Acans and favia hate my tank

jwwoodjr · May 9, 2021

Long drawn out story but a while back, several months, my acans and favia died almost overnight. At the same time any new frags I put in the tank failed to thrive and eventually died. My weekly water changes had dropped off to every other week and I wrote it off to that.
My euphylia, cyphastrea, birdsnest, zoas, and mushrooms seem fine and are growing. I had a chalice recede and then start recovering with no input from me.
Last week I went to buy more frozen food and had my water checked. Everything was fine so I bought an acan frag which of course has receded and looks bad. I have moved it thinking it was flow but nothing is helping.
Because of that I ran a triton test hoping that would find a smoking gun. The things flagged were high magnesium, low potassium, 378, low molybdenum, 2.44, and low iodine, 23. They don’t seem to be far enough out to matter. Imagine using Reef Crystals but considering changing to Fritz when I run out. The only dosing I do is Microbacter7 and Microbacter Clean weekly.
Parameters are listed below and any ideas on what is going wrong would be greatly appreciated.
Tank: JBJ 28
Flow: MJ1200 return, Nero 3
Lighting: Nanobox retrofit
Salinity: 1.026 (Hanna)
Alk: 8.7 (Salifert)
Ca: 483 (Triton)
Mg: 1502 (Triton)
NO3: 10 ppm (Salifert)
PO4: 0.05 ppm (Triton)

CanuckReefer · May 9, 2021

jwwoodjr said:
Long drawn out story but a while back, several months, my acans and favia died almost overnight. At the same time any new frags I put in the tank failed to thrive and eventually died. My weekly water changes had dropped off to every other week and I wrote it off to that.
My euphylia, cyphastrea, birdsnest, zoas, and mushrooms seem fine and are growing. I had a chalice recede and then start recovering with no input from me.
Last week I went to buy more frozen food and had my water checked. Everything was fine so I bought an acan frag which of course has receded and looks bad. I have moved it thinking it was flow but nothing is helping.
Because of that I ran a triton test hoping that would find a smoking gun. The things flagged were high magnesium, low potassium, 378, low molybdenum, 2.44, and low iodine, 23. They don’t seem to be far enough out to matter. Imagine using Reef Crystals but considering changing to Fritz when I run out. The only dosing I do is Microbacter7 and Microbacter Clean weekly.
Parameters are listed below and any ideas on what is going wrong would be greatly appreciated.
Tank: JBJ 28
Flow: MJ1200 return, Nero 3
Lighting: Nanobox retrofit
Salinity: 1.026 (Hanna)
Alk: 8.7 (Salifert)
Ca: 483 (Triton)
Mg: 1502 (Triton)
NO3: 10 ppm (Salifert)
PO4: 0.05 ppm (Triton)

I have never experienced success with Acans over the years. My mag numbers are high as well and I figure it's the salt mix (Reef Crystal's) we both utilize. Shrooms, Duncans , Nem all grow to size of monsters since switching over to RC from Tropic Marin... your parameters look pretty good to me mostpart. Could be the Mag?