Continuing to Struggle with SPS

[aarbutina]

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.

While I would tend to agree with you, the tank had been relatively stable for the past month, with the exception of the addition of dosing Nitrates. My plan right now is to continue dosing as well as slowly bring the alkalinity up.

EDIT: Stable with the exception of the skimmer turn off while I was a way last week for what could have been a couple of day, as mentioned three posts ago.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Nutrients and trace elements is my opinion, I fought corals looking like this for years before I figured it out.

Before: 6 months of low nutrients and no trace dosing/monthly 10% water change

After: 6 months of 5+ nitrates and at least 0.03 po4; bi-weekly trace element dosing (red sea colors) and continue 10% water changes:

This was the theme with all my SPS; dosing and higher nutrients turned a dull low growth tank into a colorful explosion of healthy SPS.

 

[Bps619]

Nutrients and trace elements is my opinion, I fought corals looking like this for years before I figured it out.

Before: 6 months of low nutrients and no trace dosing/monthly 10% water change

After: 6 months of 5+ nitrates and at least 0.03 po4; bi-weekly trace element dosing (red sea colors) and continue 10% water changes:

This was the theme with all my SPS; dosing and higher nutrients turned a dull low growth tank into a colorful explosion of healthy SPS.

I think I just watched your YouTube vid. In wall tank? Following along

 

[aarbutina]

Nutrients and trace elements is my opinion, I fought corals looking like this for years before I figured it out.

Before: 6 months of low nutrients and no trace dosing/monthly 10% water change

After: 6 months of 5+ nitrates and at least 0.03 po4; bi-weekly trace element dosing (red sea colors) and continue 10% water changes:

This was the theme with all my SPS; dosing and higher nutrients turned a dull low growth tank into a colorful explosion of healthy SPS.

Would it be possible to provide the alkalinity level that you kept you tank at during both of these periods?

 

[2Wheelsonly]

I think I just watched your YouTube vid. In wall tank? Following along

Yes, that's me!

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Would it be possible to provide the alkalinity level that you kept you tank at during both of these periods?

My alk shifts between 7.8 and 8.5 throughout the week. It's been stable like that for 3 years now.

 

[aarbutina]

My alk shifts between 7.8 and 8.5 throughout the week. It's been stable like that for 3 years now.

Cool. Good to know thanks for the reply.

 

[aarbutina]

20 days into dosing Sodium Nitrate. Currently my nitrates are sitting around 4 ppm and my phophate are around 0.05 ppm. I have brought my alkalinity up to about 8.3 dka. Things are continuing to look bad.... really bad. All of my montis are graying or are fully grated out. Going to stay the course and see if stabilizing the alkalinity helps things out. It’s not looking good though

 

[ZaneTer]

I would perform a 100% water change, in your 90 gallon that is relatively easy. I do full 200g changes every 6 months.

My thinking is that you have a contaminant or allelopathy going on. By now your rocks should have fully saturated with NO3 and PO4 so when you do your water change some will leach out so you shouldn’t have a tank deprived of them for long....ICP can’t detect allelopathy nor even something like cyanide (not that I am suggesting you have any). You would need a mass spectrometer to begin detecting hazardous chemicals in your tank.

Some may suggest carbon but I don’t personally like it.

 

[aarbutina]

Nutrients and trace elements is my opinion, I fought corals looking like this for years before I figured it out.

Before: 6 months of low nutrients and no trace dosing/monthly 10% water change

After: 6 months of 5+ nitrates and at least 0.03 po4; bi-weekly trace element dosing (red sea colors) and continue 10% water changes:

This was the theme with all my SPS; dosing and higher nutrients turned a dull low growth tank into a colorful explosion of healthy SPS.

So I watched both your videos and the changes over 1 Year are very very impressive. I’d say impressive enough that I picked up some Red Sea trace colors supplements and will give it a try.

I know for a fact that my potassium and iodine are very very low, particularly potassium. Not only by ICP but also by testing with the Red Sea pro kit. Going to bring this up to the level they should be.

 

[madweazl]

For what it's worth, I havent noticed any difference in my acroporas when I had very low nutrient levels (NO3 barely detectable with PO4 at .01) with 7 dKh. I've had NO-3 up to 5ppm and PO4 up to .2ppm with the same alkalinity and there was no difference in my corals (alkalinity levels were down below 6 dKh in December and there still wasnt an observable affect on the acropora). I dont believe your issues to be related to your nutrients levels or alkalinity.

 

[aarbutina]

For what it's worth, I havent noticed any difference in my acroporas when I had very low nutrient levels (NO3 barely detectable with PO4 at .01) with 7 dKh. I've had NO-3 up to 5ppm and PO4 up to .2ppm with the same alkalinity and there was no difference in my corals (alkalinity levels were down below 6 dKh in December and there still wasnt an observable affect on the acropora). I dont believe your issues to be related to your nutrients levels or alkalinity.

So my question to that would be why would corals that were fully colored an growing start taking such a battering when Nitrate and phosphate were raised. Yes I am struggling with a majority of SPS, but my Monti Caps were very happy. Added some NO3 an boom.... they look like they were hit by a train. One may say well its the low potassium, but the potassium was low before hand. It could very well be a combination of different things, low potassium, increased NO3 & PO4, increased alkalinity. Very perplexing.

 

[aarbutina]

I would perform a 100% water change, in your 90 gallon that is relatively easy. I do full 200g changes every 6 months.

My thinking is that you have a contaminant or allelopathy going on. By now your rocks should have fully saturated with NO3 and PO4 so when you do your water change some will leach out so you shouldn’t have a tank deprived of them for long....ICP can’t detect allelopathy nor even something like cyanide (not that I am suggesting you have any). You would need a mass spectrometer to begin detecting hazardous chemicals in your tank.

Some may suggest carbon but I don’t personally like it.

Rock was transferred from a previous tank that had been running for many years, so if there is such thing as fully saturated, they would have been years and years ago.

I suppose that there could be some chemical contamination that could be causing an issue, but during the time frame that everything was doing well started to really go down hill nothing new add added to the tank, save for the Sodium Nitrate. I still find it very interesting that my experience this time is matching what I saw when I tried dosing nitrates before.

Have been running carbon off and on for a while.

 

[madweazl]

I plugged your ICP results in to a salinity calculator and got 31.5ppt (1.0236). Your results for magnesium are also quite a bit different than that of the ICP (off by about 170ppm). Are these deltas the result of fluctuations within the tank or just test error (neither is particularly bad but may be indicative of an unstable environment)?

Edit: also, in your first post you mentioned having some alkalinity issues and things started to go down hill. You hadn't mentioned the dosing of nitrates until two weeks later so you were already experiencing issues. You did make a substantial change to lighting; have you continued to increase the duration of the T5s? All of this points to almost nothing being "stable" within your tank.

 

[Ldballoon4]

Too many negative variables leads to unknowns like this. Skimmer failure, dosing unknowns, tweeking this and that etc..

Check your salinity with a well working manual refractometer or digital one.
Your ALK is fine. Feed more instead of dosing the chemicals. Do a corrective water change. Double check everything with another Reefer nearby. Especially your salinity. Also clean out your RO/Di holding container- it’s does collect detritus and grow bacteria. You got a slow crash occurring. Those are the worst.

 

[dwest]

Rock was transferred from a previous tank that had been running for many years, so if there is such thing as fully saturated, they would have been years and years ago.

I suppose that there could be some chemical contamination that could be causing an issue, but during the time frame that everything was doing well started to really go down hill nothing new add added to the tank, save for the Sodium Nitrate. I still find it very interesting that my experience this time is matching what I saw when I tried dosing nitrates before.

Have been running carbon off and on for a while.

I had a similar problem with a “newish” tank after reefing for many years. I would do the following:
1. Make sure that your rodi unit is putting out zero tds with a hand held held tds meter.
2. If there was a possibility of using non reef safe silicone for anything, even a little bit, replace it.
3. Do 10% wc per week.
4. Stop using any chemical or physical media that removes nutrients. Only GAC would be used.
5. Check any strange algaes under the microscope for possible dinos.

 

[aarbutina]

So I felt it was time for a small update. I am one month into the nitrate dosing, it is appears that things are starting to turn the corner. I see some hints of color in the corals that had completely greyed out and polyp extension has returned. My nitrates are testing around 4 ppm with phosphates at around 0.02 to 0.03. I have stabilized my alkalinity at around 8.2 dKh. I have also brought my potassium and iodine levels up to an appropriate range. So i will keep my fingers crossed that this upward trend continues.

I would also like to note that I am going to start implementing the Red Sea Trace colors system to supplement the BRS 2 part plus Mg that @2Wheelsonly made reference to earlier in the thread. BRS did a good video on the maintenance of trace elements as part of the BRS/WWC series. While dilution is the solution to pollution the same isn't always true with trying to maintain trace elements through water changes only, if you aren't doing large water changes on a regular basis. You will eventually we a decrease in these elements unless the fresh saltwater you are adding has higher amounts of the trace than what you would typically want to maintain your tank at (which normally isn't the case).

And away we go....

 

[aarbutina]

Minor Update: 10 days later and things appears to still be on the upswing. Colors are definitely coming back. I'm even starting to see some colors come to in corals that hadn't colored correctly since I had purchased them so that is a good sign in my book.

As some folks have pointed out there were a number of different things going on with the tank so it may be hard to ever point to one and say that it was the root cause for my issues. Personally I am leaning towards lack of trace elements (potassium and iodine) and nitrate dosing with lower alkalinity levels as the most likely suspects, or some combination of the two. I will continue to update with progress. I wish I had a better camera that I could document this photographically with. I can never seem to get and accurate or even semi accurate picture with any of my cameras.

 

[ihavecrabs]

Glad to see things are turning the corner for you. I'm having similar troubles as you with some of my acros and interestingly also have iodine deficiencies.

What troubles me is I have one montipora digitata that looks horrendous and a few acros with tips that look like someone took sandpaper to them along with filaments out, but 90% of my acros are doing absolutely amazing and growing tremendously. I'm at the point where I don't want to make any changes for the few in benefit to the many.. or are these the canaries in the coal mine! o_O

Looking forward to seeing your tank continue to progress in the upswing! Take pictures to track!