Help me to understand

[Scdell]

This is an interesting observation. I too had black sand in my last tank. LPS thrived and had great growth but any Acro I added would RTN within a few days. My new tank is setup also with caribsea sand, Fiji pink and Bahamas oolite. I didn’t do an icp test but suspected heavy metal poisoning just from what I’ve read about it but couldn’t figure out the source after checking many times for rust or stray metal anywhere. To think it could’ve been the black sand. Hmmm.

Yes! Put a magnet on the black sand. It'll stick. Check around. There are quite a few threads out there about it. That's what I ran up against. Half the acros I put in the tank would RTN. Now the ones that didn't? They do all right. Some better than others. I did notice the more carbon I used and heavy skimming. The better the tank did. It was driving me crazy!

 

[Scdell]

This is an interesting observation. I too had black sand in my last tank. LPS thrived and had great growth but any Acro I added would RTN within a few days. My new tank is setup also with caribsea sand, Fiji pink and Bahamas oolite. I didn’t do an icp test but suspected heavy metal poisoning just from what I’ve read about it but couldn’t figure out the source after checking many times for rust or stray metal anywhere. To think it could’ve been the black sand. Hmmm.

When I took the black sand out? The sand bed was devoid of any life. Changed it out about a week ago. I'm already seeing much more pods and such.