corals going down...

Jaysushi

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@tautog83 yes, my tips were also bleaching during the time that I didn't know what my par was. Honestly, with my Radion at 95% and no diffuser my acros have never looked better. Mind you my tank is still under a year old, and I don't have much for acros, but the few I do have are looking a lot better.
 

dwest

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ya im not sure im going to do that as of now , see what a waterchange does . it just sucks
Any brown stuff on your sand? I’m wondering about dinos, but didn’t see any on your rocks.
 
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tautog83

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I'll post a pic tomorrow , no sand its bare bottom no algae of any kind . I'm getting in touch with a friend that has a par meter but I Increased lighting just to see . Appreciate the feedback guys
 

dwest

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I'll post a pic tomorrow , no sand its bare bottom no algae of any kind . I'm getting in touch with a friend that has a par meter but I Increased lighting just to see . Appreciate the feedback guys
This is a tough one for sure. If it were me I’d go back to the basics. I’d check my rodi water with a hand held tds meter to make sure it’s zero. Then check my refractometer with a calibration solution. Then do a series of water changes daily for about a week and then let it rest for a while. I hope the par meter helps though. Good luck.
 

Elegance Coral

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Correct me if I'm wrong...
You have a 160 gallon tank, and you change 20 gallons of water every 5 or 6 weeks??????
 
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tautog83

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This is a tough one for sure. If it were me I’d go back to the basics. I’d check my rodi water with a hand held tds meter to make sure it’s zero. Then check my refractometer with a calibration solution. Then do a series of water changes daily for about a week and then let it rest for a while. I hope the par meter helps though. Good luck.

done , done and done. just waiting on par meter



Correct me if I'm wrong...
You have a 160 gallon tank, and you change 20 gallons of water every 5 or 6 weeks??????

usually 30 gallons and yes , i use 2 35 gallon storage containers , one for ro and one for salt . if all else fails then i will make both of them salt so i can do one large water change . if you look back up nutrients arent my problem, if anything i should skip some of them , lol.
 
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tautog83

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Still no calcium uptake , coraline production has stopped . Bumped lights up to 85%intensity . Waiting on par meter ... what could stop that ??
20190809_194413.jpg
 

Mrtakeoff53

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Still feeling your pain over here my friend. No coral growth whatsoever on my end. All SPS are STNing still and it’s rapidly increased here lately. LPS are steady or declining slightly. I have CRAZY coraline growth in my tank though so something is going ok I guess. My parameters are still solid. My Alk and Ca literally haven’t moved more than 0.2 dKh/10 ppm in the last 3 weeks and I’ve been dosing Kalk.

All this to say stay the course. We both have young tanks. Keep it stable and keep thinking but don’t react until your certain you know what the issue is. Make calculated changes if you do anything at all. I was sure on Friday night I was getting a Dino outbreak that was killing everything. Today, no Dino growth and green algae all over the glass (haven’t seen that in while). What did I do, nothing. Why? Because I don’t know what’s going on so I’m going to leave my tank alone, maintain parameters and only change something if I’m 100% sure it’ll fix a problem. Hope it works. I hope you find a problem soon or your tank stabilizes itself. I got on R2R tonight just to check on your tank to see how things were going. Hopefully it all turns around soon!

Don’t forget about your fish. They are pretty too!
 
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tautog83

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thanks man. thats nice of you i was hoping for more feedback from this thread because i just hate not knowing what to do . ive had tanks for years and never had such an issue . i know , getting a lot of feedback with par readings (and im working on confirming that) but im really thinking its a chemistry thing. if you had coralline growth, calcium uptake, alk consumption and visible growth with your lights on the same percentage for 3 months , would the first thing you would think of is i dont have enough par? Im not discounting the idea of it completly , and i agree that i should know what readings i am getting for future refrences. it may very well be a light thing , im just getting in my own head i suppose. hopefully par meter will be here next week to cross it off the list . im also thinning out my herd of trochus snails because maybe their sperm is toxic lol. thats how i defeated i feel resorting to crazy talk like that. i did put a uv back online to see if i can see a difference with it running for a couple of weeks without going crazy and trying to add all sorts of stuff. Im sending out another icp test this week
 

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Mine randomly started looking a touch better within the last few days. Not holding my breath. I literally did nothing. I bet your lights were perfect where they were. I set mine at 85% and left it alone. I literally am maintaining stability and nothing else. I believe eventually it’ll pass. Something we can’t see or measure if off and causing you issues. Keep your parameters stable, try and get out of your head and just let your tank be for a couple weeks. Keep testing to ensure you’re good and let it be. It’ll come around. It’s what I’m doing with mine.
 
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tautog83

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Yea , I suppose . Looking at 4 corals that arent growing in a 200 gallon is depressing . At least the fish are good , although my flame wrasse is determined to.keep my labouts at the top corner of the tank now ..sigh
 
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Well icp , didnt seem to.have anything off . That ssc and millie that were doing fine but now growing are starting to do same thing . They've lost the top long feeder polyps at night and starting to crumble . I did see a little calcium uptake and alk moved a little in 3 days . A tiny bit.of coraline on the glass in last 4 weeks but should be a lot more . Have a small uv running but not sure it's making any difference . @Randy Holmes-Farley is therea bacteria that could cause calcium or corals to not utilize it ? In case you didnt read whole thread I did have coraline growth and coral growth with the same lighting months before until it just decided to stop...
 

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Did you start this tank 100% base rock and only cycle with bottled bacteria and no seed live rock/sand?

There were a couple of guys in my local reef club that did that and had this kind of problem, experienced reefers with parameters and light that all looked great but they got basically no growth out of coral for months.

They ended up seeding their tanks with LR from successful systems as a last resort on the thought that they might be missing some kind of biological diversity. Unknown if it will help as it was a recent change.
 

Joedubyk

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YOU NEED to check your PAR. Ihad same issue in my nano. Perfect params. I had 2 Kessil 160s. Thought I had PLENTY of light at 75% intensity. Turns out my par was REALLY REALLY low....
 

vetteguy53081

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SEVERAL FACTORS WILL INFLUENCE SUCH DOWNTURNS WITH CORAL. VERIFY THE FOLLOWING:
Salinity. . . Is it possible youre getting a false reading. Just mentioned to someone 2 days ago who thought he had 1.025 to discover it was 1.014
Have you change salt mix or added Kalk ?
Have you gone to a brighter lighting scheduling too quickly?
Has your water flow changed?

I would suggest a 2nd a opinion from a trusted LFS to compare with your readings ad to verify salinity
 
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tautog83

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Did you start this tank 100% base rock and only cycle with bottled bacteria and no seed live rock/sand?

There were a couple of guys in my local reef club that did that and had this kind of problem, experienced reefers with parameters and light that all looked great but they got basically no growth out of coral for months.

They ended up seeding their tanks with LR from successful systems as a last resort on the thought that they might be missing some kind of biological diversity. Unknown if it will help as it was a recent change.

YOU NEED to check your PAR. Ihad same issue in my nano. Perfect params. I had 2 Kessil 160s. Thought I had PLENTY of light at 75% intensity. Turns out my par was REALLY REALLY low....

SEVERAL FACTORS WILL INFLUENCE SUCH DOWNTURNS WITH CORAL. VERIFY THE FOLLOWING:
Salinity. . . Is it possible youre getting a false reading. Just mentioned to someone 2 days ago who thought he had 1.025 to discover it was 1.014
Have you change salt mix or added Kalk ?
Have you gone to a brighter lighting scheduling too quickly?
Has your water flow changed?

I would suggest a 2nd a opinion from a trusted LFS to compare with your readings ad to verify salinity


I have a refractometer and a hanna both calibrated recently ..guess I can use a 3rd source .to triple verify . Early on I use coral pro salt then switched to blue bucket , via water changes of 30 gallons each time . I agree with the par , but like I said previously I had acros growing in the same spot before and saw visible growth for a couple weeks. The most I adjusted was 10% . I did start the tank with bacteria and dry rock and I've been hearing the same thing from.others especially bare bottom like me . I ordered tons of copepods in the early months to encourage biodiversity (guess only one type then lol). I mean I looked other night and did see some pods crawling on rocks so that was a plus . Yea I always used live rock but nowadays tons of people have had success with dry so I just went with it . I think it's something with the bare bottom and just still under a year thing but who knows it will be 1 year in a couple weeks
 

dank reefer

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I'm going to chime in with my experience, but I am no Reef God Guru.

Stop messing with your lights. Your Corals especially acros will take about 1 month to adjust to your lighting. Set your light up with the schedule you want, then forget it, and dont adjust. But rather adjust and move your corals around in case you see them react poorly.

Get a par meter by either renting one, or buying one. As mentioned before, ask your LFS if they have one for rent, or see if a local reef group has one for rent. This is critical as our eyes can't detect par just by looking at the tank.

Where do you keep your temp at?

What are you using to test your nitrates, and phosphates? Feeding my fish everyday at least 2-3 times a day helped me with my acros. Also are you running a fuge? If so, is your chaeto growing? If its dying off, then you dont have enough nutrients in your tank.

Here are a couple of things I did that helped me stop killing my corals.

Removed filter socks, and I did this for 2 reasons. My chaeto kept dying off on my no matter what. So at my last attempt of growing chaeto, I decided it was time to remove the crap catcher and allow the chaeto to absorb it. I'd say that after 2-3 weeks I noticed that my chaeto was not turning yellowish white and still held its green. About 1 1/2 in 8 knew that it had to be working cause the grapefruit size ball of chaeto had doubled, and now about every 2 weeks I can harvest about 1-2 gallon size bags worth of chaeto. The other reason I stopped using filter socks was cause I hated replacing them every other day.

Purchased a t5 hybrid system as my 3 hydra26 HD on my 4ft tank was causing shadowing. Now I have a blanket of light through out my tank, and the 4 bulb t5 added 200+par to the tank alone.

Bought a second hand par meter (PMK). Helped me dial in my lights, and to truly know how much par I was giving my corals. Its when I figured out that my hydras were giving out 400+ par alone 6-7 inches below water line, and with both hydras and t5 I get 600+.

I also only have a couple of frags glued down to rock work. I keep a couple of frag racks in my tank so that I can monitor how the frags are doing at different levels in my tank. When I think I've found the right place for my frag, I'll use gorilla glue and set it. If I see it doesnt like where it's at, i can pop it off and move it around instead of adjusting my light.

I dont run a BB tank, but i am in the thinking process of removing my sand from my tank cause i like the idea of being able to crank up my flow and not have to deal with patches of bare bottom, and mounds of sand in section of my tank. With that being said, from what I've read in this community is that starting off with a BB tank is a pain in the tush since you have place besides your rocks to build your bacteria. And that you will also have a wide variety of either bacterial blooms, weirdness in alk, calk consumption. And that all seems to settle out after about 1- 1 1/2 years after the tanks has been running. Other that started off with BB can chime in more on this topic. I read you have marine pure blocks or bioballs in your sump, and that you were going to remove them because of the aluminum. If you do remove it, throw in some live rock rubble, or something I saw Mark from Melevs Reef do was put down crushed coral that you would use for a CaRx.

Sorry for the long post, but I'm in the car on a 3 1/2 road trip to drop off my stepson as he is returning back to college after his summer break.
 
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tautog83

tautog83

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I'm going to chime in with my experience, but I am no Reef God Guru.

Stop messing with your lights. Your Corals especially acros will take about 1 month to adjust to your lighting. Set your light up with the schedule you want, then forget it, and dont adjust. But rather adjust and move your corals around in case you see them react poorly.

Get a par meter by either renting one, or buying one. As mentioned before, ask your LFS if they have one for rent, or see if a local reef group has one for rent. This is critical as our eyes can't detect par just by looking at the tank.

Where do you keep your temp at?

What are you using to test your nitrates, and phosphates? Feeding my fish everyday at least 2-3 times a day helped me with my acros. Also are you running a fuge? If so, is your chaeto growing? If its dying off, then you dont have enough nutrients in your tank.

Here are a couple of things I did that helped me stop killing my corals.

Removed filter socks, and I did this for 2 reasons. My chaeto kept dying off on my no matter what. So at my last attempt of growing chaeto, I decided it was time to remove the crap catcher and allow the chaeto to absorb it. I'd say that after 2-3 weeks I noticed that my chaeto was not turning yellowish white and still held its green. About 1 1/2 in 8 knew that it had to be working cause the grapefruit size ball of chaeto had doubled, and now about every 2 weeks I can harvest about 1-2 gallon size bags worth of chaeto. The other reason I stopped using filter socks was cause I hated replacing them every other day.

Purchased a t5 hybrid system as my 3 hydra26 HD on my 4ft tank was causing shadowing. Now I have a blanket of light through out my tank, and the 4 bulb t5 added 200+par to the tank alone.

Bought a second hand par meter (PMK). Helped me dial in my lights, and to truly know how much par I was giving my corals. Its when I figured out that my hydras were giving out 400+ par alone 6-7 inches below water line, and with both hydras and t5 I get 600+.

I also only have a couple of frags glued down to rock work. I keep a couple of frag racks in my tank so that I can monitor how the frags are doing at different levels in my tank. When I think I've found the right place for my frag, I'll use gorilla glue and set it. If I see it doesnt like where it's at, i can pop it off and move it around instead of adjusting my light.

I dont run a BB tank, but i am in the thinking process of removing my sand from my tank cause i like the idea of being able to crank up my flow and not have to deal with patches of bare bottom, and mounds of sand in section of my tank. With that being said, from what I've read in this community is that starting off with a BB tank is a pain in the tush since you have place besides your rocks to build your bacteria. And that you will also have a wide variety of either bacterial blooms, weirdness in alk, calk consumption. And that all seems to settle out after about 1- 1 1/2 years after the tanks has been running. Other that started off with BB can chime in more on this topic. I read you have marine pure blocks or bioballs in your sump, and that you were going to remove them because of the aluminum. If you do remove it, throw in some live rock rubble, or something I saw Mark from Melevs Reef do was put down crushed coral that you would use for a CaRx.

Sorry for the long post, but I'm in the car on a 3 1/2 road trip to drop off my stepson as he is returning back to college after his summer break.

I agree I dont like messing with lights either , I felt they were fine because of the growth I did have initially. I only ramped them another 10% or so once . Im working on par meter , adulting has been getting in the way for sure . No fuge in sump , and I use the media cups with some filter floss in them and a carbon bag that's pretty much it .. I can try the calcium reactor media but there is over 100lbs of rock in there and a light bioload so as far as surface area for bacteria I feel like it's enough based on nitrate readings being inline .. I'm going to continue to work on par reader and let it go and see . My birds of paradise is now thinning out on the base and mow looks likes it's about to bailout
..its frustrating
 

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