My Green Slimer went from this...... To this..... PICS--Acro Help Please

JDK · Jun 15, 2012

Any help/advice would be much appreciated... System Specs are-

A. Total water volume ( Please include sump, etc.)
29 Gallon Biocube (rimless)

B. What are your parameters? ( CA, ALK, PO4,Salinity, etc.)
ALK-8.5
CA-425
MG- 1300
NO3- <1 about .2-.5
PO4- .04 (Hanna Checker)
Salinity- 1.026

C. Type of lighting. Please include age, watts, and bulb/ballast name.
AI Nano Blue LED- 4.5 inches from water surface
Light comes on at 11 AM ramps up to 90% all 3 channels W/B/RB over 180 mins. It holds there til 8 PM then ramps down to moonlights for 180 mins. Just today turned the lights down to 75% to see if it helps the lightening of colors. When colors were best I was in the process of acclimating the corals in question to the AI NANO LED and started at 40% and slowly increased.

D. Filtration method (Skimmer, GFO, DSB, etc.)
Aquamaxx HOB-1 Skimmer
BRS GFO in Reactor
BRS ROX carbon in bag place in InTank media basket
Chaeto in InTank media basket

E. What types of corals do you keep other than SPS?
Acans,Zoas,Palys,Shrooms, Cyphastrea

F. How long has the tank been running?
8 Months

G. What are you dosing? Dosing schedule?
BRS 2 Part Recipe 1
Bubble Magus Dosing pump both ALK and CA every two hours automatically spread an hour apart from one another.
MG every once and a while by hand
Every once in a while I will add some Salifert aminos and BA KoralColor
Also added some Dr Tims waste away the past couple weeks to help cyano on back wall (worked for me in the past)

H. Which brand of salt are you using?
Red Sea Coral Salt- NOT CORAL PRO SALT the regular Red Sea salt

I. What brand of test kits are you employing?
Salifert for everything except Phosphates which are checked with Hanna Green egg ULR checker phosporous checker then converted to phosphate.

J. What are you using for CA/ALK supplementation?
BRS Recipe 1

K. What are you using for flow? (Pump names, how many, placement, etc.)
Vortech MP10 on ReefCrest mode, Hydor EVO Nano 425. MP10 is on side of tank Koralia is on opposite side and blows behind rocks (just added the koralia this week) Plan on adding another Hydor nano 425 and placing it on opposite wall of MP10

For the Past couple months my acros colors have been fading with the exception of my Garf Bonsai, Neptune Blue Mille, and rainbow monti. Purple is holding well on the Garf and the blue is great on the mille and the rainbow monti looks better than ever. I am losing color primarily on my green slimer, J Fox Unknown acro, and Nicks purple green acro. Coralline algae in the tank is also turning white in the centers with purple edges. I am also experiencing retracted polyps on slimer (barely any) and the blue mille (no PE at all). Both the blue mille and green slimer used to have amazing PE about 2 months ago day and night and it has slowly faded about the same time the colors began to fade. One day the polyps were retracted and have not come out since. That was about a month ago maybe 3 weeks. There is no PE now at night or day. The garf bonsai still puts its polyps out but not as much as it used to.... it is definately reduced extension. I recently added 3 frags- Tyree Rainbow Stylo, Pink lemonade, Superman Mille that all are currently being light acclimated about 1/3 of the ways up in the tank. They all have good PE especially the Stylo. I feel like all this started when I switched from Kent Reef Salt to Red Sea Salt about 2 months ago began dosing with the bubble magus and running GFO in a reactor. A Cyano outbreak is what lead to the GFO reactor purchase. The only reason I switched salts was the CA was soooo high in kent and was much more expensive than the big bucket of Red Sea salt which had much more desirable levels.

Zoas, Palys, Acans all are growing and colored but the growth on the zoas has slowed down. Acans all show great extension on feeder tentacles.

Small amount of brown slimy algae and cyano on the back wall but none on the rocks or sand. Sand is very clean.

Here are some pics of the Slimer in question to help... Thanks again anyone who can lend some advice. I can not figure out what is out of whack. Below the slimer is an epic chaos frag from ReefPets that has also shown extremely decreased polyp extension. It used to be hairy now the polyps only come out in the shaded areas of the frag.

Bali Slimer 2-3 months ago

Bali Slimer Now

Young Frankenstein · Jun 15, 2012

Dose some iron and see that coral as green as it can be

pumarjr · Jun 15, 2012

+1, also, could a metal object have fallen into the tank that you are unaware of?

turbo21 · Jun 15, 2012

its hard to tell from the pic, but it looks like you have almost 0 growth on the 3 acros shown in both pics. you should have had some decent growth especially from the slimer in that time period have you tried new test kits? maybe your calcium is too low.

bob

rocko918 · Jun 15, 2012

My first thought was your LEDS. too much light, or too close to the surface,. i see you turned them down a bit, see if that helps.

Steelerfan747 · Jun 15, 2012

Interested in seeing the results of this one. Please let us know what you find

turbo21 · Jun 15, 2012

Can you also add your list of inhabitants? Could account for lack of pe

bob

FaviaFreak · Jun 15, 2012

could be photoinhibition from too much light (try raising your lights)

Dave3112 · Jun 15, 2012

FaviaFreak said:
could be photoinhibition from too much light (try raising your lights)

+1 that and decreasing the intensity and photoperiod.

xcorallusx · Jun 15, 2012

I would not dose Iron unless you have a test kit for that. I would also stop doing two part until your corals get bigger and just do regular water changes. I doubt its too much light.

dmatt88 · Jun 15, 2012

There are many trace elements removed from our water over time. Id move the green slimer lower in the tank n plan a few larger water changes. Sorry buddy. Been there.

........what, me worry?

FaviaFreak · Jun 15, 2012

xcorallusx said:
I would not dose Iron unless you have a test kit for that. I would also stop doing two part until your corals get bigger and just do regular water changes. I doubt its too much light.

it could most certainly be too much light with LED 4"-5" off the water surface, I have seen it many times, it's not something that will be fixed by doing water changes trust me

laskopyre · Jun 15, 2012

Sounds like it is the light. I had one do the same thing to me under T5's. When I moved it lower in the tank, it brightened up again. Now it's growing like a weed.

xcorallusx · Jun 15, 2012

trust me slimer shouldnt have any problems under an ai nano especially after 2-3 months.

Ninjapotamus · Jun 15, 2012

I very much doubt his AI nano led is too much light. This is very likely not a light issue at all.

I believe your tank is too clean and you are being too aggressive with your media and additives. When your alk/cal/mg levels are in line Bleaching/ very slow growth usually should be a big STOP sign for things such as gfo/waste away. You need to especially stop using products like waste away, in a tank with very low organics this can cause major bleaching/die off(I know from personal experience)... Also do smaller and less frequent water changes for a while. At this point its not going to help and will probably make things worse if you aggressively change your water. "But I have cyano how can I have low nutrients?". Cyano is a symptom of phosphate/nitrate imbalance and can fix its own nitrogen(look up redfield ratios if you want to read more on this). A bit more nitrates in the correct ratio to phosphates would actually help - not hurt your cyano problem.

Do you have any fish? A fishless reef will not have enough nutrients(small amounts of ammonia) being released into the water to help feed coral zooxanthellae. If you have a very low fish load you can consider adding a few small fish and feeding them frequently. You could even consider slowly adding small amounts of ammonium nitrate to help get things moving in the right direction

Hope this helps... I have been in very very similar situation to yours in the past and it took me a long time to realize it was not a chemistry issue. It was not a light issue, it was not some foreign contaminant such as metal in the tank... I was making my tank way too clean with media/additives and totally decimating the corals ability to sustain its zooxanthellae.

FaviaFreak · Jun 15, 2012

Ninjapotamus said:
I very much doubt his AI nano led is too much light. This is very likely not a light issue at all.

I believe your tank is too clean and you are being too aggressive with your media and additives. When your alk/cal/mg levels are in line Bleaching/ very slow growth usually should be a big STOP sign for things such as gfo/waste away. You need to especially stop using products like waste away, in a tank with very low organics this can cause major bleaching/die off(I know from personal experience)... Also do smaller and less frequent water changes for a while. At this point its not going to help and will probably make things worse if you aggressively change your water. "But I have cyano how can I have low nutrients?". Cyano is a symptom of phosphate/nitrate imbalance and can fix its own nitrogen(look up redfield ratios if you want to read more on this). A bit more nitrates in the correct ratio to phosphates would actually help - not hurt your cyano problem.

Do you have any fish? A fishless reef will not have enough nutrients(small amounts of ammonia) being released into the water to help feed coral zooxanthellae. If you have a very low fish load you can consider adding a few small fish and feeding them frequently.

Hope this helps... I have been in very very similar situation to yours in the past and it took me a long time to realize it was not a chemistry issue. It was not a light issue, it was not some foreign contaminant such as metal in the tank... I was making my tank way too clean with media/additives and totally decimating the corals ability to sustain its zooxanthellae.

you make a vaild point of perhaps his tank is too clean but low nutrients combined with too much light will make photoinhibition occur more readily. If it is not red bugs causing his slimer to look blah than it's too much light combined with ULNS, two ways to combat that decrease your intensity or add more fish, greens don't need a lot of light

Ninjapotamus · Jun 15, 2012

Looking at his rocks I feel even more confident it is a low nutrient issue... his rocks look cleaner in the recent photo than they do in the 3 months ago photo. IMO 8 month old rock should not look like freshly added dry rock.

JDK · Jun 16, 2012

pumarjr said:
+1, also, could a metal object have fallen into the tank that you are unaware of?

Interesting,,, I did not mention this but about 2 weeks ago the AI led fell in the tank for about a second. I had to disconnect it and dry it out. Tank had no light for about a day as it dried out. However the dull colors was happening well before this happened. The Garf Bonsai has done well since day one and is in possibly the brightest spot in the tank.

JDK · Jun 16, 2012

turbo21 said:
its hard to tell from the pic, but it looks like you have almost 0 growth on the 3 acros shown in both pics. you should have had some decent growth especially from the slimer in that time period have you tried new test kits? maybe your calcium is too low.

bob

Garf Bonsai has encrusted very well. Has also grown vertically but not as much as it has encrusted just cant tell from top down pics. Slimer has encrusted at base and sprouted new tips but is hard to tell from the pics. Jason Fox acro (purple) has grown at the base but not so much vertically. Calcium is not too low. Has never dropped below 430 since tank began. Calcium is the least of my worries. This is not CAL or ALK related I am convinced of that.