Unexplained sudden SPS death

Ron Popeil

Ron Popeil

Love them clownfish.
hi there. so my sps tank was flourishing. i was very happy with it. then a serious of events occurred and now there doesnt seem to be any recovery in sight.

here are my parameters:

alk 10
ca 500
mg 1300
sal 1.025
po4 .03

here is the chronology of problems over the course of a few weeks:

added a juvenile navarchus angel to my reef, hoping i would get one that didnt eat sps. not so lucky. within a few days i could see the tips of particular corals being nibbled on.

a week later i added 250 mL of warner marines eco bak pellets to my media reactor and 120 gallon system.

a week after this corals started to continue to decline, now much more noticeably. it was here i noticed the power supply to my moonlights had disconnected and was sitting in the water. i imagine it had been in the water sometime between 1 to 3 days. hastily unplugged immediately when noticed.

few days later sps really suffering now. 45 gallon water change. angel removed. carbon and polypad added.

red bugs noticed taking advantage of weakened corals. heavy interceptor treatment followed by 45 gallon water change. carbon added.

that was three weeks ago. my corals have yet to recover, instead they continually died off. strangely enough its particular corals too.

california tort. green slimer. monti caps. millepora. all had retracted polyps followed by top down and bottom up recession. the caps faded in color and perished.

however

loripes. oregon tort. just fine. flourishing. anemones fish and and clams unaffected. soft corals and LPS just fine as well.

the symptoms look a lot like high po4. or alkalinity swings.

but neither are the case. elos test kit confirms stable alk. martini colorimeter confirms the po4.

im using kent salt.

i switched out all my RODI prefilters this morning and will do another 45 gallon water change tomorrow.

any ideas what could have possible continued to affect my corals so negatively, specifically and continuously? ive looked for AEFW and have come up negative. red bugs were treated.

should i add a grounding probe? remove the eco bak?

thoughts? suggestions? anything would be appreciated. its extremely disheartening.
 
Ron Popeil said:
hi there. so my sps tank was flourishing. i was very happy with it. then a serious of events occurred and now there doesnt seem to be any recovery in sight.

here are my parameters:

alk 10
ca 500
mg 1300
sal 1.025
po4 .03

here is the chronology of problems over the course of a few weeks:

added a juvenile navarchus angel to my reef, hoping i would get one that didnt eat sps. not so lucky. within a few days i could see the tips of particular corals being nibbled on.

a week later i added 250 mL of warner marines eco bak pellets to my media reactor and 120 gallon system.

a week after this corals started to continue to decline, now much more noticeably. it was here i noticed the power supply to my moonlights had disconnected and was sitting in the water. i imagine it had been in the water sometime between 1 to 3 days. hastily unplugged immediately when noticed.

few days later sps really suffering now. 45 gallon water change. angel removed. carbon and polypad added.

red bugs noticed taking advantage of weakened corals. heavy interceptor treatment followed by 45 gallon water change. carbon added.

that was three weeks ago. my corals have yet to recover, instead they continually died off. strangely enough its particular corals too.

california tort. green slimer. monti caps. millepora. all had retracted polyps followed by top down and bottom up recession. the caps faded in color and perished.

however

loripes. oregon tort. just fine. flourishing. anemones fish and and clams unaffected. soft corals and LPS just fine as well.

the symptoms look a lot like high po4. or alkalinity swings.

but neither are the case. elos test kit confirms stable alk. martini colorimeter confirms the po4.

im using kent salt.

i switched out all my RODI prefilters this morning and will do another 45 gallon water change tomorrow.

any ideas what could have possible continued to affect my corals so negatively, specifically and continuously? ive looked for AEFW and have come up negative. red bugs were treated.

should i add a grounding probe? remove the eco bak?

thoughts? suggestions? anything would be appreciated. its extremely disheartening.
Click to expand...

Sounds like pellets plus a high alkalinity seems like the cause. I would remove a portion or all of the eco bak and see how things go.. I had the exact same thing happen to me with a DKH of 11 and am in the process of dropping it down.
 
this was the conclusion i had just heard about a week or so ago. since then i have lowered my alk closer to 8. i removed the eco bak weeks ago, and now just run GFO.

are there any threads detailing why this occurs or of similar experiences you may know of?
 
when you dose a carbon source such as vodka, ecobak, etc. you want to keep the alk low or it will burn your tips. I would take the affected coral out and dip in revive for giggles,if you had red bugs, there is a good chance for aefw. "quarantine" is always very important. Also slow down on the water changes you are in a panic and making things worse imho.....Go slow and one thing at a time. :)
 
Ron Popeil said:
this was the conclusion i had just heard about a week or so ago. since then i have lowered my alk closer to 8. i removed the eco bak weeks ago, and now just run GFO.

are there any threads detailing why this occurs or of similar experiences you may know of?
Click to expand...

I believe Randy Holmes-Farley was gathering some anecdotes from folks about this situation. Without the pellets you can safely run at a higher alk than 8, NSW is around 9 anyway. I simply turned off my calcium reactor and my kalk drip until I get things settled in, you may want to do a search on the forums regarding alkalinity burn and pellets, its an interesting read.
 
i finally thought i was at a point of recovery. i removed the eco bak and lowered my alk. weeks later, corals improved. colored back up. new corals encrusted.

im back to what i was doing earlier last year, when my SPS were actually growing wonderfully: GFO. but i have lowered my alk to around 8/9. my PO4 is .03 (martini) and .05 (hanna).

so i put a bunch more coral heads in, and they seemed to be doing great. but now, after leaving for a week and returning home, i was so disappointed to find the same problems are continuing. most of my sps are dying, tip down, but the entire tissue of the coral seems to just pull away, exposing the skeleton and allowing algae to grow. even a clam id had for over a year suddenly died, within just a week! this is so frustrating because i can not seem to pin point a solution to this problem.

i need any ideas or suggestions. thank you!
 
Have you run any polyfilters? You could have copper in your system after the power supply fell in.

I feel your pain. I went through a similar crash last year after changing some things. You may need to just make everything stable and let this play out.
 
i have tried a poly pad. ive run lots of carbon. no copper.

things are stable. which is what makes all this additionally irritating. sigh.
 
Ron Popeil said:
i have tried a poly pad. ive run lots of carbon. no copper.

things are stable. which is what makes all this additionally irritating. sigh.
Click to expand...

Are you still running lots of carbon?
Do you run it in a reactor?

Take a look at the pictures in my tank crashing thread. Do your dying corals look similar?

I never figured out for sure what caused my crash. Could have been the Metro I fed but it may also have been overuse of carbon in my reactor pulling out too much too fast. Could also been overfeeding to try to get the trigger to eat. All I know for sure that lots of things were changing at the same time in my tank so officially I blame my crash on instability.

Even after I thought it was all done and stabilized I came back from vacation several months later to a dying green slimer colony. I also had a few other corals RTN on me long after the fact.

Another suggestion is to double check your test kits. I've noticed that my Salifert kits report low alk, calc and mag readings if I've used 75% of the kit. Perhaps your alk is much higher than you think.
 
Pics of affected corals? When was your last coral addition prior to decline? Any chance it is AEFW? I do not think red bug may have caused the event.
 
Last edited:
when was the last time you put in a new coral ? I lost my sps to aefw and thought it was this and that and spent weeks trying to go slow checking water parameters and lights etc only to find the worms finally with a baster eating away already a month after putting in a new coral the eggs had hatched and already laying more by the time i figured it out ..
 
preef - your pictures look extremely similar to my situation.

whisperer - im usually always adding some sort of frag or colony. but each one is dipped in interceptor or revive. i have seen what AEFW damage looks like, and what im enduring is not them. definitely not red bugs either, they simply attacked early in this episode and were opportunistic.

kuyatwo - i have checked with a voltmeter. i started this thread though because i didnt really understand what numbers i was looking at. and apparently i couldnt really get a straight answer on what i was looking at either from anyone else:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1928223

rogerwilco - ive dealt with AEFW in other peoples systems, and their damage is pretty specific. as well as pretty obvious egg clutches. i do not believe my issue is parasite related....although, any definite answer would be better than what i have now.
 
If you make your own water, check your water supply for chloramines. I've been experiencing the same problems as you. I read up on chloramines used to treat city water. A standard ro/di unit won't filter it out. I will be upgrading soon.

Check your ro water for ammonia as chloramines is basically chlorine+ammonia=chloramines.
 
mike, im sorry youre going through a similar problem. i do make my own water, and change out my prefilters regularly. i have 0 tds on my output and about 14 to 25 going in.

the question i have about your theory is....up until the last 4 months of last year, why wasnt i having problems? i had great growth. and nothing about how i made water was any different than the successful years before.

what specifically about standard rodi units dont remove chloramines? what would you recommend?
 
call your water service providor. they will tell you immediately if they use chloramines to treat their water. chloramines have to be removed by a catalytic carbon, which is more expensive to produce.
 
i am certain my water has chloramines in it. however, i have changed nothing about my RODI unit in the last few years (except my prefilters obviously). its only since about september that ive been struggling with these problems.

if chloramines are present in my RODI water however, an ammonia test would confirm this?
 
Sorry to hear about the troubles Jordan, I thought you were over them. Let me know if there is anything that I can do to help you out.
 
Ron Popeil said:
mike, im sorry youre going through a similar problem. i do make my own water, and change out my prefilters regularly. i have 0 tds on my output and about 14 to 25 going in.

the question i have about your theory is....up until the last 4 months of last year, why wasnt i having problems? i had great growth. and nothing about how i made water was any different than the successful years before.

what specifically about standard rodi units dont remove chloramines? what would you recommend?
Click to expand...

My tank was doing okay for the better part of 2010 up until a few months ago. That's when it really started to go down hill. Another reefer told me that la county recently started adding more chloramines in late 2010 to build up to the level that it is now. Maybe this is the same case for you, maybe not.

To my understanding, standard filter blocks do not remove chloramines . You need catalytic carbon filled in a refillable cartridge and a chlorplus filter to really remove chloramines. Hopefully I can upgrade my ro/di unit soon but BRS is out of those catalytic carbon cartridges. When I do upgrade and notice some improvements. I will def response here with an update.

I hope you figure out your problem and rectify it before anything else happens to your tank..I'm hoping the same. Good Luck
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

K
SPS Pest?!
Replies
10
Views
657
griss
griss
C
Need advice
Replies
1
Views
595
Uncle99
Uncle99
R
Cyano and nutrients
2 3
Replies
47
Views
6K
Radicalrob1982
R
J
PO4 can't get it right
Replies
3
Views
756
Timfish
Timfish
YellowDesmo998
Back from a decade of silence...
Replies
7
Views
964
Guygettnby
Guygettnby
Back
Top