Hello,
Apologies in advance for the lengthy post, but I will try to give as much information as possible. For as long as I can remember, my tank has been plagued with coral troubles, and as of recent, things have only gotten worse.
I think it began towards the end of my Fluval 13.5 setup, when polyp extension on all of my LPS corals got shorter, and eventually, they began to close up dramatically and die. At that time, I was convinced there was a chemical reason for this, given that parameters were (fairly) normal and I had five large leather corals packed in the tank. The solution—upgrade the tank.
With the setup of my 40B, I was more strategic in coral placement, making sure to keep corals from growing on top of one another. The old Fluval tank became a quarantine tank for some frogspawns that were in really bad shape. Eventually, everything was together in the 40B and thriving.
For a while, I thought I had coral care figured out. For months, it seemed as though everything was happy and healthy. I began feeding reefroids, and all seemed good, and all the lps were doubling in size, faster than they ever were in the Fluval.
Then catastrophe struck. After one of my regularly scheduled water changes, corals began to close (at first in a natural response to being messed with). Then they continued to recede, and recede, until I was certain they would all die. At first, the solution I found was constant water changes until the corals recovered. That seemed to work for some corals, but others, especially my frogspawn, would continue to do poorly. That is until they were moved into the coral QT for a couple of days. Then, they’d instantly recover.
At first, these instances happened every few months. Then it was every few weeks. Eventually, my stony corals were all living in quarantine more often than when they were in the DT. I came to realize that something had to have been off, which is when I found what seemed to be the source—the water which I used to do water changes had crazy high phosphates. In the tank, they were so high they couldn’t be read on the Salifert test.
So it made sense—get phosphates down, and all should work out. I began doing water changes with RODI water, which took much longer, but there was certainly an improvement in parameters. Even my SPS and torch were looking better. Of course, with constant water changes, nutrients were also bound to go down. So even when phosphates got to a tolerable level, nitrates were also so low that all stony corals continued to do poorly. So my next mission was to get nitrates back up. With this, everything finally started looking how it did months ago. Yet whenever I moved remaining LPS and SPS from quarantine back into the DT, they’d look fine for a day or two, and then every stony coral in the tank would begin to recede. Except now, it’s no longer a slow process, but they are immediately looking near death. Things were getting bad and I didn’t know why.
I began to test water more frequently. Most recently, they were:
Salinity: 1.026
Mag: 1455
Alk: 9.3
pH: 7.9 (not sure why it was so low this time)
Phos: 0.4 (and going down)
Nitrate: 0.1
Calc: 45
Parameters are, admittedly, off from the proper range in the DT. Yet here’s the truly strange part. The QT is, by all accounts, in worse shape. About five months ago, phytoplankton blooms started to plague the Fluval tank, and despite my best efforts left the water an opaque green. Additionally, parameters weren’t very hot either (aside from pH):
Salinity: 1.025
Mag: 1460
Alk: 10.9
pH: 8.2
Phos: 1.5
Nitrate: 0
Calc: 490
By all accounts, this tank should be the death of any corals, especially the more sensitive ones. And yet they still instantly recover as soon as they’re transferred into the Fluval, just as they did months ago. Which brings me back to my very first conclusion. The fact that the corals start to melt back instantly in the DT makes me think that something undetectable by my water tests is causing such a dramatic effect. Additionally, those affected are exclusively stony corals. Zoas close up for a day or two, but my anemones, softies, and gorgonian all continue to thrive. More so, this happens only when the corals are reintroduced to the tank. The zoas look fine at any other time.
As far as the appearance of the corals when this happens, they tend to spit out their mesenterial filaments and recede, exposing as much skeleton as possible. From there, they either recover fine, or, in the case of my euphyllia, melt back and die.
I’ve been wondering what precisely can cause such an issue. Should I send the water in for an ICP test? Should I be testing beyond these parameters? Or, even at these slightly off levels, can there still be such major effect? Why do I not see this in the QT? My source water has rather high iron levels (I don’t know a numerical value), but RO should fix that, right?
Some images from the most recent “meltdown”:
Apologies in advance for the lengthy post, but I will try to give as much information as possible. For as long as I can remember, my tank has been plagued with coral troubles, and as of recent, things have only gotten worse.
I think it began towards the end of my Fluval 13.5 setup, when polyp extension on all of my LPS corals got shorter, and eventually, they began to close up dramatically and die. At that time, I was convinced there was a chemical reason for this, given that parameters were (fairly) normal and I had five large leather corals packed in the tank. The solution—upgrade the tank.
With the setup of my 40B, I was more strategic in coral placement, making sure to keep corals from growing on top of one another. The old Fluval tank became a quarantine tank for some frogspawns that were in really bad shape. Eventually, everything was together in the 40B and thriving.
For a while, I thought I had coral care figured out. For months, it seemed as though everything was happy and healthy. I began feeding reefroids, and all seemed good, and all the lps were doubling in size, faster than they ever were in the Fluval.
Then catastrophe struck. After one of my regularly scheduled water changes, corals began to close (at first in a natural response to being messed with). Then they continued to recede, and recede, until I was certain they would all die. At first, the solution I found was constant water changes until the corals recovered. That seemed to work for some corals, but others, especially my frogspawn, would continue to do poorly. That is until they were moved into the coral QT for a couple of days. Then, they’d instantly recover.
At first, these instances happened every few months. Then it was every few weeks. Eventually, my stony corals were all living in quarantine more often than when they were in the DT. I came to realize that something had to have been off, which is when I found what seemed to be the source—the water which I used to do water changes had crazy high phosphates. In the tank, they were so high they couldn’t be read on the Salifert test.
So it made sense—get phosphates down, and all should work out. I began doing water changes with RODI water, which took much longer, but there was certainly an improvement in parameters. Even my SPS and torch were looking better. Of course, with constant water changes, nutrients were also bound to go down. So even when phosphates got to a tolerable level, nitrates were also so low that all stony corals continued to do poorly. So my next mission was to get nitrates back up. With this, everything finally started looking how it did months ago. Yet whenever I moved remaining LPS and SPS from quarantine back into the DT, they’d look fine for a day or two, and then every stony coral in the tank would begin to recede. Except now, it’s no longer a slow process, but they are immediately looking near death. Things were getting bad and I didn’t know why.
I began to test water more frequently. Most recently, they were:
Salinity: 1.026
Mag: 1455
Alk: 9.3
pH: 7.9 (not sure why it was so low this time)
Phos: 0.4 (and going down)
Nitrate: 0.1
Calc: 45
Parameters are, admittedly, off from the proper range in the DT. Yet here’s the truly strange part. The QT is, by all accounts, in worse shape. About five months ago, phytoplankton blooms started to plague the Fluval tank, and despite my best efforts left the water an opaque green. Additionally, parameters weren’t very hot either (aside from pH):
Salinity: 1.025
Mag: 1460
Alk: 10.9
pH: 8.2
Phos: 1.5
Nitrate: 0
Calc: 490
By all accounts, this tank should be the death of any corals, especially the more sensitive ones. And yet they still instantly recover as soon as they’re transferred into the Fluval, just as they did months ago. Which brings me back to my very first conclusion. The fact that the corals start to melt back instantly in the DT makes me think that something undetectable by my water tests is causing such a dramatic effect. Additionally, those affected are exclusively stony corals. Zoas close up for a day or two, but my anemones, softies, and gorgonian all continue to thrive. More so, this happens only when the corals are reintroduced to the tank. The zoas look fine at any other time.
As far as the appearance of the corals when this happens, they tend to spit out their mesenterial filaments and recede, exposing as much skeleton as possible. From there, they either recover fine, or, in the case of my euphyllia, melt back and die.
I’ve been wondering what precisely can cause such an issue. Should I send the water in for an ICP test? Should I be testing beyond these parameters? Or, even at these slightly off levels, can there still be such major effect? Why do I not see this in the QT? My source water has rather high iron levels (I don’t know a numerical value), but RO should fix that, right?
Some images from the most recent “meltdown”: