Acro in tank is 5 days old and bleaching bad?

[[Cameron]]

Some SPS are just temperamental. It could be water params, pests, disease, lighting, some fish nipping at them or Tuesday... some SPS just hate Tuesday.

I lost a purple tort colony about a foot across in one night. It had been in the tank for a long time and no other SPS in the tank showed any signs of a problem. Water params good and stable, no new corals in months, same fish for over a year and the same lighting as always but it was Tuesday.

 

[UnderseaOddities]

It's sad to hear it could've been anything could be rtn stn, instability like stated above improper placement,in consistent feeding the main thing is doing the research and not get hoodwinked like the meme below and always dip sometimes it can be frustrating but dont let it discourage you building a reef is and should be a slow process, like creating an aquatic forest, it will take patience to turn a sapling into a tree

 

[Dkmoo]

Cool thanks, I’ll look into the PH thing.
Would upping my water changes allow for higher levels of alk/mg/ca vs dosing have one be fit over the other? Like should I up my water changes (currently about 10% every 2 weeks) to try and raise those numbers or should I dose?

This might be a bit of a long post but hopefully you'll find helpful b/c there's a lot of factors/nuances to keep in mind:

Generally i'd recommend dosing because it allows for more precision, better control, and more stability since it'll swing less in between water changes. But the effectiveness of one vs the other depends a lot on 1) how much your tank consumes, and 2) what lvls your replacement water's at. The issue here is the % nature and math - the bigger the difference between replaced water and replacement water, the bigger the impact. for example:

if tank was at 350PPM Calc, and you do a 10% WC with a salt mix that has 500% Calc - you'll end up with 350x90% + 500x10% = 365ppm, or a 15PPM raise. If your tank is at 400, a 10%WC will give you 410, or 10ppm raise.

So as your Calc levels raise - WC will be increasingly less effective. On top of that, keep in mind ur corals also are absorbing Calc, so WC may never get u to the level you need. For ex, if your coral also absorbs 15ppm of calc in between each wc, then the 10% WC in the very first example will actually just keep your levels at 350. Increasing the frequency will raise it, sure, but that just means it'll rebalance at some higher level where the CA added by the WC matches the ca uptake for that period. Whether or not that new level is high enough depends on both the frequency and ca uptake. In the same example as above:

if you change from WC every 2 week to every 1 week, this means in ur corals absorb 7.5ppm (15/2) per week. This also means that when your tank gets to 425ppm, it will no longer increase further (425x90% + 500x10% - 7.5 = 425)

a final point to consider with WC is salinity - while 1.025 vs 1.026 may not seem like much - that is actually a 4% difference, so depending on how you mixed your salt from one batch to the next, a 0.001 difference in salinity is actually 20ppm of CA difference and 60ppm of mag difference if the salt mix is designed to be at 500ppm calc and 1500ppm mag.

So, what does it all mean? first thing is - get a handle on what your tank's daily uptake is. just measure your tank daily at the same time for a week and you'll get a general idea. Then you can think about either dosing or do the math above to see how effective wc is. That's why I recommend dosing to save you some brain cells, since you will know if for example, your tank uptakes 15ppm a week, then you can dose for, say 30ppm split to 3 doses of 10ppm each every other day, then at the end of the week you would have raised your CA by 15ppm. the WC you do at the end of the week will muck up the level a little bit, but since the amount you dose each time is absolute and not impacted on WC, eventually your levels will reach a point high enough where the effect of WC changes will be negligible. At that point, the purpose that WC serve will strictly be vacuuming out detritus from sand, and replacing trace elements that you are not dosing (ie, iron, strontium, iodine, etc...), and lowering (to a degree) no3/po4.

Corals coral uptake rates also change when concentration changes, the same coral will absorb more at 450ppm CA than at 350ppm CA, so you probably need to monitor your level and adjust - ie, if at 350ppm your corals take 15ppm. after a couple of months of dosing 30ppm to get to 450ppm, your corals may be absorbing 20ppm due to the higher concentration, so dosing 15ppm will show up on your test results as a slow 5ppm decrease per week. periodic testing and tweaking dosage will correct this. Plus, your corals will be growing so it naturally changes.

The concept above use Calc as example but is applicable for all the params - alc/calc/mg/no3/p4.

A final point is that in a stable system, corals uptake Alk/Calc/Mg at a fixed ratio of approx 2.8DKH/20ppm/1-2ppm. so you can use that to gauge where you uptake is. Don't be alarm if your tank deviates from this esp in new tanks b/c there are a lot of different factors on how they are being consumed. For ex for a long time my tank was doing 4dkh/20ppm of CA. It'll eventually even out but should be a guideline for you to keep on the right path, and investigate any large deviations to see if the cause is a normal aging process vs something off in your tank.

Randy has a treasure trove of articles on water chemistry - they are old but the science behind it is still valid. I'd start with this one:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-06/rhf/index.php

 

[One Reefing Boi]

This might be a bit of a long post but hopefully you'll find helpful b/c there's a lot of factors/nuances to keep in mind:

Generally i'd recommend dosing because it allows for more precision, better control, and more stability since it'll swing less in between water changes. But the effectiveness of one vs the other depends a lot on 1) how much your tank consumes, and 2) what lvls your replacement water's at. The issue here is the % nature and math - the bigger the difference between replaced water and replacement water, the bigger the impact. for example:

if tank was at 350PPM Calc, and you do a 10% WC with a salt mix that has 500% Calc - you'll end up with 350x90% + 500x10% = 365ppm, or a 15PPM raise. If your tank is at 400, a 10%WC will give you 410, or 10ppm raise.

So as your Calc levels raise - WC will be increasingly less effective. On top of that, keep in mind ur corals also are absorbing Calc, so WC may never get u to the level you need. For ex, if your coral also absorbs 15ppm of calc in between each wc, then the 10% WC in the very first example will actually just keep your levels at 350. Increasing the frequency will raise it, sure, but that just means it'll rebalance at some higher level where the CA added by the WC matches the ca uptake for that period. Whether or not that new level is high enough depends on both the frequency and ca uptake. In the same example as above:

if you change from WC every 2 week to every 1 week, this means in ur corals absorb 7.5ppm (15/2) per week. This also means that when your tank gets to 425ppm, it will no longer increase further (425x90% + 500x10% - 7.5 = 425)

a final point to consider with WC is salinity - while 1.025 vs 1.026 may not seem like much - that is actually a 4% difference, so depending on how you mixed your salt from one batch to the next, a 0.001 difference in salinity is actually 20ppm of CA difference and 60ppm of mag difference if the salt mix is designed to be at 500ppm calc and 1500ppm mag.

So, what does it all mean? first thing is - get a handle on what your tank's daily uptake is. just measure your tank daily at the same time for a week and you'll get a general idea. Then you can think about either dosing or do the math above to see how effective wc is. That's why I recommend dosing to save you some brain cells, since you will know if for example, your tank uptakes 15ppm a week, then you can dose for, say 30ppm split to 3 doses of 10ppm each every other day, then at the end of the week you would have raised your CA by 15ppm. the WC you do at the end of the week will muck up the level a little bit, but since the amount you dose each time is absolute and not impacted on WC, eventually your levels will reach a point high enough where the effect of WC changes will be negligible. At that point, the purpose that WC serve will strictly be vacuuming out detritus from sand, and replacing trace elements that you are not dosing (ie, iron, strontium, iodine, etc...), and lowering (to a degree) no3/po4.

Corals coral uptake rates also change when concentration changes, the same coral will absorb more at 450ppm CA than at 350ppm CA, so you probably need to monitor your level and adjust - ie, if at 350ppm your corals take 15ppm. after a couple of months of dosing 30ppm to get to 450ppm, your corals may be absorbing 20ppm due to the higher concentration, so dosing 15ppm will show up on your test results as a slow 5ppm decrease per week. periodic testing and tweaking dosage will correct this. Plus, your corals will be growing so it naturally changes.

The concept above use Calc as example but is applicable for all the params - alc/calc/mg/no3/p4.

A final point is that in a stable system, corals uptake Alk/Calc/Mg at a fixed ratio of approx 2.8DKH/20ppm/1-2ppm. so you can use that to gauge where you uptake is. Don't be alarm if your tank deviates from this esp in new tanks b/c there are a lot of different factors on how they are being consumed. For ex for a long time my tank was doing 4dkh/20ppm of CA. It'll eventually even out but should be a guideline for you to keep on the right path, and investigate any large deviations to see if the cause is a normal aging process vs something off in your tank.

Randy has a treasure trove of articles on water chemistry - they are old but the science behind it is still valid. I'd start with this one:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-06/rhf/index.php

Wow thank you so much for the write up! I have a pounding headache rn but I’ll go through it in detail tomorrow during lunch — I look forward to it!

 

[tnw50cal]

this simple statement said it all. at 3 months your system isn't quite even half way to ready for sps coral yet as stability is tough to gain in a young tank. if you used dry rock expect closer to a year.

Remind me to shoot some pictures of my going to be 3 month old tank in 3 days that's had SPS(including Acropora) in it since 2 days after I set it up. You know what you can click on my build thread to the left. Only thing that wasn't dry was a small bag of bio-media out of one of my other tanks.

 

[Sabellafella]

Almost guarantee it was troubling during shipping. The acro in the back wouldn't just up and die like that unless shipping was insanely harsh on it. The dragon in the front probably dealt with the same stress, but are very sensitive to changes. I would contact the seller and see what they can do.

 

[landlubber]

Remind me to shoot some pictures of my going to be 3 month old tank in 3 days that's had SPS(including Acropora) in it since 2 days after I set it up. You know what you can click on my build thread to the left. Only thing that wasn't dry was a small bag of bio-media out of one of my other tanks.

no need to remind you.
in life there are exceptions to everything and in this hobby you can find a counter argument to every common practice. this is exactly the reason you usually have to take more than a single internet forum opinion.
none the less, the vast majority throwing sticks in a 3 month old system are going to struggle due to a variety of issues most of which are relative to a lack of maturation.
i will definitely check your build out

 

[tnw50cal]

no need to remind you.
in life there are exceptions to everything and in this hobby you can find a counter argument to every common practice. this is exactly the reason you usually have to take more than a single internet forum opinion.
none the less, the vast majority throwing sticks in a 3 month old system are going to struggle due to a variety of issues most of which are relative to a lack of maturation.
i will definitely check your build out

In fairness after 5 decades in this hobby I know a little about it, so I can act before something goes wrong as I know it will go wrong if I don't act. With that said in that tank I fight to keep nutrients up right now, something I know I won't have to fight when it matures.

 

[Uncle99]

I would not add SPS until I see coralline building.
Any even small change will take out, especially acros