Ok I'll start from the top...
I went to feed my fish this morning and I noticed my green staghorn acropora melting away! It was perfectly fine yesterday. One of the hermit crabs was sat in the branches eating the dead tissue.
So I've immediately tested my tank:
PH: 8.1
Salinity: 1.027
Alk: 7dkh
Mag: 1320ppm
Cal: 355ppm (I recently discovered my dosing line had calcified so I'm in the process of raising this)
Nitrate: 1ppm (fighting to raise this)
Phosphate: 0.015 (again I'm trying to raise this)
My tank is 5 years old
Lights: ATI Sunpower T5s
RTN Acropora age: 13 months in tank
The last coral I added was over 6 months ago
Dosing: I automatically dose Alk, Mag and Ca
I have just started automatically dosing Seachem flourish nitrogen to help raise my Nitrates, I'm starting very low and im getting a steady reading of 1ppm when I test Nitrates
I am currently hand dosing vibrant to tackle turf algae which has recently made a reappearance...
I am not running any chaeto, I took it offline a long time ago due to it being too efficient and stipping all the tank nutrients. I just have a skimmer to deal with waste export. I only run Carbon on the rare occasion that I think I need it.
What I did on the days and weeks running up to the RTN:
- Restarted Vibrant (2 weeks ago), I've never had this problem when dosing it previously
- Started dosing Seachem flourish nitrogen (yesterday... 24.01.20)
- Vacuumed my sump (yesterday), I hadn't cleaned it in a long time and it desperately needed it
- Made slight adjustments to my automatically dosers for Alk, Ca and Mg. Nothing major, just small increases to account for what the new growth is using up (this has taken me a couple of weeks to fine tune)
As I read this I'm starting to think I've done too much over a short space of time and this is possibly the reason for the RTN??
What I've done so far since discovering the RTN Acro:
- trimmed back the acropora to remove all the dead tissue and hopefully try to save what's left
- Added carbon
- I've not made any changes to anything I'm dosing as I didn't want to unintentionally upset the tank any further
I think that's everything I can think of? Any ideas of what could have possibly caused it or any tips on what to do next would be massively appreciated.
I went to feed my fish this morning and I noticed my green staghorn acropora melting away! It was perfectly fine yesterday. One of the hermit crabs was sat in the branches eating the dead tissue.
So I've immediately tested my tank:
PH: 8.1
Salinity: 1.027
Alk: 7dkh
Mag: 1320ppm
Cal: 355ppm (I recently discovered my dosing line had calcified so I'm in the process of raising this)
Nitrate: 1ppm (fighting to raise this)
Phosphate: 0.015 (again I'm trying to raise this)
My tank is 5 years old
Lights: ATI Sunpower T5s
RTN Acropora age: 13 months in tank
The last coral I added was over 6 months ago
Dosing: I automatically dose Alk, Mag and Ca
I have just started automatically dosing Seachem flourish nitrogen to help raise my Nitrates, I'm starting very low and im getting a steady reading of 1ppm when I test Nitrates
I am currently hand dosing vibrant to tackle turf algae which has recently made a reappearance...
I am not running any chaeto, I took it offline a long time ago due to it being too efficient and stipping all the tank nutrients. I just have a skimmer to deal with waste export. I only run Carbon on the rare occasion that I think I need it.
What I did on the days and weeks running up to the RTN:
- Restarted Vibrant (2 weeks ago), I've never had this problem when dosing it previously
- Started dosing Seachem flourish nitrogen (yesterday... 24.01.20)
- Vacuumed my sump (yesterday), I hadn't cleaned it in a long time and it desperately needed it
- Made slight adjustments to my automatically dosers for Alk, Ca and Mg. Nothing major, just small increases to account for what the new growth is using up (this has taken me a couple of weeks to fine tune)
As I read this I'm starting to think I've done too much over a short space of time and this is possibly the reason for the RTN??
What I've done so far since discovering the RTN Acro:
- trimmed back the acropora to remove all the dead tissue and hopefully try to save what's left
- Added carbon
- I've not made any changes to anything I'm dosing as I didn't want to unintentionally upset the tank any further
I think that's everything I can think of? Any ideas of what could have possibly caused it or any tips on what to do next would be massively appreciated.