A New Challenger Appears - Coral Loss Post-Dinos

hp9000

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TL;DR
RedSea MaxNano purchased early-April, cycled, and was ultra-low nutrient. Minimal stock; minimal feed. Dinos appeared and caused the death of a Two Spot goby, an emerald crab, and some hermits/snails. I fought dinos and won with a combination of UV Filter + adding pods, phyto and sand/mud from IPSF.
Corals are now stressed across the board - and I'm curious why and what my next steps should be.
Signs of coral stress
  • Octospawn completely bailed out
  • Toadstool has "deflated", fallen over
  • Cyphastrea bleached
  • Zoas/Ricordea receded
  • Torch polyps retracted
  • Acan + Caulastrea showing some tissue loss
2 Ocellaris + Purple Firefish are doing great.

Parameters
Salinity - 37.5 ppm
Temp - 29.8
Ph- 8.6
Nitrate - 20
Alk - 10-11
Water changes weekly of 2-3 gallons.

Lighting
The 23K out of the box program from RedSea's ReefLED50, running around 73% of max on an acclimation program. Ran the lights less for a week or so 20ish days ago to combat the dinos.

Theories I Have
  • Temperature - It was hot in Seattle last week. I was out of town and my wife was handling feeding/top-off. Maybe the tank just got way too hot.
  • Nutrient swings - going from ultra-low nutrients to higher nutrients in 20ish days could have stressed everything out.
  • "Chemical issue" - Octospawn bailout stressed everything else out. Timeline was: wife noticed bailout while I was out of town; next day cyph bleached, candy cane/acan looking terrible, everything receded/looking ticked.
  • All of the above - this is the clubhouse leader.
Present Plan of Attack
Execute a 20% water change today. Keep water changes to 4 gallons weekly until things improve. Monitor nitrate/ph/alk every morning.

What do you think?
 

Spare time

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If you have a phosphate test, list the readings of that. 0.00 phosphate is usually what appears to be the cause of dinos and 0.00 (if still present) would cause corals to do poorly.


8.6 seems very, and unusually, high. I would be surprised if that was accurate.
 

droblack

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With lots of changes, tank has not been stable. That alone will stress corals. Hard to say what killed your livestock.

I would focus on slow, low volume, and gradual water changes, getting ph right, and keep other parameters within optimal limits and stable (eg temp, etc).

Even if you are getting things dialed in right, if you do it too fast, corals will stress.
 
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hp9000

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If you have a phosphate test, list the readings of that. 0.00 phosphate is usually what appears to be the cause of dinos and 0.00 (if still present) would cause corals to do poorly.


8.6 seems very, and unusually, high. I would be surprised if that was accurate.

I do not have a phosphate test. I had assumed that nitrates/phosphates would go up in conjunction simply by increasing feeding (mysis blend).

If you're pointing to High N/Low P ratio as a recipe for coral stress, seems like adding a small amount of NeoPhos blind would be pretty low risk, possibly high reward - until my test kit arrives in 6 days.

re: 8.6 - being color blind and doing reef chemistry...a match made in heaven. It's definitely not lower than 8.2.
 
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hp9000

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With lots of changes, tank has not been stable. That alone will stress corals. Hard to say what killed your livestock.

I would focus on slow, low volume, and gradual water changes, getting ph right, and keep other parameters within optimal limits and stable (eg temp, etc).

Even if you are getting things dialed in right, if you do it too fast, corals will stress.
Agreed.

And to be clear, they aren't all dead - just felt like I had to go to one extreme to fight the dinos and am now dealing with the consequences of those actions.

Long term the goal of the tank was to have a relatively low-stress, low-maintenance tank -- keep nothing complicated, have a basic schedule, keep the parameters in solid ranges with some variance accepted, easy-to-care-for corals, an entertained 5 year old.
 

Spare time

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I do not have a phosphate test. I had assumed that nitrates/phosphates would go up in conjunction simply by increasing feeding (mysis blend).

If you're pointing to High N/Low P ratio as a recipe for coral stress, seems like adding a small amount of NeoPhos blind would be pretty low risk, possibly high reward - until my test kit arrives in 6 days.

re: 8.6 - being color blind and doing reef chemistry...a match made in heaven. It's definitely not lower than 8.2.


Phosphate and nitrate to not increase in equal proportions. Different foods vary in the amount they contain.

Also I am not refering to any ratio, but rather than there just needs to be some phosphate that is detectable above the margin of error on a test kit (assuming perfect practice).

Also I completely understand the colorblind issue haha. I use a cheap digital pH pen for this reason but the calibration powder seems impossible to dissolve so I am not sure how accurate it is. If you need a test kit for phosphate that is easy to read, the hanna ulr phosphate or ulr phosphorus (more accurate but needs a conversion at the end from ppb to ppm which is simple) are probably your best bet since most phosphate test kits are seemingly impossible to read.
 
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hp9000

hp9000

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Phosphate and nitrate to not increase in equal proportions. Different foods vary in the amount they contain.

Also I am not refering to any ratio, but rather than there just needs to be some phosphate that is detectable above the margin of error on a test kit (assuming perfect practice).

Thanks - I'm going to do some dosing with NeoPhos until I can get my hands on a phosphate test kit. Between the new tank/dry rock build/previous dinos/running activated carbon, it's pretty likely that my Nitrate/Phosphate ratio is way out of whack - and phosphates are near 0.
 

Spare time

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Thanks - I'm going to do some dosing with NeoPhos until I can get my hands on a phosphate test kit. Between the new tank/dry rock build/previous dinos/running activated carbon, it's pretty likely that my Nitrate/Phosphate ratio is way out of whack - and phosphates are near 0.

I would be cautious dosing it without the test kit. Maybe dose to 0.05 and then wait a few days for a test kit to come in?

You can also feed the corals heavily in the mean time.
 

iMi

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Salinity is too high. Should be between 34-35ppm, but not sure if that is indeed causing the problem. I'd aim to correct that value.

Temperature seems high, too. That's over 85° F.
 

hikermike

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If everything went that quickly I'm betting on heat. The problem is I live in the same area and my tanks haven't been that affected but I'm in a basement apt and maybe your in a heavily windowed room and if the AC is off for a few hours while you're at work, well from past experience I can say that'll wipe everything out and the tank will "rot" quickly. All those other things will take time and have different effects on different life forms. I.E., one by one. Either that or something toxic got into the tank. A cleaning lady or something? You can put a fan over the tank and/or sump but remember it cools via evaporation so have an ato or someone adding H2O daily.
 

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