Acros crashing

[AFHokie]

Around November I was feeling really good about my tank and things were doing well. The couple acros I had were growing and looking great so I decided to get a few more from Black Friday sales. They came and went in my frag rack. A couple weeks later I moved them to my rockwork and since then everything acro, except two frags, has started going downhill.

Main problem is increasing tissue loss, poor PE, and generally looking rough.

I wasn’t overly shocked that a couple of the new frags didn’t adapt but when the two torts I had for a while started showing problems it became apparent that something isn’t right.

I’m trying to find the best approach to help these frags but at the same time not make big changes that throw everything else off for my other coral. Everything else in the tank is doing great.

Tank age: 10 months
Temp:78.3
SG: 1.026
Alk: 8.6 (Hanna)
Ca: 420
Mg:1310
NO3: 6.5 (Hanna)
PO4: .08 (Hanna)
K: 400

Changes:
-Moved from IO to AF Reed salt at end of Nov to get my target numbers without messing with new salt chemistry every time.
-Added second hygger mini wave maker at Christmas to get more random flow on left side of tank.
-Slight instability in PO4, swings of less than .05 over a few days

Over many months I’ve slowly increased my light output to 92% to hit higher PAR up top. Unfortunately, I didn’t record when I hit 92 and stopped so not sure on how long they have been sitting at the highest level. I rented a PAR meter many months ago and tested at 90%. My miyagi was in a spot at about 250 PAR. Using Photone on my phone my miyagi was getting closer to 275ish at the 92%. I have one XR15 G5 pro on AB+.

Below are a couple pics with the tissue loss. Very quickly the bare spots get brown algae growth on them which I’m sure isn’t helping.

Once upon a time this frag was blue and green but for a month or now has been mostly purple (too much PAR?)

Cali tort. Most tissue loss on left. Right side has good PE and only one small spec of tissue loss

Green Austera (fastest crash of new additions)


Fraghouse blueberry muffin (so far so good)


Fraghouse fashion show (seems ok so far)


FTS:

I of course want to save these frags but not at the expense of everything else. Could this be the case of an older param swing I didn’t catch now rearing it’s ugly head? Could I be hitting them with too much PAR? It seems Photone is “close enough” to an apogee.

Welcome any thoughts.

 

[njreefkeeper]

A few things:

1. Did you start your tank 10 months ago with dry rock?
2. Was your salt switch all at once or did you slowly mix your old salt mix with new until your old salt was gone?
3. Have you checked your heater to see if it’s cracked and/or possibly releasing current in the water (number one cause of tank crashes)?

 

[DanyL]

Adding to @njreefkeeper questions:

4. Are you dosing anything or are you relaying on water changes?
5. How often do you change your water and at what percentage to tank volume?
6. Have you tried verifying your test results using a regular test kit (Salifert/Red Sea)? Hanna's Alk test is often inaccurate.
7. Are you feeding a lot of Nori by any chance? It contains quite a lot of Iodine which may get released to the water and cause similar symptoms.

 

[AFHokie]

A few things:

1. Did you start your tank 10 months ago with dry rock?
2. Was your salt switch all at once or did you slowly mix your old salt mix with new until your old salt was gone?
3. Have you checked your heater to see if it’s cracked and/or possibly releasing current in the water (number one cause of tank crashes)?

1. Started with dry rock
2. I didn’t mix salt but I only change at most about 10% no more than every couple weeks. Alkalinity was the biggest change in the salt and it gradually went from around 10 to 8.6 since I started the new salt in late Nov.
3. Haven’t checked heater. Would only acros be affected by that?

 

[AFHokie]

Adding to @njreefkeeper questions:

4. Are you dosing anything or are you relaying on water changes?
5. How often do you change your water and at what percentage to tank volume?
6. Have you tried verifying your test results using a regular test kit (Salifert/Red Sea)? Hanna's Alk test is often inaccurate.
7. Are you feeding a lot of Nori by any chance? It contains quite a lot of Iodine which may get released to the water and cause similar symptoms.

4. No element dosing. Another mystery I explored in a different thread but several (maybe 4-5 now?) months ago I noticed my alkalinity depletion stopped. All corals are growing yet even after stopping my dosing (AFR) alkalinity would continue to rise. That has since stoped and now I see very minimal alkalinity depletion.
5. Every 10-14 days at 10-15% (tank is 20 gal net water volume)
6. Yes, I also test with salifert to verify and have only been using the Hanna Alk and NO3 for a week or two.
7. No nori. XTreme pellets, PE mysis, and Rod’s food. Reef energy AB+ once a week and reef roids once a week (only since Christmas)

 

[adsf430]

Do you have a PH monitor? If not very worth getting one. I realized all my beginner acro issues turned out to be due to times PH got very low without me noticing. Causes Alk to spike and kills the acros, but it's hard to notice if only testing once a day or less.

 

[AFHokie]

For a warm fuzzy I just checked a couple things
Alkalinity:
Salifert: 8.3
Hanna: 8.5

PO4:
Salifert: barely blue? Somewhere around the .03-.1 so in line with my Hanna from the other day.




Within expected error so no concern there

 

[AFHokie]

Do you have a PH monitor? If not very worth getting one. I realized all my beginner acro issues turned out to be due to times PH got very low without me noticing. Causes Alk to spike and kills the acros, but it's hard to notice if only testing once a day or less.

Very interesting. I have a cheap one but since it seems to need calibration every time I use it I don’t use it very often.

If pH drops drive alkalinity perhaps that’s the reason I saw alkalinity increases?

These problems are recent, perhaps coinciding with winter and our house being more closed up, heat on, etc. driving pH down?

 

[adsf430]

Very interesting. I have a cheap one but since it seems to need calibration every time I use it I don’t use it very often.

If pH drops drive alkalinity perhaps that’s the reason I saw alkalinity increases?

These problems are recent, perhaps coinciding with winter and our house being more closed up, heat on, etc. driving pH down?

Yea winter definitely lowers it. Main elements are closing windows more often, too much company coming over, and cooking using gas. All lower PH. I never calibrate mine, more important that you see the drops and correct them by lowering your alkalinity dosing. Also, I highly recommend a CO2 scrubber.

 

[DanyL]

Slow and gradual transition from one salt to another is correct, especially when the parameters are vastly different. I doubt this has anything to do with it.

Acros in general are delicate corals and even more so in a newly established, dry-rock tank where bacteria diversity is still developing. This may also explain your experience with Alk growing up even when you aren't dosing anything, since A4R requires bacterial processing to turn Calcium formate into Calcium Carbonate.

However, this could also be stemmed by PH fluctuations, which in turn can be influenced by the amount of people in the house, air flow in the room, etc, so I would try to monitor PH at different times of the day for a couple of days to rule this out and cross reference it against the fluctuations you see in your Alk test results.

The 2 main things I would tackle are better bacterial establishment and diversity, and your somewhat low Magnesium levels.

You can get fairly good bacterial diversity by introducing a live rock from an established tank (or straight from the sea, if you have access), another popular way in recent years is to use bottled up bacteria.
For better establishment you would also need to introduce a carbon source, this could be either Vodka+Vinegar, NoPox, or Biopellets. However, you need to be cautious as this will also lower your nutrients, which are currently good, so I would either be prepared to dose them, or add more fish to up the bio load.

As for Magnesium - I would shoot for around 1380 -1430, but make sure to do so slowly, if I remember correctly it is advised to increase up to 10mg a day, but I would double check this before doing so.

Good Luck!

 

[DanyL]

Also, just to make sure your water quality is in check - make sure your TDS is 0.
Otherwise it could be a contamination issue, which you'll be able to ensure through an ICP test.

 

[AFHokie]

Also, just to make sure your water quality is in check - make sure your TDS is 0.
Otherwise it could be a contamination issue, which you'll be able to ensure through an ICP test.

TDS on my RO is 0

 

[njreefkeeper]

1. Started with dry rock
2. I didn’t mix salt but I only change at most about 10% no more than every couple weeks. Alkalinity was the biggest change in the salt and it gradually went from around 10 to 8.6 since I started the new salt in late Nov.
3. Haven’t checked heater. Would only acros be affected by that?

1. Dry rock and acros in a first year tank just sucks. I’m only now a little after a year in starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It just takes much more time than most of us give it.
2. Any salt change is best to introduce gradually. Many report issues regardless of which salt they switched to/from if it’s too fast.
3. It’s not that only acros would be affected, but I’d guess they’d be the first to react negatively.

 

[Ancient Mariner]

It’s a common experience in a young reef that non-acropora SPS can do OK while Acroporas fade (or like in my tank do OK for a few weeks then fade). I came close to doing a Pocillopora dominant reef when my acroporas struggled for a year and a half. Then at the 2 year mark the acropora finally started to thrive.

 

[Becks17]

Check for AEFWs