Help me understand my SPS crash

[Llorgon]

Yeah just watch it close test at least weekly if your dosing it. Once phosphate get low enough it will start to rise.

How are you removing phosphates algae scrubber, cheato, carbon dosing, GFO?

think about this so when you start a new tank it takes half a year or more for rocks and sand to stop absorbing phosphates so all appears fine then one day boom phosphates rise dramatically and then you get hair algae on rocks and it keeps coming back as phosphate leaches back out of the rocks as you remove phosphates from water (by pulling it out or other control measures)

need to use one of the mentioned methods above consistently to keep algae growing slow enough for CUC to control but not so low or controlled corals don’t have enough to grow

Ya, I don't really want to dose so I will keep an eye on how much things are dropping.

I have caulerpa in the refugium that is currently being out competed by the gha. I will probably give chaeto a try.

That's a good point on the removal of phosphates. I am hoping I can eventually control it with chaeto in the refugium, but we will see. If not I might try the algae scrubber.

I noticed last night, after lights off that I have tons of small snails all over the glass, but not a single snail on the rocks. Is that odd or is it just me?

 

[cooltowncorals]

Ya, I don't really want to dose so I will keep an eye on how much things are dropping.

I have caulerpa in the refugium that is currently being out competed by the gha. I will probably give chaeto a try.

That's a good point on the removal of phosphates. I am hoping I can eventually control it with chaeto in the refugium, but we will see. If not I might try the algae scrubber.

I noticed last night, after lights off that I have tons of small snails all over the glass, but not a single snail on the rocks. Is that odd or is it just me?

A lot of my snails hang out on the glass

chaeto works for a lot of people most dose something like cheatogrow or similar cause it pulls lots of iron or something out of the water

 

[Llorgon]

A lot of my snails hang out on the glass

chaeto works for a lot of people most dose something like cheatogrow or similar cause it pulls lots of iron or something out of the water

I've heard that before. My last ICP test said iron was 0 so maybe that is why I haven't seen as much growth with the caulerpa.

 

[Llorgon]

I was taking a look at some old pictures of the tank and I noticed something.
June 26th - tank and corals were looking good. I did have a bunch of chrysophytes all over the rocks, but things were going well.
June 28 - Elkhorn and forest fire aren't looking great and some cyano is showing up
July 8 - Corals are losing tissue, chrysophytes are completely gone, cyano has exploded on the rocks and glass

Seems like good things happen slowly and bad things happen quickly.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

I was taking a look at some old pictures of the tank and I noticed something.
June 26th - tank and corals were looking good. I did have a bunch of chrysophytes all over the rocks, but things were going well.
June 28 - Elkhorn and forest fire aren't looking great and some cyano is showing up
July 8 - Corals are losing tissue, chrysophytes are completely gone, cyano has exploded on the rocks and glass

Seems like good things happen slowly and bad things happen quickly.

Isn’t that with everything in life

 

[Llorgon]

I tested my water again on Sunday night. My main 3 consumption has dropped again.

Temp: 78
Salinity: 1.026
Alk: 9.6
Cal: 485
Mag: 1500
Nitrate: 6.1
Phosphate: 0.07

Still trying to remove as much gha as possible. I'm still dosing live phyto daily, but moved to weekly MB7 dosing. I'm working on getting my Apex to connect to fusion again and I will be looking into ordering some more cuc, pods and chaeto in the next week or so.

 

[Llorgon]

Some current tank shots. It's still not looking great, unfortunately.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Some current tank shots. It's still not looking great, unfortunately.

Get some mexican turbo snails. Like 3 or 4 should help clean up the algae.

 

[cooltowncorals]

Doesn’t look terrible hold steady get the cheato growing and that will get you there.

 

[Llorgon]

I ordered a few snails and some pods yesterday. I also got my apex connected back to fusion so I was able to bump up my refugium light time. Hopefully that will help start making a dent in things.

 

[Llorgon]

Here's the tank after not scrubbing the rocks or stirring the cyano side of the sand for 2 days.

I'm going to do a 15g water change tomorrow and try and suck out as much of all the nasty stuff as I can. This will be my first water change in about a month. Hopefully there won't be anymore coral losses following it.

The pods and snails I ordered should come on Tuesday. I ordered a pod seed pack rated for 100g tank, so I hope they can help out a bit in cleaning things up.

Since I was finally able to get the apex connected to fusion again, I can see what the pH is doing. pH seems to go between 8.4 - 8.2.

 

[willpower]

Here's the tank after not scrubbing the rocks or stirring the cyano side of the sand for 2 days.

I'm going to do a 15g water change tomorrow and try and suck out as much of all the nasty stuff as I can. This will be my first water change in about a month. Hopefully there won't be anymore coral losses following it.

The pods and snails I ordered should come on Tuesday. I ordered a pod seed pack rated for 100g tank, so I hope they can help out a bit in cleaning things up.

Since I was finally able to get the apex connected to fusion again, I can see what the pH is doing. pH seems to go between 8.4 - 8.2.

Read most of the thread but not all of it. I have been running sps dominant / mixed reef tanks for some years and by looking at your current tank condition I am mostly concerned about:

1. The lack of coraline
2. The amount of algae

While you could dose h202 or get a bunch of fish / cleanup and limit your light I would most likely just start over as It does not look like your tank matured completely in a way to grow sps.

I have moderate swings in phosphate and alk due to my tank only being 15 months old but 80% of my rock is covered in coraline, no algae and I feed moderately. Water quality may be a concern as well, hopefully you are testing 0 ppm using a RODI.

 

[Llorgon]

Read most of the thread but not all of it. I have been running sps dominant / mixed reef tanks for some years and by looking at your current tank condition I am mostly concerned about:

1. The lack of coraline
2. The amount of algae

While you could dose h202 or get a bunch of fish / cleanup and limit your light I would most likely just start over as It does not look like your tank matured completely in a way to grow sps.

I have moderate swings in phosphate and alk due to my tank only being 15 months old but 80% of my rock is covered in coraline, no algae and I feed moderately. Water quality may be a concern as well, hopefully you are testing 0 ppm using a RODI.

The Coraline is growing on the side glass and a bit on the overflow/back glass, but nothing on the rocks. It's strange, I think I commented that a few pages ago somewhere. I noticed a similar thing happened in my 25g that has been running for 3 years. Corals died off and the Coraline just completely stopped growing on the rocks. I have noticed small patches appearing on the rocks here and there.

The algae came up after the coral losses started. Before that, corals were growing and some of the frags had encrusted onto the rocks. Then the RTN/STN issues started happening and the cyano and algae came in too. Being away for a few weeklong trips over the summer didn't help things either.

How do I get a tank to mature completely/correctly? I cycled the tank, slowly added a fish and some cuc, then added some test corals. Those corals did well so I continued to add them. What would I have missed? I would prefer not to restart since I have nowhere to house the fish and corals I do have.

Water quality seems to be fine. I check the ro/di once a month and I change filters when it reads over 0.

 

[Llorgon]

Came back from a 5 day fishing trip to the tank looking pretty rough. Lots of algae and the caulerpa in the sump is completely gone. Actually very little algae in the refugium now which is weird.

While I was away the pod seed pack I ordered came and I had my wife add them to the tank for me. They were added Thursday night.

The 2k gyre and second refugium light arrived yesterday. So I will hopefully get those up and running soon.

All the snails I added before going away still seem to be alive which is good. I think I might be fine to add a few more.

I tested my water last night and I'm still struggling to keep nitrate up. It read 0 while phosphate was 0.12. I added some nitrate to bring it up to detectable levels.

 

[LeDart]

Came back from a 5 day fishing trip to the tank looking pretty rough. Lots of algae and the caulerpa in the sump is completely gone. Actually very little algae in the refugium now which is weird.

While I was away the pod seed pack I ordered came and I had my wife add them to the tank for me. They were added Thursday night.

The 2k gyre and second refugium light arrived yesterday. So I will hopefully get those up and running soon.

All the snails I added before going away still seem to be alive which is good. I think I might be fine to add a few more.

I tested my water last night and I'm still struggling to keep nitrate up. It read 0 while phosphate was 0.12. I added some nitrate to bring it up to detectable levels.

What test kit are you using?

 

[Rick5]

I thought I chimed in on this thread but I guess I didn’t. Is this a dry rock setup? If so, why not toss the rock and replace it with live rock? If it were me, I’d also vacuum the sandbed and get a solid cleanup crew.

 

[Llorgon]

What test kit are you using?

Hanna Nitrate checker

I thought I chimed in on this thread but I guess I didn’t. Is this a dry rock setup? If so, why not toss the rock and replace it with live rock? If it were me, I’d also vacuum the sandbed and get a solid cleanup crew.

Yes, dry rock. It was running with minimal pest algae until July.

The only live rock I can get in Canada is aquacultured. I would also have to ship it so might not be worth it for the price + shipping to get some rock with a bit more coraline on it.

I'm working on the CUC, I added a few about a week ago that seem to be doing well. This seems to be lyngbya and not the gha I thought it was though.

 

[EugeneVan]

I know nothing about sps really, just added an acro to test out my water stability, lighting and whatnot for this coral. But from what I'm understanding from this thread is since it takes so long to see differences in the corals you may not want to make too many changes over night if a coral worsens. You may have already fixed the issue but because you don't see an overnight improvement you may then undo the fix if more changes are made.

In my rookie opinion if you have stable water parameters no need to really do a water change, it's useful to calculate how much alk is consumed by corals over a 3 day period then offset that number by dosing but figuring out exact water volume can be difficult. I believe a uv sterilizer would really help with the algae you are concerned about and when that's better just turn down its flow and let it fry any unwanted bugs. It you don't have space under the tank you can always attach it to the outside of the tank. It doesn't look as tacky as it sounds

If you find yourself moving the corals around may be better to let them rest in one spot for a couple weeks to let them adjust to the spot.

It can be very difficult to not tinker around inside the tank and I've been told a few times to stay out of my tank. If you get to a point where you feel you have done everything reasonable to do then I would just get parameters where you want, test 1-2 times a week establish a routine of maybe one 5 gallon wc a week or even every other week.

If your lights are working, corals are settled in, water is stable over time and in good condition then I would assume you would then just need to sit back, observe and just give it time before any other big changes. I believe ive heard corals can actually be resiliant to maybe not the most ideal paramters as long as they have time to settle in and get comfortable and things stay consistant within the system. I'm not positive but isn't changing your salt a pretty big change for livestock?

Sorry Im not one of your experts here but was reading through this and just wanted to throw out my humble opinion.

Totally agree with you humble opinion. Stable water parameters are the must in keeper SPS. From all the previous posts, I see you keep changing/dosing different stuff every day. This has to be stop. If you dose, I high recommand you using a dosing pump and divide the dose into very small amount over 24 hrs. In my 200 gal, I only do water change 5 gal every 4 day. The goal is too keep the water as stable as possible.

 

[Llorgon]

Totally agree with you humble opinion. Stable water parameters are the must in keeper SPS. From all the previous posts, I see you keep changing/dosing different stuff every day. This has to be stop. If you dose, I high recommand you using a dosing pump and divide the dose into very small amount over 24 hrs. In my 200 gal, I only do water change 5 gal every 4 day. The goal is too keep the water as stable as possible.

alk, cal and mag are all on a doser. I have been changing the dosing amounts as demand dropped.

I have been adding 20ml of live phyto daily by hand and once a week MB7. Other than that I will add some nitrate or phosphate if readings drop.

I'm trying to get to a stable place with things. Any tips on getting there quicker?

 

[EugeneVan]

There is nothing wrong to start with dry rock. I did my 200 gal with 95% dry rock and 5 % aquacultured. I was showing my SPS growing rate of one of my fastest SPS in 9 months interval on Facebook.It can be done with dry rock. Save your money for the future SPS or LPS. First I will stop adding anymore animals into the tank. Take the rock one piece at a time out and spot treat with H2O2. Leave the rock out for about 5 mins before putting it back into the tank. Wait for few days and take another one out, do the same thing until all the alage are destroyed. Make sure your protein skimmer is working as good as it suppose too. Stop adding live phyto for now. When the alage got destroy, they will release NO3 and PO4 and your protein skimmer should able to handle the extra load. Keep your dosing and try not to make any big jump on the big 3 (Ca, KH, Mg). Start growing Chaleto in the sump. Make 2 gal of WC every few days and try to stuck out all the death alage. Patient is your best friend, all your alage should be gone in a month or so.