Continuing to Struggle with SPS

[hart24601]

I have just used sodium nitrate that has food grade certification or higher. I personally am uncomfortable using things like stump remover too but it’s not hard nor prohibitively expensive for me to use graded chemicals. Feeding more is a solid option, at some point you may find phosphate rising higher than you would like, since nitrates are generally consumed much faster than phosphates, at which point I suggest nitrate dosing. Another thing to consider is that I have found some corals are sensitive to rapid phosphate changes, so I would just watch those levels and not increase them too quickly in an attempt to get nitrate. However since you are feeding more and remain undetectable with nitrate lends a bit of credit to being nitrate limited since the system is consuming it so fast.

 

[Scorpius]

If you do dose nitrate then please take it extremely slowly.

 

[aarbutina]

IPC test seen. I will report back when I have results.

 

[aarbutina]

I have just used sodium nitrate that has food grade certification or higher. I personally am uncomfortable using things like stump remover too but it’s not hard nor prohibitively expensive for me to use graded chemicals. Feeding more is a solid option, at some point you may find phosphate rising higher than you would like, since nitrates are generally consumed much faster than phosphates, at which point I suggest nitrate dosing. Another thing to consider is that I have found some corals are sensitive to rapid phosphate changes, so I would just watch those levels and not increase them too quickly in an attempt to get nitrate. However since you are feeding more and remain undetectable with nitrate lends a bit of credit to being nitrate limited since the system is consuming it so fast.

I ordered a bag of reagent grade Sodium Nitrate, just in case I get the urge to dabble in Nitrate dosing. The bottle of spectracide I have will only be used for its intended purpose, getting rid of stumps.

 

[hart24601]

Excited to see the progress!

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

This is what I dose when my nitrates drop below 0.2
https://mecoral.com/product-category/nitrate/

 

[madweazl]

Few things that work well for me:

1) Raising PAR rarely leads to anything good when acroporas are already stressed. 200 PAR is plenty to keep them alive.
2) Lower alkalinity levels have always produced better results with my acroporas than high. I shoot for 7 dKh.
3) I've seen no difference in the health of my acroporas with phosphate levels between .01 and up to .2ppm (haven't had higher levels so that range might even be larger).
4) The acroporas appear to be the healthiest when nitrates are at or below 2ppm.

 

[aarbutina]

ICP Test Results are in:

 

[aarbutina]

It appears that my Potassium and Iodine levels are on the low side, but everything else looks to be normal. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I am not sure if this would be what is causing the issues I am seeing.

 

[hart24601]

I would say this lends support to low nitrates and maybe even phosphates. Have you increased them and to what level and for how long? It takes a while.

 

[Scorpius]

I cans say that too much light and very low nitrates will nuke a tank. Currently dealing with quite a bit of death. Hoping it stops soon. Parameter swings suuuuck.

 

[aarbutina]

I would say this lends support to low nitrates and maybe even phosphates. Have you increased them and to what level and for how long? It takes a while.

So phosphates have been running between .02 and .03 ppm but my nitrates have been running at 0 ppm or at least undetectable but the Red Sea pro kit.

I just started up with dosing sodium nitrate yester day. So we will see if that help. I also ordered some brightwells potassium and iodine to get this back in check.

 

[jpas]

ICP Test Results are in:

Do you have any coralline growth? Is your chaeto actually growing to the point you need to harvest it?

Your iodine, zinc & iron are all zero. Are you doing weekly water changes or are you dosing something like Triton or ATI?

What kind of algae are you getting in your display tank?

 

[aarbutina]

Do you have any coralline growth? Is your chaeto actually growing to the point you need to harvest it?

Your iodine, zinc & iron are all zero. Are you doing weekly water changes or are you dosing something like Triton or ATI?

What kind of algae are you getting in your display tank?

Yes there is Coralline growth in the tank. I really need to stay on top of it of it starts covering the glass very quickly.

The Chaeto is growing. I cut it back pretty heavily a while back in an attempt to reduce the amount of Nitrate it was sucking up and still has a bit of room left to grow into.

I have recently tried to get back in to a more stringent water change schedule. I’m sure that that lack of water changes for a while were how these parameters got out of whack in the first place. I do not dose any of the trace element blend products.

I was getting a bit of turf type algae growing on my rock work. But now that I increased my fuge light schedule again the algae in the display is going away.

 

[jpas]

Sounds like you need to get back on weekly water changes before making too many other changes.

 

[aarbutina]

I am back to weekly water changes now.

 

[aarbutina]

So I am 11 days into dosing 1 ppm of Sodium Nitrate a day. Nitrate level have gone from 0 up to somewhere between 1 and 2 ppm using the Red Sea Pro test kit. As of last night phosphate was measured as 0.03 ppm.

At this point I would have hoped to be seeing some positive results, unfortunately that is not the case. I went away for 4 days to visit family after Christmas and when I came back every thing was looking worse than it did before I left. There was whole lot of paling and signs of STN on most of my montis. Even the ones that I wasn't having any issues with before.

My thought is that this is being caused by one of a couple things of a combination there of.

1) Sometime after I left the house, most likely the minute I walked out of the door my skimmer collection cup filled up and shut the skimmer down. Looking at the pH trends in Fusion, it seems that during this time the pH was swinging a little bit more than it normally does on a daily basis. Maybe just by a tenth of a pH point in either direction. Not a huge change but a change.

2) The corals aren't happy with presence of the N03 or it was ramped up to quickly. That being said I don't think a 1 to 2 ppm raise over 10 days should/would cause this type of issue. I am dosing with reagent/pharma grade chemical so I am not nearly as worried about contaminates as I would be if I was using stump remover.

3) Since up until now my Nitrate and Phosphate level have been 0/0 I have been keeping my Alkalinity level at around 7.5 dKh. Since the begining of December when I finally got my doser dialed in correctly i have had pretty good luck with keeping the alk where I wanted it. Looking back at my test results I have maintained an average alkalinity of 7.6 dKH and have had a variation of +/- 0.3 dKH over the course of the month. But generally pretty stable. That being said I am wondering if with the increased "nutrients" if maintaining my alkalinity at this level is causing the issue. From everything I have read I should be maintaining my Alk between 8 and 9 with these nitrate and phosphate numbers. So maybe they just paled out and started to STN due to a lot alkalinity in relation to the nitrate and phosphate level.

4) I think I had a fish die in the tank while I was gone. One on my anthias was looking pretty beat up before I left. It was eating but it did not look good. I haven't seen it since I have been back, though it normally spent a lot of time hiding any way, but I do have a feeling it is a goner.

Would be interested to hear any thoughts that folks may have.

 

[aarbutina]

So was just sitting here thinking about whats going on in my system and trying to figure out what might be going on. In re-reading the last post that I made in this thread I made a connection to something I previously experienced. Back in April when I was first experimenting with Nitrate dosing I was using Spectracide. At the time I posted a thread asking if anyone had experienced any negatives dosing Spectracide specifically (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/has-anyone-ever-had-their-sps-die-due-to-dosing-spectracide-for-nitrates.386025/)

In that thread I noticed that my SPS started to take a turn for the worst after 10 days of dosing. I was dosing at at rate a of 1 ppm a day. I shared my current test results in there thread and upon review it seems that they are very similar to where my tank is sitting today.

Test Results April 30 12018:

Alk 7.5
Ca 380 (lower but not crazy)
Nitrate 1.5
Phosphate 0.034
Potassium 390
Ammonia 0​

At the time I was concerned that it was something in the Spectracide that was contaminating the tank. I stopped dosing Nitrates did some water changes and things recovered. No I have switched to using a reagent grade Sodium Nitrate and I am having the same issues at approximately the same time (10ish days after start of dosing), with nearly identical test results.

What this is leading me to believe is that Option #3 proposed above (alk to low for given nitrate level) is the leading contender for root cause.

It is always stressed that it is important to match your alkalinity to you "nutrient" level.

Has anyone else experienced similar results to these? In all the threads I have read on nitrate or phosphate dosing I can think of a time that I have seen the poster who is trying to increase one of these also increasing alkalinity at the same time, but it makes sense.

 

[aarbutina]

Continuing reading through that old tread I found that I already proposed this:

"Another thing I have been thinking is could the be an available nutrients and alkalinity thing. In the past folks who have run near zero systems have kept alkalinity at NSW levels of 7-8. Deviating to far on either side of that range seemed to have resulted in “burned tips” or Stn. Now people are pushing to higher alk level 9-11 ish, but to do this the nutrient level in the tank must be higher, or you guessed it burned tip/Stn. What if we just weren’t increasing our alk to a high enough level to match our nutrient level (again just a thought). What was you alk level during you experience?Another thing I have been thinking is could the be an available nutrients and alkalinity thing. In the past folks who have run near zero systems have kept alkalinity at NSW levels of 7-8. Deviating to far on either side of that range seemed to have resulted in “burned tips” or Stn. Now people are pushing to higher alk level 9-11 ish, but to do this the nutrient level in the tank must be higher, or you guessed it burned tip/Stn. What if we just weren’t increasing our alk to a high enough level to match our nutrient level (again just a thought). What was you alk level during you experience?"​

But i think I was hung up on a contaminant at the time and wanted to blame the Spectracide.

 

[markalot]

So I am 11 days into dosing 1 ppm of Sodium Nitrate a day. Nitrate level have gone from 0 up to somewhere between 1 and 2 ppm using the Red Sea Pro test kit. As of last night phosphate was measured as 0.03 ppm.

Are you still hand dosing? You could still be seeing a reaction from something that happened 14 days ago, 11 days is nothing IMO. Steady the tank, let the corals go through what they are going to go through, and then move forward.