Corals Constantly Dieing

[aquaalgae]

Sorry for the long post!

I've tried to do research on this for the past few months and have tried various things but I cannot seem to figure out what is killing my corals.

My tank is 450 gallons and has been running for almost exactly two years. It is filled with pukani rock from BRS. I have a 120 gallon sump with a Reef Octopus Regal 250INT skimmer, 2 Quiet One Pro 400 return pumps. I have two 7" socks that are changed weekly. I have 2 XF280 Gyre pumps that are running ~50% to avoid blowing sand too much. For lighting I have 3 DIY LED lights that are ~300 watts each running a ramp up to ~50%. It takes 5 hours to come up and down to/from that intensity and it is at 50% for 3 hours, so a total of 13 hours of some level of lighting. I also have 4 36" T5s running for 5 hours during the day. I also have a talk reactor that I use for calcium and alkalinity.

I started putting coral in the tank this past spring after the system had been running for 17 months or so. Things were growing relatively well until a couple months later.

All of the following happen around the same time... I decent outbreak of bryopsis so I treated with with Reef Flux. A single dose didnt do anything so I added a 2nd dose. That did the trick. I had some turf algae in my sump so I dosed Vibrant twice a week for a couple of months. That took care of the turf algae ( as well as my chaeto). Around this time I also had trouble with the aquarium controller I was using. The lighting would act up and not come on some days or get stuck at max all night long. A couple of times the heaters didn't come on and the temp went down to mid to low 70s. It was around this time that the corals all just started dieing. In addition during this time I switched salt from Red Sea Coral Pro to Live Aquaria's salt.

I thought maybe it was the vibrant so I stopped dosing that. Then I thought it was the Reef Flux so I did a couple 20% water changes. I also then bought a dual head peristaltic pump that I've had doing daily 3 gallon water changes. I then started dosing nitrate as I couldn't detect it when testing. Then I used a PAR meter and lowered my lighting to be 150 at sand bead and 450 at top of rock work. I also started using ROX carbon. Each of these things was done individually. I waited one to two weeks before trying the next thing. None of them have really helped.

In addition, it my anemones have all but died. They look very translucent and they are balled up tight. One of the pics shows the worst one.

Here are my current parameters:
Temp: 81F
Salinity: 34.5 PPT
Cal: 419
Alk: 8.8
Mg: 1560
pH: 8.13
Nitrate: 5ppm
Phosphate: 0.02ppm

I am really at a loss as to what I should do. I am planning on switching back to Red Sea salt although I doubt that's the answer. I have attached pics of some corals and my clam.

BTW, I have a small 29 gallon tank with corals that have been doing great all along.

 

[Flippers4pups]

I’d say that all the changes and things going wrong stressed them. Stability is one key to growth.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

I have to agree with Flippers you experienced to many changes in to short a time. Stability in light cycle, temperature and then dosing all those products resulted in who knows what killed the coral. In my estimation the temperature swings and light swings caused the biggest problem. It was all down hill from there. Stable light and temperature are the first things to get a handle on.

Hope your system can rebound and you find success. You are better off with a simple on off light timer until you can control the ramping and controller issues.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

Look for stray voltage, rust or leaching from a pump, and maybe try a triton or ATI test.

 

[KrisReef]

I think clams like more par than 150 (on the sand bed).

Are your corals fixed in place, or have they been moved around? Moving them will cause problems with growth.

 

[SPR1968]

The current system parameters look fine, but it sounds to me that prior to this there have been to many changes in all sorts of areas and corals hate change and will soon tell you so.

Also they may well not have reacted well to the additives. I’ve used vibrant and it does work, but it also killed 2 large elegance corals in days and I only used 2 small doses so.........

If it were me I would ramp your lights up in 1 hour and give proper lighting throughout the day for around 9-10 hours. That’s what I do anyway.

In addition you need to maintain all parameters roughly we’re they are now by dosing if necessary and only if necessary

The key to a marine system is to maintain stable water parameters and I mean stable. Stability is the key as corals can’t adept quickly to changes to their environment. Your just a ‘water keeper’ and if you can do that you will do well.

 

[Armydogracing]

You will need to upgrade your skimmer eventually your pushing it for the brs recommendation of a light bioload.

BRS Recommended for tanks up to:

• Heavy Bioload (Most Common) - 250 Gallons
• Medium Bioload - 475 Gallons
• Light Bioload - 600 gallons

I also don’t think you have enough flow. I run 6 MP40QD on my 300DD. 3 are at 90% random modes and 3 are at 50% in wave mode

 

[Armydogracing]

Vibrant is a super bacteria I’m going to go with that had nothing to do with the loss of corals. I’ve used it and several others on multiple tanks with ZERO loss of corals.

 

[Armydogracing]

What test kits are you using? Is your ato hooked to your kalk reactor? If you have limited sps and lps corals and do normal water changes the use of a kalk reactor or dosing is not necessary with a light load of corals that actually use alk and cal.

 

[thejuice24]

How long ago did you get your nitrate and phosphate up? IMO everything looks starved. Are spot feeding? How often? I had a similar issue went my tank went fallow. I had bump my feeding to double to keep thing looking happy. Especially if your using vibrant, that stuff works great by stripping nitrate and phosphate (to smaller extant) out of the water.

 

[aquaalgae]

Thanks for all the replies. I agree stability is key and I've tried to maintain that as much as possible since stopping the Reef Flux and Vibrant in August. I also have not had any temp or lighting fluctuation issues since July/August.
Since then, I have:

• tightened up my temp from heaters on at 80.5 and off at 81.5 to on at 81 and off at 81.5
• started daily small water changes - although I did (3) 15% water changes once per week a couple months ago
• Decreased my lighting quite a bit - although I recently changed this back to the lighting setting that was in effect before things went south

I do have my ATO hooked up to my kalk reactor. I have always thought it shouldn't be necessary, however, my calcium and alkalinity are never overly high...... I could try taking it offline and see how the calcium/alk respond.

As far as stray voltage, I did install a grounding probe in my sump. Maybe I should in the display as well. The only powered devices in the display are the gyre pumps.

I have thought many times about doing an ICP test but from the comparison reviews that I've seen, I'm not convinced that I can completely trust them.

Lots of people have used Vibrant successfully, and I really like that it got rid of some of the nuisance algae that I was dealing with. It seems that Vibrant competes for nutrients that the algae would otherwise use. And with the high dosing that I was doing, it does it with such efficiency that it can leave the tank nutrient deficient.

My nitrate and phosphate were undetectable until I started feeding more (around 2 months ago) and dosing nitrate (around 1 month ago).

So my plan going forward:

• increase flow
• keep doing daily small water changes
• add grounding probe to display
• take kalk reactor offline
• continue to monitor

Seem reasonable?

 

[aquaalgae]

duplicate

 

[aquaalgae]

triplicate

 

[Armydogracing]

What test kits are you using currently? Sorry if I missed that

 

[aquaalgae]

Calcium, Alk, and Phos are Hanna checkers
Magnesium is Salifert
Nitrate is Red Sea Nitrate Pro
Salinity is with refractometer that I recalibrate at each use

 

[Armydogracing]

Calcium, Alk, and Phos are Hanna checkers
Magnesium is Salifert
Nitrate is Red Sea Nitrate Pro
Salinity is with refractometer that I recalibrate at each use

I was hoping you’d say api so I could say get a second opinion from different test kits lol.

Since your alk and cal is good keep the kalk reactor online don’t change it. But do the other stuff you listed. I think the grounding probe in the tank isn’t necessary though.

 

[whoisfelix]

So my plan going forward:

• increase flow
• keep doing daily small water changes
• add grounding probe to display
• take kalk reactor offline
• continue to monitor

This seems like a good path forward. Maybe I missed it, but did you track down what was causing your controller to throw your lights and heater out of whack? It would suck to get everything else in order and still have random occurrences/ inconsistencies for your tank.

 

[KrisReef]

I’m wondering about the ato/ call reactor synergy. My water top off is very unstable and the amount of replacement water highly variable over time. I use a steady drip through my reactor to replace calcium used by the reef, and my ato independently replaces water loss.
Having them linked I would suspect could increase instability that may challenge your system to cope with the excess?

 

[Sea MunnKey]

I may be wrong but I've heard a lot of mishaps involving the switch of different salt brand from what was previously used before.

 

[rkpetersen]

I have read several stories like this after people used Vibrant. I have no experience with it myself but I just get a sense that it's not all that safe.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

As others have said, it looks like things have been bouncing around a lot and you just need to find a rhythm.

I work almost exclusively on larger (200 gal and up) reefs, and their trajectory seems to be different than smaller tanks. They tend to kinda behave a little differently.

I think it takes a little longer to establish that balance and equilibrium that you need for coral survival/growth/reproduction. The good news is that once established, it’s a lot harder to knock it off kilter.

My advice is to start with some easier corals, even...gasp...some soft corals, just to establish some balance and success with less collateral cost, and get the feel for how your tank moves and how corals respond to it.

Having said that, I wouldn’t totally rule out a metal contaminant or stray electrical current, so double check that stuff to make sure it’s not causing unseen issues.