Hammers are infected? Stalks have a white coat growing on them.

[UCedumacasion]

New app it was set wrong .. app fixed. Think it's worth if I scrap the dosser and drip KW? My ph is all over the place .. busy busy living room 4 fully grown Rottweilers 2 kids 1 baby myself and the misses always in from around 3pm till 12am.

If I do go ahead and start dripping KW for the 3 things my water is spiking it should sort itself out and I'll just feed the fish only with 1 cube every 48 hours? Remove all media slow the skimmer down and keep my hands out of that water... things should start picking up?

I've been in the game for about 14 months very passionate about it. I'm just wanting to get on top of this water.

Cheers for the comments though people much appreciated.

Alkalinity that high is not conducive to LPS corals usually. I'd try and get that down a little bit. I'd also look into the pH issue. That should be higher, especially if that test was done a significant time after the lights came on.

 

[UCedumacasion]

Magnesium should be raised as well.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Alkalinity that high is not conducive to LPS corals usually. I'd try and get that down a little bit. I'd also look into the pH issue. That should be higher, especially if that test was done a significant time after the lights came on.

That's gong to be tough one to balance. Alk ph. It's a full house.

 

[Shayneoc]

That's gong to be tough one to balance. Alk ph. It's a full house.

Great .. looking forward to this lol - Money not a problem, what would you recommend to increase that ph? I was thinking of Kalkwasser but i know everything else is going to rockit too. This is the time it starts to give me headaches.

 

[Shayneoc]

These spikes are terrible :/

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

What are you seeing spiking?

 

[Shayneoc]

The magnesium was 1040 18 hours ago now it's 1200, is that not a huge jump so quickly and so often? Tomorrow I'm guessing that's going to drop again below or around 1000ppm.

I've ordered some Kalkwasser but worried will push everything else up!?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Magnesium is the most common test error. Is also used the slowest relative to alk and cal. It can only Go down btw.
Without dosing or a water change none of those will increase

 

[UCedumacasion]

Magnesium is the most common test error. Is also used the slowest relative to alk and cal. It can only Go down btw.
Without dosing or a water change none of those will increase

100% agree. What test kit are you using for the Magnesium and how old is it?

 

[James Johnson]

For starters the hammers are fine, the flesh you see going down the stalk from the mantle is part of the coral and is normal. Stop feeding anemones more that once or twice a week if they do not have a chance to expel the waste before you feed them again they can get gut rot. Adding kalk will only further increase the already high levels. If you need magnesium just add magnesium, remember it takes a lot to bring it up try to do about 100 points a day. The truth about PH is that it is a correlation between the oxygen in the tank and the alkalinity. There is no PH Product that does not also increase alkalinity, so if you have a low ph and a alk of 10 then adding more buffer will not bring up the ph any further it will only raise the alk further. The only way to raise ph if the alk is already high is to increase the oxygen level in the tank. You can do this by opening windows, running a skimmer intake hose outside your house or by adding a refugium.

However I don't think that's your problem. If there are bad smells coming from your sumo it's time to clean it out. A shop vac does a great job and while your at it wrinse out any sponges or socks in the sump. Anything that can trap particles has the ability to trap organic debris which just sits there and rots. If your skim mate is that dark and fills up every 24hours that is a sign that you are feeding waaaay to much. I feed my fish once per day only what they eat in about 3-4 minutes as soon as food start hitting the bottom of the tank I stop feeding, corals I try to only feed 1-2 times a week taking the time to turn off the flow and target feed each one before turning it back on.
Last but not least your phosphates are very high and most likely the problem, it is recommended to keep levels below 0.10 you posted a reading of 0.70 I always try to keep mine at 0.03-0.05 There are many products that can remove phosphates I use GFO personally works like a charm.

 

[James Johnson]

While your magnesium is low it would not cause these problems.

 

[Apotack]

How long has your tank been set up?

 

[Shayneoc]

I couldn't tell you .. 5 years this year maybe? I did recently add 1 bag of Red Sea sand as the bed was rank.

 

[Apotack]

I would remove everything from your sump with the exception of the skimmer. Also remove any other pads sponges bags etc. Cut way back on feeding and do several 10-15% water changes a few days apart.

 

[BluewaterLa]

Figured I would chime in for a minute and give some thoughts.
I did notice that your hand written notes on testing values / parameters were fluctuating quite a bit and this will cause stress in your corals. Speaking of your DKH, calcium and magnesium. Keep those dosed, stable and consistent as possible.
Next I would not be too concerned with chasing PH too much as many reefers obsess over this value and many find out the hard way that trying to manipulate it with additives and such becomes more of a nightmare and can harm the tank with fluctuating DKH.
Natural ways of creating some surface agitation for more gas exchange is a good start among some other good methods if this concerns you about the PH though it is not causing your problem and will continue to fluctuate if your Big 3 of mag, cal and DKH are up and down, especially the Alkalinity/ DKH.

From looking at the picture it is hard to tell if the skeletal structure you refer to is coated with a sponge like material or Bacteria of some sort or just natural discoloration that the skeleton can go through as algae and such will eventually stain it and leave it looking rather darker like brown ish or tan, some even purple up with coralline over time.
If you are concerned that the discoloration appears to seem as if it is inside the skeleton itself and you notice that it is traveling up toward the heads then you may have some sort of infection inside the structure of the stalks that could make its way up to kill the flesh Then I would cut the base of the skeleton off and just re mount the heads.
They will continue to grow and make new skeletal growth over time becoming more branch like again.
I have had some in the past with brown jelly like disease that started inside the tubular structure of the skeleton branches and have saved a few by cutting off the affected parts a bit above the dark colored areas. Once you cut the suspected part off you can cut that ''bad'' part in half long ways to get a good look inside the tubular structures for signs of bacterial looking goo.

Testing all parameters, Ammonia, nitrate, phosphate, Mag, CAl, Alk and any others you have on hand will let you know if there is any thing not in order or out of place.
Check all equipment for signs of rust/ corrosion, make sure its all working properly as sometimes there could be something causing a problem in our tank that we would only discover after getting elbows deep into all areas of our system while cleaning up some things as we go inspecting and looking for any issues.

Last I would ask two things, How many gallons is the display ?
How Long has this tank been set up with life in it ?

 

[Shayneoc]

Bluewaterla,

I was going to ask about something you just pointed out regarding the system itself.

The tank is about 5 years in total and has had many kinds of live in the aquarium from salt water to a prana fish then to Salk water fish only and now 1 years later reef only with very small fish and one huge blue tang. Everything has been cleaned but not the pipework, could this hold unearned bacteria etc coursing the problems?

I'm going to drag them hammers as the colouring is going very close to the heads.

I've done two 40% water change over the weekend so tomorrow will test the water see what's in there.

Will also test ammonia tomorrow too.

Shayne

 

[Shayneoc]

I would remove everything from your sump with the exception of the skimmer. Also remove any other pads sponges bags etc. Cut way back on feeding and do several 10-15% water changes a few days apart.

I am only running the skimmer now nothing at all is going in that water for a few weeks at least. I changed the salt Friday on the first water change and it actually sent kh and mag higher sucked out 50 calc.

Will test again tomorrow as done another large water change today. If the perimeters are still increasing then there must be a doser stuck in the pipwork

 

[BluewaterLa]

Bluewaterla,

I was going to ask about something you just pointed out regarding the system itself.

The tank is about 5 years in total and has had many kinds of live in the aquarium from salt water to a prana fish then to Salk water fish only and now 1 years later reef only with very small fish and one huge blue tang. Everything has been cleaned but not the pipework, could this hold unearned bacteria etc coursing the problems?

I'm going to drag them hammers as the colouring is going very close to the heads.

I've done two 40% water change over the weekend so tomorrow will test the water see what's in there.

Will also test ammonia tomorrow too.

Shayne

I'm not sure of anything in the old pipe that would survive the transition to saltwater from fresh water. What could be somewhat of an issue would be any bacterial build up or organic matter inside the pipes that would break down into the water over time. This would have been an issue early on in the tank and In my opinion would not take this long to cause such an issue. The issue from the pipes would have been more of an increased cycle as the organics were broken down after the transition to saltwater when you were just keeping fish.
Any medications used in the tank would have degraded or dissipated after two years, unless you are using the same substrate and rock from when it was fresh water and you used medications that could have leached into them and slowly leached out over time.
This would also be highly unlikely as you state your tank has been holding life for two years being saltwater to date.

Regarding the dosing and parameters rising recently, this would be a direct influence of dosing more than what the corals are using in the system either from improperly dosing too much or equipment failure where the dose tubing may be leaking alkalinity when the pump is not on.
Inspect this possible issue, what I would recommend is to turn off all automatic dosing and test every day to see how much of each Cal and Alk your corals are using each day. This will give you a better idea for how much to dose.
One other possibility would be your dose pump pumping more than what it is programmed for, say you set it to dose 20 ml per day and it actually is dosing 25 ml per day as this would cause it to keep rising. To check for this you would need a graduated cylinder and check the out put of your dose pump to see if its dosing more or less.

Sometimes the most simple explanations for problems in a system is from believing the tank is fine and not keeping on top of testing and performing regular maintenance. Corals and fish seem fine for quite a while and something slowly starts to slip out of the acceptable range becoming an issue that upsets the balance of our systems.
There are often times in this hobby that we all will have issues that can not be easily explained though if we are dedicated to the reef enough and enjoy the hobby we will stay involved and help our systems recover even if we never find out the true cause of the issue.
Main things to keep in mind is to always know the state of your tank, keep equipment clean and in proper working order, test often and make needed adjustments to keep parameters stable as possible.
When we allow our systems to just glide on auto pilot out of the belief everything is doing well, this is usually when something will go wrong and quick. Any amount of things can go wrong fast leading to issues that will lead to the tank suffering such as an accumulation of bacteria of the wrong kinds.

Remember that when things seem complicated with our systems we can always reduce the amount of ''extra'' equipment that is not really needed to run a simple successful reef tank. Doing this takes you back to the basics and gets you in tune / engaged with the tank once again, simple has always worked well before all the fancy gadgets and add on's

 

[DMan]

With an alk that high your ph should definitely be higher, unless you are running a calcium reactor. If you have consistently low Mg it will play havoc with your alk and calcium. Making them hard to keep stable. Not matter how much you dose.
Also turning your bookseller reactor on and off is not good. Either always on or pull it.