Coral Not Growing/ Dying Off

[Slidecf]

It all takes time… I want a beautiful tank as well, but am OK with playing the long game, which I’m being forced to play now that my system has dinos.

Just be careful with the Neo-Phos. The stuff is super strong. You want to follow the dosing instructions exactly.

Give us an update in a few days please!

So, about the NeoPhos... The instructions on the package aren’t really clear about the dosing amounts. I started with 1ml, tested PO4 after 6 hours, and got no reading. Then I dosed another 1ml—still no reading.
I used ChatGPT to do the math, and supposedly, 2.1ml should be enough to raise PO4 to 0.10ppm.

I waited 24 hours, and since PO4 was still at 0.03, I dosed 3ml—but after a few hours, there was still no noticeable change. Am I missing something? I’ve been increasing the dose little by little, but I haven’t seen much difference.

EDIT: Did some research and found other threads of reefers who had the same problem...

"IME I dosed daily, test 24 hours later (or some set amount of time, could be weekly if u want). If still 0 I increase my dose and then test, repeat until readable and then monitor accordingly to your liking so as to be able to get a cadence of how your phosphate either rises/falls/stays stable. According to some threads and accounts like mine this can take weeks as your rock and sand can absorb phosphate from what I understand. I think of it like getting the tank to a saturation level and then thru feeding or dosing po4, we try to keep it just slightly over that level. Sort of like a sponge that can hold water"

I will try to keep increasing the dose untill i get some reading

 

[Dburr1014]

So, about the NeoPhos... The instructions on the package aren’t really clear about the dosing amounts. I started with 1ml, tested PO4 after 6 hours, and got no reading. Then I dosed another 1ml—still no reading.
I used ChatGPT to do the math, and supposedly, 2.1ml should be enough to raise PO4 to 0.10ppm.

I waited 24 hours, and since PO4 was still at 0.03, I dosed 3ml—but after a few hours, there was still no noticeable change. Am I missing something? I’ve been increasing the dose little by little, but I haven’t seen much difference.

EDIT: Did some research and found other threads of reefers who had the same problem...


I will try to keep increasing the dose untill i get some reading

Typical. Rocks are soaking it up.

Instead of neophos, next time buy some lab grade calcium phosphate or sodium phosphate. Neophos is weak and doesn't state the purity.

 

[Slidecf]

Some updates:

The new light fixture arrived today! After some engineering, I managed to set up both the new and old lights together. I’m pretty confident that lack of light won’t be an issue for coral growth anymore—I’ve upgraded from 60W to a total of 180W. Now I just need to fine-tune the settings to find the best setup.

PO4 still no reading... Dosed a bunch more of NeoPhos today. Lets see the results tomorrow.

Some pics of the new light setup:

 

[StartingATank]

So these are some things I can think of that haven't been said:
The spots of them might be a little too close to the light, or too far, which is why they might be shrinking
The lights might be too white, and you might need more blue
Also, sometimes Coral just don't like being transported, or sometimes they just don't cooperate.
Last thing is that you might have added Coral too early, so they might be nervous right now, but they might open up in about 4-6 months to possibly a year

 

[biotex]

What is your magnesium now? Is it stable?

I had very similar issues, but I had a strong light. I found out that my fresh sand or something else in my new tank had depleted my magnesium. Once I added magnesium up to ~1300ppm, all my lps started growing and had polyp extension again.

 

[Slidecf]

"The lights might be too white, and you might need more blue"

I think that was one of the main issues — I probably didn’t have enough blue light. Hopefully, the new setup will fix that!

 

[Slidecf]

What is your magnesium now? Is it stable?

I had very similar issues, but I had a strong light. I found out that my fresh sand or something else in my new tank had depleted my magnesium. Once I added magnesium up to ~1300ppm, all my lps started growing and had polyp extension again.

Magnesium has been stable in the last couple of months... Around 1320 - 1350ppm.

 

[whoasked]

My suggestion is to check alk and calcium then again exactly 24 hrs later. If non are used, you have ZERO growth. Phosphate is detrimental in higher concentration but essential for coral growth. A sign of too low of po4 is dinos.

 

[Slidecf]

My suggestion is to check alk and calcium then again exactly 24 hrs later. If non are used, you have ZERO growth. Phosphate is detrimental in higher concentration but essential for coral growth. A sign of too low of po4 is dinos.

I think Alk and Calcium have never dropped since I started testing… and since the corals haven’t grown during this period, that makes sense. I’ve been dosing PO4 lately because my levels were at 0ppm.

As if dealing with dinos and no coral growth wasn’t enough, now I have another issue— In the last couple of days one of my Ocellaris has turned into a little jerk! Every time I put my hand in the tank for maintenance, it comes after me and tries to bite. Bro needs to chill lol!

 

[Slidecf]

BREAKING NEWS:
After adding a whole bunch of NeoPhos, I finally got a reading!
Just tested, and PO4 is at 0.06ppm. I’ll wait 24 hours and test again. The plan is to keep dosing until I reach 0.10ppm and see if the dinos disappear.

 

[whoasked]

I think Alk and Calcium have never dropped since I started testing… and since the corals haven’t grown during this period, that makes sense. I’ve been dosing PO4 lately because my levels were at 0ppm.

As if dealing with dinos and no coral growth wasn’t enough, now I have another issue— In the last couple of days one of my Ocellaris has turned into a little jerk! Every time I put my hand in the tank for maintenance, it comes after me and tries to bite. Bro needs to chill lol!

Clowns are like that, sounds like it wants to be a girl! I had a Maroon that could draw blood if she wanted. I rearranged the rock work one time and that made her less aggressive. Clowns am I right

 

[Skfoley4]

Hey guys, I need some help.


I'm having trouble with my corals—they're either dying (especially euphyllias) or not growing since I set up the tank. For a while, I tried dosing Aquavitro’s Fuel twice a week, but to be honest, I didn’t see any difference. I also tried feeding the corals, but there were no results either. This past month, I’ve been dealing with some algae (or cyano? Not sure).


The light turns on at 10:50 AM, ramps up to 100% at 11:00 AM, stays like that until 7:00 PM, then ramps down to 0% at 11:00 PM.
Here’s all the info you might need and some pictures.

Water Parameters:

Corals Overview:

• GSP – The first coral I added to the tank (it's been there for about 8 months). It's the only one that has actually shown some growth, but reeeeally slow, considering some people say it's like a plague.
• Zoas – Stable. Most of them haven’t grown since they were added about 4 months ago (only one died – King Midas). They’ve been closed up for the last couple of weeks.
• Torch – Died. The first euphyllia I added to the tank (8 months ago). At first, I had some trouble with euphyllia-eating flatworms but got rid of them completely. Eventually, it shrank to death.
• Hammer – Added 3 months ago. One head died, and the other is shrinking.
• Frog – Added 3 months ago. Currently shrinking.
• Goniopora – Added 8 months ago. Stable—no significant growth. It bleached for a while, but now it looks okay.
• Mushrooms – Pretty much stable. One of them appears to be growing a new head.

My Setup:

• Tank Size: 40 Gallons
• Salt: Aquaforest ReefSalt
• Light: AquaKnight V3 60W
• Skimmer: RedStarfish SQ90-Plus
• Fish: 2 Ocellaris / 1 Royal Gramma /
• 1 Coral Banded Shrimp / Some hermit crabs and turbos

Some pictures (right before i cleaned the tank):

The algae or cyano:

Frog (it used to be much bigger/open):

Hey guys, I need some help.


I'm having trouble with my corals—they're either dying (especially euphyllias) or not growing since I set up the tank. For a while, I tried dosing Aquavitro’s Fuel twice a week, but to be honest, I didn’t see any difference. I also tried feeding the corals, but there were no results either. This past month, I’ve been dealing with some algae (or cyano? Not sure).


The light turns on at 10:50 AM, ramps up to 100% at 11:00 AM, stays like that until 7:00 PM, then ramps down to 0% at 11:00 PM.
Here’s all the info you might need and some pictures.

Water Parameters:

Corals Overview:

• GSP – The first coral I added to the tank (it's been there for about 8 months). It's the only one that has actually shown some growth, but reeeeally slow, considering some people say it's like a plague.
• Zoas – Stable. Most of them haven’t grown since they were added about 4 months ago (only one died – King Midas). They’ve been closed up for the last couple of weeks.
• Torch – Died. The first euphyllia I added to the tank (8 months ago). At first, I had some trouble with euphyllia-eating flatworms but got rid of them completely. Eventually, it shrank to death.
• Hammer – Added 3 months ago. One head died, and the other is shrinking.
• Frog – Added 3 months ago. Currently shrinking.
• Goniopora – Added 8 months ago. Stable—no significant growth. It bleached for a while, but now it looks okay.
• Mushrooms – Pretty much stable. One of them appears to be growing a new head.

My Setup:

• Tank Size: 40 Gallons
• Salt: Aquaforest ReefSalt
• Light: AquaKnight V3 60W
• Skimmer: RedStarfish SQ90-Plus
• Fish: 2 Ocellaris / 1 Royal Gramma /
• 1 Coral Banded Shrimp / Some hermit crabs and turbos

Some pictures (right before i cleaned the tank):

The algae or cyano:

Frog (it used to be much bigger/open):

I am not a pro by any means but my corals don’t do well with too high of white lighting! When I increased blue and decreased white they did way better. I do think testing the par is the way to go but I really just did it by eye and they are great now…good luck. It is a very enjoyable but tough hobby to have

 

[Slidecf]

BREAKING NEWS:
After adding a whole bunch of NeoPhos, I finally got a reading!
Just tested, and PO4 is at 0.06ppm. I’ll wait 24 hours and test again. The plan is to keep dosing until I reach 0.10ppm and see if the dinos disappear.

Some updates:
After 24 hours, PO4 was back at 0ppm. I dosed another batch of NeoPhos (at least now I know how much I need to dose to get a readable level), but I’m still struggling to keep PO4 stable—it keeps dropping back to 0 after 24 hours.

On the bright side, the corals have been looking a little happier over the past few days, especially the frogspawn.

As for the dinos... it seems like they’re getting worse. The strands are getting super long, and I think the improved lighting might actually be helping them thrive. Does that makes sense?
I’ll keep up with daily maintenance, trying to remove as much of the dinos as I can, dose MicroBacter 7, and work on stabilizing PO4. If that doesn’t fix the issue, I’ll try a 3-day blackout.

 

[CHSUB]

Here are my thoughts. You seem to have a good understanding of manually removing nuisance algae and maintaining a clean aquarium. What you’re missing is a decent bio load. I see your aquarium as sparsely populated, sterile environment and you’re trying to feed it with adding inorganic nutrients. The stuff you’re adding ONLY technically feeds algae; not the fish, inverts, or corals. Keep up on the maintenance (WC, manual removal, blowing the rocks, stirring the sand, etc) and add more fish, crabs and corals and feed them heavy, direct multiple types of particle foods. I feed Reef Roids, Reef Fenzy, Red Sea AB+, chopped shrimp, pellets directly to all corals with a straw every other day and fish twice a day. I’m at 10 months too, look how full my aquarium looks compared to yours.

 

[Slidecf]

Here are my thoughts. You seem to have a good understanding of manually removing nuisance algae and maintaining a clean aquarium. What you’re missing is a decent bio load. I see your aquarium as sparsely populated, sterile environment and you’re trying to feed it with adding inorganic nutrients. The stuff you’re adding ONLY technically feeds algae; not the fish, inverts, or corals. Keep up on the maintenance (WC, manual removal, blowing the rocks, stirring the sand, etc) and add more fish, crabs and corals and feed them heavy, direct multiple types of particle foods. I feed Reef Roids, Reef Fenzy, Red Sea AB+, chopped shrimp, pellets directly to all corals with a straw every other day and fish twice a day. I’m at 10 months too, look how full my aquarium looks compared to yours.

Thanks for the insight!

I understand your point about the tank looking kinda empty. At one point, I had more fish—I had five, but my Midas Blenny went carpet surfing, and my Firefish probably became a snack for the Coral Banded Shrimp.

Corals are pretty expensive by Brazilian standards, so I can’t buy too many at once. I was also hesitant to get an expensive coral just for it to die a few weeks or months later—it would feel like throwing money away. I actually had a beautiful (and expensive) torch coral that shrank to death, which only made my fear worse. That’s why I’ve been slowly adding corals to the tank. I'm trying to make sure the corals I have now start thriving before adding new ones.

I also think I’ve been feeding too little… At first, I was only feeding the fish once a day with flakes and not feeding the corals at all. Later, I bought some powdered coral food (apparently some kind of phytoplankton) and started feeding once or twice a week. Since I didn’t see any results, I tried dosing Aquavitro’s Fuel once a week, but it didn’t make a difference.

Right now, I’ve stopped dosing Fuel because of the dinos and have just been feeding fish flakes once a day and the powdered coral food once a week. I also give my Coral Banded Shrimp a piece of shrimp once a week.

I’ll try increasing feeding to see if I get better results. Thanks!
By the way, your tank looks amazing! Congrats!

 

[Slidecf]

It's been a while, so time for some updates… and I have awesome news!

First and most importantly: I GOT RID OF THE DINOS! Here’s how I did it:

1. I started dosing NeoPhos to raise PO4 from 0 to 0.10ppm. I was dosing daily since it kept dropping back to 0. However, this didn’t fix the dino issue—in fact, it actually seemed to be getting worse, which was pretty odd to me.
2. Since raising PO4 alone didn’t work, I read that vacuuming the water and sandbed with a really fine micron sock filter could help. So, I bought a 10-micron filter sock and did a ton of vacuuming to remove as many dinos as possible. I also started dosing Microbe-Lift Special Blend. To my surprise, that actually fixed the issue! It’s been two weeks now, and I haven’t seen any signs of dinos in the tank.

Corals overview after NeoPhos and better light fixture:
Since I started dosing NeoPhos, I’ve been trying to keep PO4 between 0.06ppm and 0.10ppm. The corals are looking much happier! My GSP is better than it’s ever been and seems to be growing a lot. The zoas are almost fully open (though one is still refusing to open). The frogspawn looks happy—maybe it’s even grown a tiny bit. The goni is looking okay—no noticeable growth, but it seems healthy. The mushrooms are wide open and thriving.

Water Parameters After NeoPhos:

• Calcium (Ca) and Magnesium (Mg): For the first time ever, I’m seeing Ca and Mg being consumed, which I think is a great sign!
• Alkalinity (KH): Had a spike in the first week after dosing NeoPhos but is now dropping again.
• Nitrate (NO3): Was stable at 10ppm for months, but now it’s at 0ppm.

I’d love some tips/insights:

• I still have to dose NeoPhos daily because it drops back to 0 after 24 hours. Now, my nitrates are also at 0. I’ve tried increasing feeding, but I’m still struggling to raise both PO4 and NO3. Any ideas on how to fix this?
• Should I do a water change now that Ca and Mg have dropped?

 

[StartingATank]

It's been a while, so time for some updates… and I have awesome news!

First and most importantly: I GOT RID OF THE DINOS! Here’s how I did it:

1. I started dosing NeoPhos to raise PO4 from 0 to 0.10ppm. I was dosing daily since it kept dropping back to 0. However, this didn’t fix the dino issue—in fact, it actually seemed to be getting worse, which was pretty odd to me.
2. Since raising PO4 alone didn’t work, I read that vacuuming the water and sandbed with a really fine micron sock filter could help. So, I bought a 10-micron filter sock and did a ton of vacuuming to remove as many dinos as possible. I also started dosing Microbe-Lift Special Blend. To my surprise, that actually fixed the issue! It’s been two weeks now, and I haven’t seen any signs of dinos in the tank.

Corals overview after NeoPhos and better light fixture:
Since I started dosing NeoPhos, I’ve been trying to keep PO4 between 0.06ppm and 0.10ppm. The corals are looking much happier! My GSP is better than it’s ever been and seems to be growing a lot. The zoas are almost fully open (though one is still refusing to open). The frogspawn looks happy—maybe it’s even grown a tiny bit. The goni is looking okay—no noticeable growth, but it seems healthy. The mushrooms are wide open and thriving.

Water Parameters After NeoPhos:

• Calcium (Ca) and Magnesium (Mg): For the first time ever, I’m seeing Ca and Mg being consumed, which I think is a great sign!
• Alkalinity (KH): Had a spike in the first week after dosing NeoPhos but is now dropping again.
• Nitrate (NO3): Was stable at 10ppm for months, but now it’s at 0ppm.

I’d love some tips/insights:

• I still have to dose NeoPhos daily because it drops back to 0 after 24 hours. Now, my nitrates are also at 0. I’ve tried increasing feeding, but I’m still struggling to raise both PO4 and NO3. Any ideas on how to fix this?
• Should I do a water change now that Ca and Mg have dropped?

So some things:
You can increase Nitrates by adding more organisms, and to help with another increase in algae, you can add more clean up crew, which would help with nitrates, and you could add more fish.

Also, you could get a custom lid from kraken.com for your tank to help with the fish jumping out.

I might try what you did with the dinos because I have been having a dino problem myself, but I take them off, I have biomedia and filter sock with carbon, but I don't blow the sand bed, so maybe this would help, but they don't grow on the sand, they grow on the rocks and the glass, and when it remove them, but then they reappear. Do you have any idea what could help?

Also, I don't dose anything yet but I also only have Clean Up Crew and 1 Clownfish, Tommorow I am going to get another, so I don't how to help with this.

But good job with the corals and everything. Hope it continues to improve and thrive.

 

[Slidecf]

I might try what you did with the dinos because I have been having a dino problem myself, but I take them off, I have biomedia and filter sock with carbon, but I don't blow the sand bed, so maybe this would help, but they don't grow on the sand, they grow on the rocks and the glass, and when it remove them, but then they reappear. Do you have any idea what could help?

I think you need to remove as much of the dinos as possible in one go. I vacuumed about 10 buckets of water through a fine micron filter sock, constantly returning the water to the tank. Dosing some kind of bacteria will also help! Hope you win this battle against the dinos too!