Acropora rtn from base up.

Aquajan

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Hi,

A lot of my acroporas rtn from the base up.
I do not have a lot of acros only 6 pieces but four of them rtn.
My green slimmer rtned 2 months ago and another acro 1 month ago.
I both fragged them but have not ripped them and altought the rtn slowed it did not stop entirely.
Now 4 days ago another acro started to rtn and today yet another..
All other corals like lps, zoas, montis, stylos, sertioporas all do well and are growing.

My nitrates are always low like under 1ppm but not entirely 0.
I started dosing No3 1 month ago when the second acro started to rtn.
I raised it to about 1/2ppm
After testing this weekend I noticed there was a big air pocket in the air line
so No3 wasn't dosed for a few days.
I do not know if such a short time of low No3 can make acros rtn?

Seccond couse could be that I hooked up a new tank (1/3 of total water volume) with dry rock, dry sand and with a top layer of ocean direct sand to the main tank with the acros.
This could be a destabilizing event altough I did match all parameters including No3 and Po4 before I hooked it up.
The new tank (36 days old) already has growing coraline everywhere and olmost no algae and alot! of pods.
There are already a good bunch of corals in the new tank that all seem do do well.

I also bought 36 new coral frags 2 weeks ago 8x acro and they all do well.
Acros are on a frag rack at bottom side of tank.
Other corals are in the new tank.
All corals are diped in rx coral pro for 10 minutes.

The parameters I measure weekly did not significantly fluctuate during those 36 days.

The total system volume is 600l/158g.

My light consists of 3x radeon g5 pro ab+ 8 hr 85% with whit ramp up to 50% at its peak.
And 4xt5 blue plus, 2x for 6 hr and 2x for 3 hr.
Tank is 100x65x55cm/40x26x22inch.
Flow pumps are 2x jecod sow 8 at back pointed down to flush bottem (max 80%) and 2x jecod sow 16m at sides pointed diagonal over the tank (max 50%).
Got alot of both laminar and chaotic flow during the day.

I also dose:
8 ml acropower daily
5ml kz xtra daily
3 drup zeofood plus daily
5 drup KS vitalizer daily
3 drup ks sponge power every other day.
2x half teaspoon reef roids week.
4 cubes frozen food and a bunch of pellets daily.

I use Randy's recipe for macro elements and added fauna marin elements to it for some cheap trace elements.
I also add about 2l/0,53g of kalkwasser daily.
I do 7% auto waterchange weekly with tropic marin pro salt.

My parameters are:

Kh7,3
Ca 420
Mg1370
Ph 8-8.3
No3 2
Po4 0.05
Salinity 1.026
Temp 26c/79f

Does any one has a good idea what is going on?

Here some pics of rtn, old and new tank.

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ScottB

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Nothing wrong with your basic parameters -- especially if you feed a couple times per day. Personally, I only feed my sticks with ample amounts of fish poo. I know exactly what is going into the system.

Given the amount of coral additives you are adding, I would send out for an ICP test to make sure you're not OD'ing on some trace or another. Can also rule out Tin or other metals.

The other possibility is bugs. A year or so ago, I was getting STN at the base of several pieces. It was slow and would actually get covered over with coralline. Even after clean cutting the pieces, it would start again. Several (most) were millis but a few tenuis too. With repeated dips, I was never able to ID a bug that didn't look like your normal small pod.

Anyway, given my symptoms, I was instructed by some big time acro keepers to do an Interceptor treatment X 3. Gotta say, it put a stop to my mysterious base STN troubles. My dragonette was not very happy about it though. It kills all pods, good and bad.
 
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Charlie’s Frags

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I would send out an icp test. You’re dosing a lot of stuff that only an icp can show the values. Something you’re adding isn’t agreeing with your acros. I’ve had some random rtn when using acropower and kz coral booster (you mentioned you were dosing that too in another thead).

Could be pests too. Coral rx doesn’t kill white or red bugs. I would examine your acros with a flashlight a couple hours after the lights are off. Any bug crawling on your acros is a bad bug.
Did you ever figure out what these white spots were?
 
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Aquajan

Aquajan

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Hi,

Sorry for the late response.

So I lost 4 acropora the past days and 2 are on their way out.
All other corals and fish are doing fine.
All acroporas had full pe to their last moments and the remaining ones have good pe too.
They all rtn-ed or are stn-ing from base up.

I stopped dosing all the KZ products.
I now only dose 2 part with the fauna marin elements, kalkwasser, acropower and no3+.

I turned down the g5 pro lights from 85 to 75% as it might be too mutch.
I used a seneye reef to meashure par and I got 300 par on the bottom and 450 at the upper corals at the peak hour of the day (peak is blue, violet 100% red green ww 24%, cw 50% and 4x t5 39w blue+.

I do not see any pests or little bugs on the across or any coral for that matter.
It does not seem like a pest killed them as it went quite fast and at different locations in the tank.

I just received my icp results and it turned out tin is 109 ppm..
I guess it is from all the new plumbing which is olmost 8 meters of 32mm pvc, a bunch of 90 and 45 degree fittings aswell as the glass of the new tank and some black acrylic.

I also had some air in the No3 dose line so it was not dosing No3 for some time and No3 droped to 0 altough i don't think that is the problem here.

I guess a tin of 109 ppm is harmful to the corals and that it is killing them.

I did a detox I had laying around 2 days before I send out the icp so the tin levels could have been alot higher and there might be even more than only a tin problem.

I also have ordered a bag of cuprisorb and a bucket of salt so bring the numbers down.

Fingers crossed that this is the problem and that I can bring the numbers down.


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Aquajan

Aquajan

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I thought it had stopped but today one of the two bigger acropora has starded to lose its tissue.

Last week I did a 30% water change and next week I want to do another one.

It might still be coused by elevated tin as it could be still leaching from the pvc and new tank.
And I don't know how well cuprisorb is absorbing the tin.
The waterchange should have nocked back the tin to 73ppm which is still way too high.

The acropora thats started to die does not have any pe unlike the other acros that died.
It had bad pe for a few weeks.

I don't really know wat to de besides do more waterchange and keep things stable.
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Wdy

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Interesting enough, I feel what you feel

can you tell me the latest condition of your MT, has the problem been resolved?
 
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