Hello!
First of all, I'm new here, but I'm a bit desperate and hope you guys can help me and my reef.
The story is a bit long... it's about how this: https://imgur.com/vSrEfEV tuned into this https://imgur.com/hrFEBPo https://imgur.com/BSmdAUa https://imgur.com/pl4r7dM so please bear with me!
About a year and a half ago, we moved, and we set up the new tank, it is bigger (150x60x60cm about 600liters).
Everything survived the move, and all the corals and fish seemed in good health.
A few weeks later we started seeing some corals not opening, a bit more algae than normal, etc. We thought it was the new tank cycling. The thing is... it never stopped... corals weakened and died one by one, and are still dying.
We tried everything we could think of:
Calling the guys from our LFS to do a major cleanup of the rock and bottom.
Controlling the nitrates.
Very frequent water changes.
Tweaked the lightning both ways
Ran activated carbon
Even a nearly 100% water change a few weeks ago,etc.
We even used a canvas bag that was supposed to detect and remove heavy metals (it did neither AFAIK).
We switched brands of salt (from kent to red sea coral pro to aquaforest probio, etc). We live in argentina, so product availabily is always an issue, but we had used those salts for a long time with no issues.
I even changed our reverse osmosis machine (entirely) in case it was malfunctioning or something.
We test regularly, and besides some high nitrates (which we controlled) everything was OK the whole time.
All our fish are OK (mandarin, dori and nemo).
The main symptoms I can identify:
1) Nothing green seems to grow in the tank. Caulerpa decolorates and dies, filament algae (the one used as algae filters) become transparent-brown and die. No hair algae anywhere. We have a sump with proper lightning and caulerpa died too.
2) Something similar to black paint is covering all the rocks where the light shines. It's not gooey or slippery (not cyano), it looks and feels just as paint. We removed the rock from the tank and scrubbed it in tankwater twice now, and it comes back. Scrubbing it with a toothbrush makes it come off, but it takes a while as it's quite hard and adhered to the rock.
3) Corals slowly debilitate and die off, one by one. We had mostly LPS and soft corals, sarcophytons rotted inside, the others just withered away.
4) All small lifeforms (copepods, tiny ophiura (had a ton), etc) died. I can only find the tiny little snails that look like a cone. Even pests such as aiptasia are nowhere to be seen.
I really have no idea what to try anymore... I even thought the silicone used in the tank could be an issue, but from what I've read, everything would have died in the first couple weeks if it was that...
Any help is appreciated.... We are *this* close to giving up on this hobbie of 13 years of ours
First of all, I'm new here, but I'm a bit desperate and hope you guys can help me and my reef.
The story is a bit long... it's about how this: https://imgur.com/vSrEfEV tuned into this https://imgur.com/hrFEBPo https://imgur.com/BSmdAUa https://imgur.com/pl4r7dM so please bear with me!
About a year and a half ago, we moved, and we set up the new tank, it is bigger (150x60x60cm about 600liters).
Everything survived the move, and all the corals and fish seemed in good health.
A few weeks later we started seeing some corals not opening, a bit more algae than normal, etc. We thought it was the new tank cycling. The thing is... it never stopped... corals weakened and died one by one, and are still dying.
We tried everything we could think of:
Calling the guys from our LFS to do a major cleanup of the rock and bottom.
Controlling the nitrates.
Very frequent water changes.
Tweaked the lightning both ways
Ran activated carbon
Even a nearly 100% water change a few weeks ago,etc.
We even used a canvas bag that was supposed to detect and remove heavy metals (it did neither AFAIK).
We switched brands of salt (from kent to red sea coral pro to aquaforest probio, etc). We live in argentina, so product availabily is always an issue, but we had used those salts for a long time with no issues.
I even changed our reverse osmosis machine (entirely) in case it was malfunctioning or something.
We test regularly, and besides some high nitrates (which we controlled) everything was OK the whole time.
All our fish are OK (mandarin, dori and nemo).
The main symptoms I can identify:
1) Nothing green seems to grow in the tank. Caulerpa decolorates and dies, filament algae (the one used as algae filters) become transparent-brown and die. No hair algae anywhere. We have a sump with proper lightning and caulerpa died too.
2) Something similar to black paint is covering all the rocks where the light shines. It's not gooey or slippery (not cyano), it looks and feels just as paint. We removed the rock from the tank and scrubbed it in tankwater twice now, and it comes back. Scrubbing it with a toothbrush makes it come off, but it takes a while as it's quite hard and adhered to the rock.
3) Corals slowly debilitate and die off, one by one. We had mostly LPS and soft corals, sarcophytons rotted inside, the others just withered away.
4) All small lifeforms (copepods, tiny ophiura (had a ton), etc) died. I can only find the tiny little snails that look like a cone. Even pests such as aiptasia are nowhere to be seen.
I really have no idea what to try anymore... I even thought the silicone used in the tank could be an issue, but from what I've read, everything would have died in the first couple weeks if it was that...
Any help is appreciated.... We are *this* close to giving up on this hobbie of 13 years of ours
