Coral not calcifying?

[ReefSlice]

Long story, but my nitrates were 100+ a few months ago after not caring for the tank for a while. Now they've been under 5 for 2 months and I'm afraid to completely stop. But I'm down to .4 ml today and plan to completely stop and watch levels this week. If nitrates begin to rise I plan on starting back up a dose of 1 ml/day and just adding phosphate to a dosing pump to keep levels up. What's strange is everyone tells me nopox is better at reducing nitrate than phosphate, however my po4 dropped from .38 to 0 in 3 days when I began dosing and nitrates took months to come down, and now no matter how low I go po4 remains 0.
Tank was started with Marco rocks 2 years ago, using a few pieces from my 5 year old 90g reef to seed at the time. Had cyano at one point, but never an algae problem. Perhaps po4 was always limited which caused the cyano outbreak and I'm just realizing it.

 

[CNDReef]

Don’t stop carbon dosing, instead reduce the amount you’re using per day. Maybe cut it in half and wait a week. I’ve had bad experience going cold turkey. Nitrates climbed to 50 in a week.

 

[ReefSlice]

Just seems like the amount I'm dosing already can't be doing much, I've never even heard of someone only dosing 1 ml/day on a 50g system. But it clearly is doing something as po4 gets eaten up like cake at a fat camp.. I already cut it from 2 to 1 ml when nutrients got to manageable levels and nitrates went from 3 to 5-10. Perhaps I'll just keep it at .5 ml for a few weeks and see where that leaves me.

 

[KJoFan]

Following. I think I'm going to look for some Neophos when I'm out and about tomorrow. Since from what I've read on your thread thus far, I'll keep my nutrient control dosing going since Nitrates are in range for me, and hope to bring up the PO4.

 

[ReefSlice]

Go slow when you start, however the dosage seems to be overstated, or my tank was using up a lot of po4 in 24 hours, because a dose that should have brought me to .03 was bringing me to around .01, so I had to slowly dose more each day, but it seems to have stabilized a bit.
Just an update, corals have stopped receding and some are showing better PE and returning color. Have some green film algae growing on my rocks and glass as well as a definite increase in sponge growth which is welcome. Po4 is sitting at .02-.03 with 2x daily feedings of lrs reef frenzy and 1 ml doses of neophos if it drops a little too low. Nitrates are remaining at 4/5 which is great, will keep it this way for a few weeks and report back. Two newer sps have actually begun to encrust, but still no noticable drop in alk really.

 

[KJoFan]

In my brief research I did read about the potential for rocks to absorb some of the PO4, which could account for the unpredictable readings. Such that if you keep upping the dose, you’ll end up with an algae outbreak because the rocks were retaining some PO4. Just good for thought.

Glad it seems to be having positive effects for you.

 

[ReefSlice]

Well, I've been keeping po4 above 0 (.01-.034) for a few weeks now and still nothing... Alk/cal has not budged one bit, my rocks got some better color to them, but still no coralline taking off or any SPS or LPS growth (other than 1 tricolor frag which is encrusting for some reason). My candy cane still looks POed and my frags are still hanging in there but obviously not thriving. I have been feeding more and even adding reef roids to my LRS mixture to feed the corals, but other than slightly better PE on a few pieces not much change. Anyone got any other suggestions? I'm just baffled as to how my big 3 can remain the same for weeks on end, has anyone ever seen that?

 

[estebanb450]

Random suggestion maybe faulty test kits, old reagent or tainted reagent. Have you had a friend test water or a Lfs?

 

[ReefSlice]

I've used multiple kits and none were close to expiration. Using red Sea for alk and Cal, Hanna for po4 and nyos for no3. Also getting very consistent results. My tanks pretty stable as nothing uptakes anything from the water other than po4.

 

[estebanb450]

Testing at the same time same salinity?

 

[estebanb450]

Have you tested ph.
Anything in your tank sump sponge filter, floss , carbon,nitrate ,nitrite, ammonia pad,when was the last time you did a water change like Randy mentioned maybe a trace eelement is out of whack. Have you tried moving the corals to a different spot

 

[ReefSlice]

Only equipment is skimmer, return pump, power head, lights and heater. No media at all in the tank. It's been about 2 weeks since I did a water change because the water changes do nothing, no elements are being used up so it is highly unlikely that a trace element is out of whack.

 

[ReefSlice]

Anyone out there got any suggestions? I've kept po4 at measurable levels for 3 weeks now and no parameter swings and still nothing. Every SPS and LPS still looks pale and not a single sign of growth, zoas are slowly growing but some are stretching like theyre looking for something. I've even been feeding the coral reef roids about 2x week and it hasn't shown any signs of helping. Anyone ever had this problem? Could low lighting actually bleach corals? The zoas stretching makes me think my lighting is not enough, but with bleached corals and no browned out frags, I doubt this is my problem.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What all have you tried? Just phosphate dosing?

Nitrate and phosphate are currently what?

 

[ReefSlice]

No3 is 5-10 and po4 .01-.04. Has dropped to 3-5 ppb a few times but I haven't let it get back to 0. Rocks definitely colored up, I got algae on the glass (just film algae everywhere no hair algae or cyano, etc), sponge growth kind of exploded but no apparent difference in my corals. Alk still remains 9.8. I actually tested a fresh batch of water and found that I'm getting an alk of 9.8 using their blue bucket mixed to 35 ppt on a calibrated refractometer, contrary to their analysis which says the bucket should be right at 8 alk. Contacted red sea to see if there could be a problem with the bucket, since it seems that when I switched to this new salt the problems arose... However it seems they're not being very helpful and seem to think I'm doing something wrong. Just seems odd that my corals were growing 6 weeks ago but have now stopped completely.

 

[ReefSlice]

Couple pictures to show you what I'm talking about here. The lights just flicked on so I took these before the polyps on my sps came out. During the day polyps are fully extended and you can't even see the flesh on the stag, but the tissue does not look good. And with the efflo, same story, except flesh is exposed obviously and still very pale.

 

[ReefSlice]

The corals that were pale have remained that way and any corals added after I started increasing po4 have kept their color and PE. How long should I expect to wait for color to come back on my corals before resorting to something else here? Coralline did take off the last week and a half out of nowhere, have never had the stuff in this tank and now it is growing by the day all over. The pale colors and low PE coupled with no growth is getting discouraging though.
Also had a thought about my lighting, is it possible that corals would slowly get pale like this due to not enough light? I run my kessil a350ws at 50-60% blue and 25-30% white for 8 hours. Thinking about begininning to ramp up the lighting slowly to 40-50% white and 70-80% blue if this is a possibility. What made me think of this was I added zoa's recently and even at the top of the tank, they're stretching like crazy for light presumably.