Understanding Burnt Tips in my Reef

[erk]

My acros grew crazy fast at 6.5-7 compared to when they were dying at 8.5-9.
Tgc OG OP on 11/02

Last night

My tiny cherry bomb in the back on Oct 5th

Now completely encrusted right of my WD

Nice! Yeah, I was thinking at 8 dKH I was low enough, but it seems I am not. Going to let it lower naturally. Should be below 7.5 by next Friday.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Thanks for the responses.

From everyone's input, it seems there is a desire to remove carbon dosing completely and reduce my alkalinity. I don't feel comfortable removing carbon dosing completely as this is my only method of nutrient control and I like it as it helps to keep a plentiful bacteria population. I have been carbon dosing since the beginning and the tank is near 2 yrs old. Prior to my crash, I had great luck with carbon dosing and keeping SPS.

As for the comment about running GFO. This is an unfortunate side effect of excess PO4 leaching from the rocks. I had a crash about 8 months ago. The PO4 leaching from the rocks is the last remaining after effect from that event. My build thread contains a full log of how that all unfolded.

All the SPS I have in the tank have been added in the last 2.5 weeks. On the 4th, I missed a feeding due to the birth of my daughter. After that the couple SPS I had experienced heavy STN. The STN slowed down or halted about a week ago. I added 8 new acros from Boomcorals a week ago and they have grown well and shown good PE. In the last day a stag experienced a burnt tip and some of the other recovering acros showed some burnt tips.

Based on everyone's responses I think the best course of action is reduce my alkalinity and my vodka dosage. I'm currently aiming for 8 dKH, so I will revise this to 7.5 and try to keep it below 7.8. I currently dose 6 mL of 80 proof vodka a day, so will reduce this to 4 mL per day.

I'll keep this thread updated with my findings as best I can.

Sooooo, you ask “why are my tips burnt?”
Multiple ppl answer with “That happened when I was carbon dosing and stopped when I stopped carbon dosing.”
And you say “I don’t feel comfortable doing that”
Awesome

 

[erk]

Sooooo, you ask “why are my tips burnt?”
Multiple ppl answer with “That happened when I was carbon dosing and stopped when I stopped carbon dosing.”
And you say “I don’t feel comfortable doing that”
Awesome

From what I've read, the number one reason it happens during carbon dosing is due to reduced nutrients. Most people refuse to increase feeding while carbon dosing. Coupled with higher alk levels and low nutrients, I can see this being the case for burnt tips in those tanks.

For myself, it would appear that what I thought was low alk levels aren't actually very low. I thought 8 dKH was low enough to avoid burnt tips in a low excess nutrient tank. I don't try to starve my tank. I feed as much as I can, which is obviously not enough at the current alk levels I have. Therefore I will lower it to the 7 dKH that others have success with.

At the same time, I clearly stated I will begin lowering the amount of vodka I dose. I don't appreciate the sarcastic tone. I am not new to carbon dosing. I have been carbon dosing my tanks for almost 4 years now. Carbon dosing is how I control excess nutrients. I don't want to run a ton of reactors of media on my tank when a small amount of vodka can achieve the same thing. This may not work for others, but it has and continues to work for me and I would appreciate if people respected that and not try to belittle others choices. Thanks to this thread I believe I have found the answer to my problems, i.e. "high" alk.

At the end of the day, if you do not have something positive to add to the conversation, I'd suggest considering not responding.

Thanks to everyone else and their helpful responses.

 

[Surfzone]

This post thread has been very helpful for me. I've been dealing with the same thing lately, and I am also carbon dosing. I think that with a slow stop of dosing NOPOX and letting my nutrients creep up that this will solve my problem.
@erk thanks for the post.

 

[erk]

This post thread has been very helpful for me. I've been dealing with the same thing lately, and I am also carbon dosing. I think that with a slow stop of dosing NOPOX and letting my nutrients creep up that this will solve my problem.
@erk thanks for the post.

Definitely do it slow. I've learned the hard way when trying to lower my vodka dosage that too large of a jump leads to problems. Please keep us updated on how things work out for you.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I hope the lower alk works out for you. Good luck

 

[Sir Chris]

I have a 20g HOB that was running upwards of 80ppm to 100+ I would guess as it stopped there..

So I stopped caring as I was cycling a 75g sumped so i knew sps would have a new home.
I cut the feeding to once a week or when I would remember and just feed my breeds clowns.
Was using Reef Roids that’s ash content is 6% and was just screwing everything the more up so used chili at 4% and soo glad!!


STOPPED ROIDS COMPLETELY and use chili. PO4 went to 40ppm. Still way to high so added phosguard to my HOB above my marine pure balls, and solved my issue but had to maintain changing and testing..

Stopped caring and now it’s below 1.0(undetectable) so then had to buy a low read test and is .4ppm.

Rock doesn’t leach like to my observation or sand. Never clean or moved anything and just ignored and changed water when sebea nem was mad.

Picture for reference

 

[itsforte]

I’ve tried many times of carbon sources from different products, zeovit, fm, tm.... etc. No matter dry powder, NP pullet, liquid type. All of them burnt tips. Especially, after 4-6months when tank got stable. Even some lather coral disappeared in one night.

In my opinion, why we so concerned about the N/P level or N/P ratio, but don’t care about what corals’ “real” reaction? Now I can keep SPS even with PO4 level 0.1-0.6 ppm. Why using carbon sources? Forget it.

 

[erk]

I’ve tried many times of carbon sources from different products, zeovit, fm, tm.... etc. No matter dry powder, NP pullet, liquid type. All of them burnt tips. Especially, after 4-6months when tank got stable. Even some lather coral disappeared in one night.

In my opinion, why we so concerned about the N/P level or N/P ratio, but don’t care about what corals’ “real” reaction? Now I can keep SPS even with PO4 level 0.1-0.6 ppm. Why using carbon sources? Forget it.

What alkalinity do you try to hold while carbon dosing?

 

[vetteguy53081]

GFO is definitely a culprit with tips burnt as is high white lighting and carbon dosing

 

[erk]

GFO is definitely a culprit with tips burnt as is high white lighting and carbon dosing

But the underlying reason here is the high alk. This seems to be the common thread on so many of the other threads I found. I just didn't think 8dKH was that high. But hearing from so many others that they keep their alkalinity at around 7dKH makes me realize I am nowhere near low alkalinity. I mean, do people with burnt tips also run at 7dKH? I guess I'll find out if I still get burnt tips while running at 6.5-7dKH.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

My nutrients were actually higher when carbon dosing and using gfo. The acros are consuming so many now I’m thinking about taking my skimmer offline. It’s only on for 12 hours now. No reef roids, oyster feast etc. Just nori and 1 cube of mysis a day. So nice not seeing that brown slime on the glass, sand, rocks or tips

 

[itsforte]

What alkalinity do you try to hold while carbon dosing?

I’ve tried to control 6-7 or 12 kh
It’s the same.
However now even my alk is 6-9 kh, it doesn’t matter.

 

[erk]

I’ve tried to control 6-7 or 12 kh
It’s the same.
However now even my alk is 6-9 kh, it doesn’t matter.

6-9dKH is a huge range to swing. Is this a slow swing over the course of a week or several weeks? I would think this would result in instability.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I test my alk at least once a day and dose manually. I don’t trust robots

 

[itsforte]

6-9dKH is a huge range to swing. Is this a slow swing over the course of a week or several weeks? I would think this would result in instability.

I do this swing all the time and no problem at all since I don’t use carbon sources. At the mean while, my SPS are growing with colors.
So why should I use carbon source and take very carefully with KH range ?

 

[markalot]

I’ve tried to control 6-7 or 12 kh
It’s the same.
However now even my alk is 6-9 kh, it doesn’t matter.

It depends on the age of the tank and how healthy the Acros are, a 6 to 9 swing in a food starved tank will kill them all. A 6 to 9 swing in a tank that is also swinging other params will also end up in death. The lesson, in my opinion, that the original poster needs to learn is to stop testing PO4 and let the tank settle down. Testing and reacting to PO4 is leading to unstable params, unhealthy acros, and more issues. I've done this myself and was not successful until I gave up reacting to every bad po4 test.

I also agree to stop all carbon dosing and remove GFO. I think the PO4 tests are false due to the feeding of reef roids.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

If I were you I would just reduce the alk and wait a while to see if that helps because it should. Some people seem to have issues with burnt tips with alk above 7 or 7.5 even with readable nutrients. Changing two things at once, especially alk and a carbon source is a pretty big change for a tank with acros that aren't happy.

 

[erk]

It depends on the age of the tank and how healthy the Acros are, a 6 to 9 swing in a food starved tank will kill them all. A 6 to 9 swing in a tank that is also swinging other params will also end up in death. The lesson, in my opinion, that the original poster needs to learn is to stop testing PO4 and let the tank settle down. Testing and reacting to PO4 is leading to unstable params, unhealthy acros, and more issues. I've done this myself and was not successful until I gave up reacting to every bad po4 test.

I also agree to stop all carbon dosing and remove GFO. I think the PO4 tests are false due to the feeding of reef roids.

I think doing too much kills corals too. If you refer to my build thread, it will give you a bit more info on why I currently test PO4.

 

[erk]

I've got to say, I'm very surprised by the amount of negativity towards carbon dosing. I've been carbon dosing almost the entire time I've been in this hobby. It is what allows me to run my tank without a ton of filtration media. Based on all the push to get rid of it though, I'm going to reduce my carbon dosing until I can turn it off. But that will take months since quitting cold turkey will kill a tank.

As for the GFO, again, this is being run to deal with the aftermath of my crash. I'll take it offline once I can see that my PO4 doesn't rise very quickly. I have no desire to run GFO as my permanent method. As @markalot keeps stressing, the reef roids may raise my PO4 and give me false readings, I'll reduce the reef roids to twice a week. Probably feed them the day after I do my testing.