Crab's is about ready to throw in the towel.

[ScottR]

Lots of posts. I read what I could but I have a friend that has GHA and cyano at the same time and seems you mentioned you currently have both? His tank is melting for a lack of better words. Do you think it’s the GHA and cyano? Have you or are you willing to try chemiclean? Works wonders on cyano.

 

[ReefHomieJon]

Hey mr. crabs, of it ain’t broke do t fix it. Go back to your original salt mix you used BEFORE your corals started falling off and change the water 20% a day until it’s new water original salt mix that your corals liked, and if you changed the way your ro/do unit is plumbed I would reverse that to. And any other changes youve recently made. Obviously your parameters are straight(unless they’ve had a big abrupt swing recently that your corals didn’t like regardless of the numbers). I would do this while waiting for the icp test to come back. You may very well ease the corals back into good health before the results come back. Dont give up tho! If you do you’ll have to shut down R2R Too lol

 

[OrionN]

Update please, even if it is one or two words

 

[foxt]

Update please, even if it is one or two words

I'll chime in. He removed his sand bed, talks about it here is his build thread:

Build Thread - Crab's 75 Gallon Reef/Dragon/Snake Tank Car Repair Thread

It's been fun, but it's time to say goodbye :(

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Was potassium really at 320? I have seen corals start looking bad at 360 and issues lower starting with Montipora. The safest easiest route imo would be to get potassium back to 420 slowly and try dosing iodine even though I believe feeding frozen food gives the tank enough to work with with water changes. Then I would try some bacteria additives like rebiotics. I hope things turn around for you.

 

[bblumberg]

Northern Virginia uses chloramine.. and tbh i dont use RO.DI. i chabge water right from the tap... I add a cap or two of prime and thats it... I have 50+ coral including 10 acros and 10 other sps.

Chloramine evaporates... and i have 0 issues with it in my water.. hell even my top off water is from the sink and i dont even add prime when i do like 2-3 gallons of top off.

I know everyones tank is diff but yea.. why doesnt it bother my corals ? I really dont tholink chloramines does anything.. specially if you use prime to bind it until it evaporates.



Also crabs if you want rock why get live rock.. go to amazon look up the dead rock they have there.. you can get 50 lbs boxes of boulder sized and smaller sizes for 50-60$. Its much cheaper.

Then just buy a bottle of fritzyme 9 and you can instant cycle your tank.. Thats what i did... 150lbs of rock for 150$ lol...

Chlorine evaporates from water after a relatively short period of time. In contract, chloramine does not, or only does so much more slowly. There are many sites around the web where you can get information on this. Some examples are here:

How To Remove Chlorine And Chloramine From Drinking Water Naturally. Best Filtration Without Chemicals

How can you remove chlorine and chloramine from drinking water naturally, without any chemical? Different kinds of harmful wastes are being thrown in the water. Water companies started using some agents to disinfect the water. These are chlorine and chloramine. Find out more in this article.

theberkey.com

How long does Chloramine take to evaporate from the water?

www.plantedtank.net

You can use prime and other such secret sauce treatments to get rid of chlorine and chloramine from your water if you wish, but sodium thiosulfate (which is the key component of many of them) is cheap and effective. Just buy the crystals on Amazon and add to your water. Here is one description of how much you need to use (the left most column should be adequate for municipal water.

http://www.edspumps.com/water-treatment/documents/Antichlorination.pdf

There is more information about chlorine use and removal on this thread, along with a calculator I made to determine how much sodium thiosulfate you need to use to remove chlorine or chloramine and any concentration you may encounter it.

Sodium Thiosulfate

I would like to learn more about using sodium thiosulfate to neutralize bleach. For example, let's say I wanted to dose 100ppm chlorine into a 40 gal QT for disinfection of Cryptocaryon and other microbes. According to this chart, I would need to use (roughly) 1 Cup of 8.25% sodium...

www.reef2reef.com

I routinely use sodium thiosulfate in my water to be used for water changes in both fresh water and salt water tanks. At low concentrations it is completely benign, inexpensive and provides some peace of mind that chlorine/chloramine are not responsible for any issues in your aquarium.

 

[MnFish1]

Was it one of the new R2R swag orange or black towels? (Which have come in handy) -

 

[MnFish1]

sorry, but i have nothing constructive to add right now.
will be tagging along to see how you beat this!

but after reading through all this, i have one question.

for those of us who don't have cats...

does cat pee smell different than... regular pee?


J.

YES

 

[Crabs McJones]

Update please, even if it is one or two words

I'll chime in. He removed his sand bed, talks about it here is his build thread:

Build Thread - Crab's 75 Gallon Reef/Dragon/Snake Tank Car Repair Thread

It's been fun, but it's time to say goodbye :(

www.reef2reef.com

Yes sorry. Essentially I removed my sandbed. Took out all the rock. Fragged the corals I wanted to keep and rehomed the rest. While I cant definitively prove it. I think the sandbed releasing nutrients into the tank causing rapid fluctuations was the issue. Partially explains why soft corals looked amazing but everything else was MAD. Also makes sense because when the tank was new, everything looked amazing. The nastiness in the sandbed hadn't grown in yet. So sandbed is out. Bottom of the tank is painted black to stop fuge light from getting through, and were on the road to recovery

 

[DesertReefT4r]

I may need to remove my sand bed as well. Thinking the sand is causing most of my issues which are nearly identical to yours Crabs. I have been dosing bacteria heavily and bubble scrubbing daily and it seems to be at least slowing down the issues and dino.

 

[drawman]

Glad to hear it @Crabs McJones

 

[Crabs McJones]

I wanted to thank everyone in this thread for your ideas and your help and your gratitude as I worked through this issue. The corals I saved are growing and everything is getting better. I very much look forward to haveing a fully stocked sps tank in the near future.

Thank you again everyone in this thread, I sincerely appreciate it!

Crabs

 

[Cory]

I wanted to thank everyone in this thread for your ideas and your help and your gratitude as I worked through this issue. The corals I saved are growing and everything is getting better. I very much look forward to haveing a fully stocked sps tank in the near future.

Thank you again everyone in this thread, I sincerely appreciate it!

Crabs

What fixed the problem?

 

[Crabs McJones]

What fixed the problem?

I'm not 100% but I believe nutrient spikes were to blame. The kessil H380 under the tank was reflecting light back up to the underside of the tank causing all sorts if nastiness growing under the sandbed. I had cyano (on the sand only, nothing on the rocks) and after doing water changes my nitrates would spike. So I took out the sand bed, painted the bottom of the tank to keep the fuge light contained in the sump and rebooted the whole thing. My acros and montis are showing great signs of recovery

 

[User1]

I'm not 100% but I believe nutrient spikes were to blame. The kessil H380 under the tank was reflecting light back up to the underside of the tank causing all sorts if nastiness growing under the sandbed. I had cyano (on the sand only, nothing on the rocks) and after doing water changes my nitrates would spike. So I took out the sand bed, painted the bottom of the tank to keep the fuge light contained in the sump and rebooted the whole thing. My acros and montis are showing great signs of recovery

Glad everything is working out. And great job to staying with it!

 

[Bpp124987]

Great news! Pix?

 

[Crabs McJones]

 

[Wick]

so is Fritz salt ok to use then? =D glad to hear it all worked out for you!

 

[Fishinwall]

Hi Crabs.
Ive read through this whole post. There were a few references to pics which I could not find but I did read that you were getting stn or bleaching at your tips....was it like this?

just curios....any chance you used Live Rock Enhance before all this happened?
my montis were the first to “pale” out.

 

[Crabs McJones]

It wasnt bleaching at just the tips, it was everywhere. The base, the tips. The encrusting.