have had the load of fish for many moons and they do not nip. I thinking my sand bed may be crashing

 

[1meantank]

If someone can help me post pic that will be great

 

[rogerwilco357]

I would start with the PO4 and No3. I had the same problems from aefw to leaching phosphates and high nitrates .. at the end I came up with Old tank syndrome I think that is what they call old tanks that have been down graded and you keep the old rock in the tank after a while like dirty filters they leach back into the water . I will be stripping my old 9 year old rock and cleaning it up soon and re-seed it with my other tanks live rock before i get back into sps ..I could never keep my numbers low with the No3 and Po4 . even with the water changes , uln type of tanks setup. gfo,and large skimmer nothing worked..what are your numbers like and how old is the live rock?

 

[79chopperdr]

I have a Hanna phosphate checker. Let me know if you want me to come by.

 

[JD46]

Just shot in the dark. But check any magnets or heaters in the tank for corrosion. If any of the coating degrades and exposes neodymium magnets to water they will begin to corrode. In my case, I believe the source of my STN turned out to be a low quality titanium heater housing that showing signs of corrosion.

Best of luck.

JD

 

[reefmutt]

in my experience, dsbs are so good at controlling nutrients that one gets comfortable with not checking n and p until one day, the dsb stops working quite as efficiently and there is a relatively sudden jump or change in the ratio of n and p…
my feeling is that the nutrient levels have begun to change..

 

[betamed]

calibrate your refractometer lately?

 

[Aslmx]

My problem is you have way more experience then I do. I read where you have a wp40 and Wp 60, that's a lot of power. Did they blow the sand around. I put a Wp40 in my tank and thought it was ok but I came home from work and half the sand was piled in the middle of the tank. I am also going through some stn but really not worried because it's cheap stuff and I'm about to up grade. How would you know if your sand bed has crashed?

 

[trueblackpercula]

I have had the load of fish for many moons and they do not nip. I thinking my sand bed may be crashing

This is what I going through with my sand bed that's 6 years old.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2361052