Are My SPS Goners?

[FortLivingRoom]

My tank is young 6 months. Started adding corals a month ago. LPS (torches, Duncan, elegance, favia/favites) and shrooms are doing fine, but not SPS. all on this top shelf and will get 200-300 PAR, but right now they’re acclimating currently at 60% of acclimation with Radion XR 15 Pro Gen4.

The purple stylo has been in a month and looks the worst. Polyp bailout? STN?

The acros and bird nest have been in three weeks. Looked good the first but have gotten progressively worse.

Ammonia/nitrite 0
Nitrate was 20, now 15
pH 8
Alk 9.0
Phosphate 0.16
Ca 475
Mg 1290

Will they possibly recover? At what point should I pull them from the tank? Thanks!

 

[tehmadreefer]

Yep they will prettt much be goners as you have some serious tissue loss going on. I’d pull em once they are completely tissue less. You can try saving them by fragging the remaining living part, but unless you fix the issue with your tank, no sense in doing so as they will die anyway.

 

[2021 reefer]

Tbh I don't know what's wrong. The parameters look fine to me. And the corals don't seem to be in bad shape (ok shape). But I think you have cyano

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Yes i can see the tissue loss. Whats ur salinity?
D

 

[2021 reefer]

I am almost positive that that is cyano. Take a sample of the red brown stuff on your frag base. If they say it's cyano then maybe try chemiclean. It's not the end of the world but get rid of it if it is cyano.

 

[2021 reefer]

Sorry for posting so much

 

[FortLivingRoom]

Yes i can see the tissue loss. Whats ur salinity?
D

 

[FortLivingRoom]

I am almost positive that that is cyano. Take a sample of the red brown stuff on your frag base. If they say it's cyano then maybe try chemiclean. It's not the end of the world but get rid of it if it is cyano.

Does cyano grow rapidly on the glass? I’m having a brownish red film on the glass and rocks. It’s very slight not a mat or anything.

 

[2021 reefer]

Does cyano grow rapidly on the glass? I’m having a brownish red film on the glass and rocks. It’s very slight not a mat or anything.

Yes it does. Do you dose different bacteria or did you buy live rock from someone else?

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

All i can say is something you probably already know. Swings in alk. Ph. Salinity. Tempature will cause rtn and stn.
Light too but appears to be water chemistry here. I dont think cyano would.cause that.
Hths
D

 

[FortLivingRoom]

Yes it does. Do you dose different bacteria or did you buy live rock from someone else?

I’ve been dosing microbacter 7 from the start as well as microbacter clean. Started with caribsea liferock and caribsea live sand

 

[FortLivingRoom]

All i can say is something you probably already know. Swings in alk. Ph. Salinity. Tempature will cause rtn and stn.
Light too but appears to be water chemistry here. I dont think cyano would.cause that.
Hths
D

My inkbird is getting down to about 77.2 even though I have the min set to 78 which I thought was weird. I just set up AWC so hopefully everything levels out a bit more. As far as when to pull the frags would you wait until the entire thing is bleached and starting to grow algae?

 

[tbrown]

Another thing a lot of the SPS like is water movement... Are they in still/calmish water or is there good flow around them? Mine don't tend to like direct flow, but too low and the polyps barely come out, too much and they tuck away almost completely.

 

[blasterman]

I'm going to take a guess here, but its something I've harped on.

Your nitrate is 15-20 and phosphate at .16. Most SPS frags bought from commercial growers come from low nutrient tanks to keep low maintenance. Your nitrate and phosphate levels are fairly high and will cause big problems if corals come from a low nutrient tank. Phosphate at .16 is a big issue if the source tank is running .01

SPS can acclimate to higher nutrient tanks obviously , but they acclimate as they grow.

We really need to push commercial sellers to post nitrate and phosphate levels along with alk.

 

[FortLivingRoom]

Another thing a lot of the SPS like is water movement... Are they in still/calmish water or is there good flow around them? Mine don't tend to like direct flow, but too low and the polyps barely come out, too much and they tuck away almost completely.

I’m relatively new to this, so I can’t exactly say my flow is correct, but I can see a lot of particles fly past the SPS and the polyps were agitated significantly, not just “waving” in the current.

 

[FortLivingRoom]

I'm going to take a guess here, but its something I've harped on.

Your nitrate is 15-20 and phosphate at .16. Most SPS frags bought from commercial growers come from low nutrient tanks to keep low maintenance. Your nitrate and phosphate levels are fairly high and will cause big problems if corals come from a low nutrient tank. Phosphate at .16 is a big issue if the source tank is running .01

SPS can acclimate to higher nutrient tanks obviously , but they acclimate as they grow.

We really need to push commercial sellers to post nitrate and phosphate levels along with alk.

Good point. The purple stylo was from TSM and the rest are from Tidal Gardens, but they’re all doing poorly. I’ll see if I can email TSM and Tidal gardens about parameters. I think I’ll try a larger water change and pick up a GFO reactor just in case. 3 weeks ago before most of the coral arrived my nitrates were at 20 and I vacuumed and did a 50% water change. Then the next day when coral arrived my nitrates were 0! I didn’t have a phosphate checker yet, just got that a couple days ago. I got real worried about the zero nitrate so I’ve been feeding heavily which is probably where the problem started.

 

[FortLivingRoom]

Purple stylo looking rough today. Started daily 10% water changes until nitrate/phosphate come down. When should I put this guy out of his misery? Or can I just leave it until when/if algae grows in it?

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Ouch. Whats wrong? Mine was low salinity and high alk and low nutrients. Ive turned mine around i think.
D

 

[FortLivingRoom]

Ouch. Whats wrong? Mine was low salinity and high alk and low nutrients. Ive turned mine around i think.
D

Wish I knew! Gonna bring nitrate and phosphate down and see what happens.

 

[Suohhen]

Looks to me like the stylos are getting too much light on their shaded sides. If you don't know the par of the system they are coming from it can be assumed that acros were probably kept in higher par and other sps quite possibly in lower where the light is also typically more directional. 60% of 200 to 300 is still a lot but I'd imagine the % started much lower than that. The acros have the opposite issue whereby the tips look bad which could also be too much light or burnt tips but all of the is confounded by the potential difference in nutrient levels as Blasterman noted so who knows.
I think the acros will be okay, the purple Stylo is probably beyond hope but I would keep pulling for the rest of them and maybe stop at 60% for a while.