First ICP test, please help with results, corals not doing well!

[ILoveAllThingsIcthy]

If someone could help me interpret these results, I could really use some input.

Tank is a 5 month old 220 gal upgrade from a 125 gal that ran for 2 years.

In the past month we have lost acros, a monti cap, chalices, button scolys, hammers, torches, merlettis and acans.

We sent away for an ATI ICP test, but quite honestly I have little idea what I'm looking at. Most of the levels are "checkmarked" like they are in the acceptable range, but we are losing coral almost daily now. It's to the point I don't even want to go look at the tank because I know I'm just going to find something else not doing well.

One thing I'll note, ATI has the Alk at 10.10 but it's never tested above 8.8 on our trident or Hannah checker.

Does anything stick out to anyone that might be the cause of all this loss or should we be looking at other factors?

Please let me know if you need any info on tank, inhabitants, etc and thanks in advance for any insight you might offer.

Link to reef results:

Analysis result

ATI Aquaristik - Lab

lab.atiaquaristik.com

Link to RODI results:

Analysis result

ATI Aquaristik - Lab

lab.atiaquaristik.com

 

[blaxsun]

Your RO water looks fine. Have you tested the TDS? If you don't have a resin/DI on it that's something you can look at if your TDS is testing high.

As for the main test on your tank itself, your alkalinity is a bit high (I'd try to keep it in the 8.25-8.75dKH range), calcium could be a bit higher (aim for 450ppm) and magnesium looks fine.

Nitrates aren't really that high and your phosphate levels are good. Other than barium being a bit high (not sure why), there's not really any other red flags.
..........

Without knowing anything about your tank (setup, filtration, salt, flow, lighting, etc.) I'd just be throwing darts at this point trying to guess. Without any additional details (images, PAR readings, equipment list, etc.) it would be hard to offer anything substantial.

Do you perform regular water changes? If so, how much?
Is this a coral-only tank or are there any fish as well?
What do you have for a cleanup crew?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I don't see any specific coral killing problem by ICP. UIt may not be any sort of chemical issue (most likely), or it may be from things ICP does not detect, such as organic toxins.

The tank may (or may not) benefit from a trace element supplement.

 

[ILoveAllThingsIcthy]

Your RO water looks fine. Have you tested the TDS? If you don't have a resin/DI on it that's something you can look at if your TDS is testing high.

As for the main test on your tank itself, your alkalinity is a bit high (I'd try to keep it in the 8.25-8.75dKH range), calcium could be a bit higher (aim for 450ppm) and magnesium looks fine.

Nitrates aren't really that high and your phosphate levels are good. Other than barium being a bit high (not sure why), there's not really any other red flags.
..........

Without knowing anything about your tank (setup, filtration, salt, flow, lighting, etc.) I'd just be throwing darts at this point trying to guess. Without any additional details (images, PAR readings, equipment list, etc.) it would be hard to offer anything substantial.

Do you perform regular water changes? If so, how much?
Is this a coral-only tank or are there any fish as well?
What do you have for a cleanup crew?

Thank you for your reply and your parameter suggestions. I purposely didn't post alot of tank specs so that my initial post wasn't too winded.

RODI system has a built in TDS that shows zero. We also use a handheld, and I'm not really sure how accurate it is, but it also says 0 TDS. Hubby is really good at changing resins when we see TDS start to creep up.
It's a 7 stage that includes anion and cation, chloramine buster, di resin, and carbon. The city water is pretty crappy where we live.
The RODI water is then stored in a food grade 40 gallon barrel.

Tank is a 220 dual overflow 6 ft tank

Bashsea sms4818 sump with 6 inch socks
Newly added chaeto in first chamber with small power head for tumble and 100w fuge light, though some of the chaeto has disintegrated already. The fuge light runs opposite of the tank lights.

Eshopps s200 skimmer

We have a jebao cross flow 70, 1 jebao
slw-30 and 1 jebao slw-20 for flow plus the two return nozzles.
Return pump is a jebao dct 8000. We do plan on getting a larger one soon. We have to run this one near or at max.

We have calcium, magnesium, alkalinity, and acro power on a jebao wifi doser. We use a trident and Hannah checkers for testing.
Alk is dosed 4 x daily
Calc once a week
Mag hasn't had to be dosed yet
Acro power 1x daily
We currently arent dosing anything else but can if we need to.
We also add phyto once or twice weekly, pods twice a month, and Brightwell Microbacter occasionally.

We do weekly water changes of 70 gallons using a 50/50 mix of Red Sea regular and Red Sea coral pro. We started the 50/50 mix when we upgraded to this tank because neither bucket gave us the alk levels we wanted, but this was also before we set up the doser so this probably isn't necessary anymore. Considering how ticked off the corals are we just didn't want to throw different salt at it right now.

We did have a nitrate spike a couple of weeks ago. It maxed at 50, but we brought that down to current levels with water changes. I suspect food and detritus in the sand is the culprit since we dont have a sand sifter goby anymore and our cuc has diminished. We have cut back on how much we are feeding until the chaeto starts doing its job, if it survives, and we replenish our CUC. We also vacuum the sand during water changes.

Last night we did a water change and the sand definitely had more brown crap on it than normal and there's more cyano than normal on our rockwork. We are looking to upgrade power heads and tweak flow, and I plan on viewing brown crap from sand under a scope later today.

Lighting consists of 3 hydra 52 hd's and 2 72 inch reef brites. We set up different lighting "zones" in the tank. We have a low light side that ranges 50-120 for par. The middle zone peaks at about 150-200 and the other side is high light that ranges from 250-400.

Our tank is a reef so it contains corals and fish.

2 clowns
2 chalk bass
3 firefish
Royal gramma
One spot foxface
Forktail blenny
Yellow flanked wrasse
Yellow coris wrasse
Aquamarine wrasse
Christmas wrasse (ornate not claudia)
Carpenter wrasse
Possum wrasse
Yellow and purple wrasse (juvenile)
2 mandarins
Springer damsel

There's some flaring and flashing between the two big fairies but no real aggression, and we don't plan on adding any more fish.

We removed a file fish we had for aptasia because he nipped at alot of our softies and some never recovered...a risk we took and knew the possible outcome.
We had a sand sifting goby who did a stellar job, but unfortunately he caused a cave in and sadly was crushed.
There's correlation between that happening and all the problems we now have because it's all been down hill from there, but it's unknown if it's the cause.

Whats left of the coral/nems:
Two rock flower nems (and a baby) (low light)
PC Rainbow acro (high light)
Green anacropora (high light)
Bird's nest (high light)
Stylo (high light)
Millepora (high light)
Blasto merletti (medium light)
Blasto wellsi (low light)
3 indo torches and 1 Malaysian torch (medium light)
Lobo (low light)
Scoly (1 large and 2 buttons) (low light)
Alveopora (medium light)
Goniopora (medium light)
1 acan survived (low light)
Chalice (low light)
Favia (low light)
Lots of zoas, some collectors (low light)
Frogspawn (medium light)
Hammer (medium light)
Various mushrooms (low and medium light)

None of these are huge colonies, mostly frags or mini colonies that we were growing out.

Of what's left, most are not doing well. Tissue loss is occurring on the birds nest and stylo. Anacropora is losing color. Goni and alveo are open but not extended. No PE on the rainbow or Mille. Blastos are shrinking as are the button scolys and mushrooms. Torches aren't extending. Hammers and frogspawn heads aren't full looking anymore.
The zoas, however, are all doing great.

We spot feed our coral/softies once or twice a week.

CUC needs to be replenished, we are certain one or some of our wrasses (we have lots!) are making snacks out of snails. We don't keep hermits, stars, urchins, etc just snails. We like a mix of nassarius, trochus, astrea, and cerith.

The only changes made in the last month is adding the reef brites to the lighting schedule for 1 hour at a time and adding the chaeto which has only been in the tank 1 week.


Temp ranges from 78-80, controlled by an inkbird. pH ranges from 7.8-8. We would like this to be a little higher and more stable.

I can get some photos if needed/wanted when I'm home, currently at work.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I just really want to figure out what's going on.
I'm heartbroken over the losses we have had and don't want to lose anymore!

 

[ILoveAllThingsIcthy]

I don't see any specific coral killing problem by ICP. UIt may not be any sort of chemical issue (most likely), or it may be from things ICP does not detect, such as organic toxins.

The tank may (or may not) benefit from a trace element supplement.

Thank you for your time! I will look into possible sources of organic toxins and trace element supplementation.

 

[Sidsreef]

Thank you for your time! I will look into possible sources of organic toxins and trace element supplementation.

dosing trace elements will surprisingly fix a ton of issues if your not dosing it already