Help ...All SPS slowly turning white..

[Kar]

Hello All,

I feed bad that I'm introducing my self in this forum with a question, but I was checking all over online and found this forum the best and here I am...

My tank is almost 10 months old and recently I have got couple of SPS frags from a retailer based in Sandeigo. I have aclimated them properly and these turned white overnight. I have few other SPS in tank which are ok with these new ones turned white. There is another redplanet which doing ok tell yesterday but when I rearranged the corals I moved it to a different place and it bleached overnight. Really having hard time loosing all the $$. Please suggest what can I do to save this last remaining ones.... attaching pics of the corals which turned white and which are doing ok..

Bleached red planet, I moved this from one place to another place... :(



ok doing corals but not colouring up nice..



The newly added colony which truned white overnight..I'm shading it now but not sure if it will survive :((((


Full tank shot


Tank Params:
Alk around 8 ish
Ca 440
Mg 1300
Po4: 0
No3: 0

 

[ermartin]

doesnt looked bleached to me looks like STN.

 

[Anthony Wood]

doesnt looked bleached to me looks like STN.

Ditto. Some have STN and the others that are all white are dead from RTN. STN stands for Slow Tissue Necrosis and RTN accordingly is Rapid Tissue Necrosis just in case you not have known, not saying you didn't. There is no bring back the ones that RTN in your pictures they are already dead, the white you are seeing is the skeleton. The ones that have STN try to give them a coral dip and place them back in the same place as not to stress them even more from having to adapt to different lighting and flow conditions. Then give it some time if they continue to STN and lose tissue in my experience anyways clip off all the STN parts and start cutting it up into frags (do some research on how to frag if you don't already know). Hopefully the entire piece doesn't die and one or some of the frags survive so that you can start regrowing it from there. There is no known treatment that is guaranteed to work 100%. The above has worked for me in the past.

While your waiting to see what the STN pieces are gonna do (before you get into fragging) start testing every parameter in the tank, go over a list of stuff you may or may not have changed on the tank as far as flow and lighting and whatever else may be new on the tank. In order to narrow down the possible reason your SPS decided to Necrose on you. Seeing you added more SPS recently it may be a drop in alkalinity, which would result in a pH drop from a gain in tank uptake. Another big one is a faulty piece of equipment leaking stray electricity in the tank. Although the stray voltage may not be getting grounded it will most certainly still effect SPS. You'll know if you have weak stray voltage only if you have a cut when you put your hands in the water (your the ground...NOT GOOD). Another way would be getting a cheap light bulb voltmeter. If you already have an expensive digital multimeter let me know and ill let you know how to do the test with it. I say that because I just went through the struggle of researching and learning what the dang thing was telling me not even a month ago when I had a heater go bad on me haha. Do you have a ground probe? Is it on a GFCI outlet like it has to be? How old is your GFCI outlet if you have one? Thats pretty much everything that is in your control for a lack of better words.

 

[Kar]

Anthony et all, thanks much for your detail.. I will do the coral dip right away, do you think that shading the coral would help ? Coz I still see few ployps at end of tips for the sps which I have in the 6th pic, also whats giving me a hard time is the red planet was doing ok till yesterday before I moved it and it RTN'ed, so does moving an SPS coral would cause it to STN or RTN??

I dont have a digital multimeter so I would order one in AMZN right way.... I really want to have a successful tank, is keeping SPS so hard.. I just checked my params and they are pretty much in line with what I have mentioned above ....

 

[Sabellafella]

Welcome to r2r pal, beautiful tank btw. Question was the birdnest first to bleach/rtn? Or is it still alive i cant really tell by the picture

 

[ermartin]

Anthony et all, thanks much for your detail.. I will do the coral dip right away, do you think that shading the coral would help ? Coz I still see few ployps at end of tips for the sps which I have in the 6th pic, also whats giving me a hard time is the red planet was doing ok till yesterday before I moved it and it RTN'ed, so does moving an SPS coral would cause it to STN or RTN??

I dont have a digital multimeter so I would order one in AMZN right way.... I really want to have a successful tank, is keeping SPS so hard.. I just checked my params and they are pretty much in line with what I have mentioned above ....

I don't believe it has anything to do with your lighting. it has something to do with a parameter or condition in your tank

 

[Kar]

Hmmm....what param would you think would have been whacked out... :( if thats the case how come other corals are doing ok...I really want to understand the chemistry/logic behind it..:(

 

[ermartin]

Hmmm....what param would you think would have been whacked out... :( if thats the case how come other corals are doing ok...I really want to understand the chemistry/logic behind it..:(

Thats the 24k dollar question. So first I guess what does RECENTLY mean when you say you added them recently ? if it was in the last 24-48 hrs then it could be that there was a very large variance in the tank they came from and your tank and they just couldn't adapt to the change. Also some corals are going to tell you there is an issue long before others. It could be that one of your test kits is wrong and you need to take a sample to your LFS or to another hobbyist to have a second set of tests run. There is the possibility that this was a growing situation and your other corals somewhat adapted but the new ones couldn't... kinda going back to my first point. If it were me I would do some water changes and try and frag any living portion to try and save it. but at least 2 of those are just dead unfortunately. there will be others that question your tank being too clean if the numbers are correct as stated at "0" i cant really comment on that as I don't test those in my tanks I only test ALK CALK and MAG and specific gravity of my water... your going to get lots of opinions and advice... but try to stick with the basics... also your water source is critical do you make your own water ? are you using RODI ?

 

[Anthony Wood]

Anthony et all, thanks much for your detail.. I will do the coral dip right away, do you think that shading the coral would help ? Coz I still see few ployps at end of tips for the sps which I have in the 6th pic, also whats giving me a hard time is the red planet was doing ok till yesterday before I moved it and it RTN'ed, so does moving an SPS coral would cause it to STN or RTN??

I dont have a digital multimeter so I would order one in AMZN right way.... I really want to have a successful tank, is keeping SPS so hard.. I just checked my params and they are pretty much in line with what I have mentioned above ....

The issue is that RTN isn't fully understood and no one knows at this point and time what actually causes it. So there is no real definitive answer to your question to what caused it in your case but stress from some sort of change in your tank 100% is only going to harm. In your case since its more then just the red planet doing this its something in the water (contaminant, faulty equipment). If it was just the red planet being moved then I could say it may of been a change in flow or light but I doubt it. Do NOT put it in the shade, coral dip it and put it back in the same spot and as close as you can to the same position. You are trying to eliminate any stressors not cause more haha As for you birds nest I would clip off the tips and cut into the tissue as far away from the necrosed skeleton. At this point fragging it isn't going to hurt anything its pretty much all dead the only thing that'll come from fragging it at this point is the chance you save a piece of it and can grow the surviving frag back to a colony. Just to clarify in your case moving an SPS didint cause the RTN but try to avoid moving stuff for the time being until you figure out whats causing you your issues. I move frags all the time until I find a spot it likes the best and that I like visually. They will adapt to its new conditions over time and none of them ever die on me.

For your parameters, sorry I didn't see you posted them at the bottom of your post. Its not that they are bad number because they are perfectly good (I've run my tank with your exact numbers for months now). What others and I are obviously not communicating very well is, have your parameters changed rapidly in a short period of time? What were your readings the day or so before you started having issues with RTN? For example did your alk drop from say 10dKh to now 8dKh in 24 hours or less.

If you haven't had any swings, introduced any contaminants into the tank (this one is tough you really gotta think what has been on your hands, air around the tank, change in RO/DI water etc..), haven't changed the lights,flow or added or taken out any equipment. I would suspect you had a piece of equipment go bad and its leaking stray voltage into the tank. Im sure amazon is the cheapest place but a cheap voltmeter and multimeter can be purchased from autozone, lowes, home depot and even walmart.

Questions that being answered that'll help fill in the blanks are as follows. Do you have a ground probe (not saying to go and get one just a question)? Do you have a GFCI outlet that the tank is plugged into? What test kit did you use for your phosphates? forgot to add like someone above DO A WATER CHANGE ASAP!

 

[ermartin]

YES THIS "DO A WATER CHANGE ASAP!"

 

[Anthony Wood]

SPS water chemistry/logic is very simple haha no matter how deep you read into it. The key to success is stability thats it! changes equal stress and stress will cause things to react adversity and at worst, die. Besides your extreme highs and lows of every single water parameter IDC what anyone else says it honestly doesn't matter what the parameters of your tank are. But the numbers have to stay the same 24/7 (very minor changes are ok). IDC what anyone tells you someone can run their tank at 6dKh and another person can run their tank at 13dkh if both kept their tanks at those numbers, day in and day out along with all their other parameters, both tanks would thrive. My very good buddy for example was too lazy to change his dosage amount, so his alk (along with all other parameters slowly dropped) to 6dKh over a months time. Then stayed and didn't budge off 6dKh for at least 4 months. Know what happened to his corals? Not a dang thing! Nothing was ever effected because his parameters after they dropped stayed stable.

The next time you go to buy something just keep in the back of your mind, is this gonna affect my tank stability. Then think, is it gonna make the tank more stable, if so then get it. If not then don't get it. In the case of corals or fish think this is gonna effect my stability because my tank uptake or bioload will increase/decrease (thats ok). Now I gotta pay attention to my parameters, do more WC's etc.... Then change and/or buy whatever you need to maintain that stability. Obviously water volume goes a long way in maintaining stability also.

So there you go haha thats the big secret no one with these magazine worthy tanks will ever tell you. Don't buy into any products or hype unless its going to improve your particular tanks stability.

 

[Kar]

Thanks guys, Il surely remove it from shade and do a coral dip. for now. Also will do a water change... If anything comes to your mind, pls drop a note.

cheers.

 

[nstd]

Is one of them a red dragon or a deep water Acro?

 

[Anthony Wood]

DO YOU HAVE A GROUND PROBE ON THE TANK!? LOL DO YOU HAVE A GFCI OUTLET THAT THE TANK IS PLUGGED INTO!? its gotta do with if you have a faulty piece of equipment. If you don't have a ground probe its gonna save me a lot of typing. If you do I have no problem the typing to help you out haha

 

[Anthony Wood]

shortly put for now if you have a ground probe but its not plugged into a GFCI outlet and you have stray voltage. The ground probe is completing the circuit and doing more harm then good. The GFCI outlet will trip if the ground probe is getting even low stray current. Where with no GFCI and ground probe and low stray current will not trip the breaker in your house breaker box (unless its a dumb expensive AFCI breaker) because its too low, its just completing the circuit.

 

[Kar]

@nstd not sure what kind of acro but I think it's red dragon, why ?

 

[Kar]

@Anthony Wood can you please send me a screen shot of your setup ( the ground probe ) which are you are mentioning about

Thanks

 

[Anthony Wood]

@Anthony Wood can you please send me a screen shot of your setup ( the ground probe ) which are you are mentioning about

Thanks

Im truly sorry I wasn't aware you didn't know what ground probes looks like my apologies! If you are not sure what I'm talking about you don't have a ground probe. Its a long titanium rod most of the time or should be titanium because its in saltwater with a cord coming out of it that plugs into the third round hole of your wall outlet. I personally don't have one myself to show a pic of because of my Arhcon controller power strips are grounded. Nothing wrong with not having one or even having one they just need to be used correctly. I mean I can take a pic of the GFCI outlet if you are not sure, its just one of those outlets with the button on them that says reset. You should have at least one in your bathroom and/or kitchen if they are up to code. Only reason I brought it up is because it would have saved you some time a possibly livestock if you had a ground probe on a NON GFCI outlet while you were in the process of getting a multimeter because all you would have to do is unplugged the ground probe. Give me a min and ill post a pic of my set up because you requested.

Personally I think you have a heater that went bad and is sending stray current into the tank because it sounds like nothing on the tank has changed since you've started having these problems. A majority of the time the first piece of equipment to go is your heater or return pump.

 

[Anthony Wood]

Not a masterpiece yet but here is what Im working with, still a very young tank and not looking 100% in this photo haha I have my own issues. I have new T5Ho bulb's coming in tomorrow because the fiji purple on the tank now has reached the end of its life and causing algae. The tank looks empty because I like smalls frags so that the coral will grow to my light and flow setup but believe it or not there is $3k+ worth of frags in the tank in this photo haha (still lots more to come). I wouldn't be able to get a pic of all the frags without cutting out feet of tank out of the picture. Lastly is the wires they might look like a rats nest but in reality they are all zip tied neatly so if I ever gotta pull something off the tank it pulls right off and don't have to unplug 5 other things in order to get 1 thing out haha The tank has an Archon controller, bubble magus doser with slave, reactors being feed by the manifold off the return, ozone, UV and tons of other stuff thats too long to list. Trust me when I say Im not perfect by any means. I've hit every bump in the road that anyone could ever possibly hit to get to this point including the one your having. Im not blowing smoke trying to help you get past your unfortunate events and by no means trying to be an ****** even if I may come off as one through your reading.

 

[nstd]

@nstd not sure what kind of acro but I think it's red dragon, why ?

Did you dip it? They are super sensitive to it.