Help me understand my SPS crash

EugeneVan · Oct 12, 2022

Dry rock work great with my growing of LPS too. 10 months grow of my Acon

my86iroc01 · Oct 12, 2022

I would stop dosing the phyto.

Llorgon · Oct 13, 2022

EugeneVan said:
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.

I have had some success in the past with dry rock and up until the beginning of July I was getting some good growth on a few of the SPS frags I had. I haven't added anything to the tank since about March except for a few more snails and a bunch of pods last week.

Why stop adding the live phyto?

I'll get some chaeto and hope it does better than the caulerpa did!

BIg 3 dosing has almost completely stopped for now. I am trying to get my alk down to 8 from 9.8 it was on Tuesday. The only thing I am currently dosing is calcium and that is just enough for a slow drop from the 490 it was at

Instead of scrubbing and blowing off the rocks in the tank, I pulled a bunch of the algae out manually. I got about a cup out in 15 mins.

EugeneVan · Oct 13, 2022

Llorgon said:
I have had some success in the past with dry rock and up until the beginning of July I was getting some good growth on a few of the SPS frags I had. I haven't added anything to the tank since about March except for a few more snails and a bunch of pods last week.

Why stop adding the live phyto?

I'll get some chaeto and hope it does better than the caulerpa did!

BIg 3 dosing has almost completely stopped for now. I am trying to get my alk down to 8 from 9.8 it was on Tuesday. The only thing I am currently dosing is calcium and that is just enough for a slow drop from the 490 it was at

Instead of scrubbing and blowing off the rocks in the tank, I pulled a bunch of the algae out manually. I got about a cup out in 15 mins.

If you used the H2O2 method to kill the hair alage, the dead alage will give out lot of organic waste, NO3, PO4.....to the water, you don't want to add more food (in your case live phyto) into the water column for the hair alage to grow again. Don't stop the Big 3 dosing all at once. You have to lower them very slowly at a rate like 0.1 every 2 to 3 days. Pulling out of the alage of course help. But you are not killing them. Depend on how much light and the interval of light you have with your tank, the alage could grow faster than you can pull out. That is why I say used H2O2 to kill them one rock at a time.

52728299 · Oct 13, 2022

I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure my tank is close to stability, if your interested I can share what I've done. I got a reactor and am running gfo. My po4 had been up above 0.4 and gfo dropped it fast, then I turned the flow all the way down on the reactor and seems to be staying stable now at about 0.13. As for dosing, my tank began with alk around 9.3, after adding the corals I now have I noticed it dropped to around 7.5. I hooked up all for reef to a dosing pump and was dosing 10ml everyday for around a week. It was slowly raising the entire time and when it got to the point it was about to go over 10 I changed the dosing days to every other day. It now seems to be staying at 9.6, ca is about 450 and mag is about 1350.

The only other thing that's taken me a while to dial in has been light intensity. I'm using radion xr15 blue and they had been set at 50% intensity. This was actually giving out a pretty low par for my tank and i have been raising it the last couple weeks. Its now at about 85%, water surface is now receiving around 216 par I believe and corals do seem to be more happy in general. I'm not sure what your lighting conditions are but may need tweaking either up or down over time, I'm not sure tho.

Llorgon · Oct 14, 2022

EugeneVan said:
If you used the H2O2 method to kill the hair alage, the dead alage will give out lot of organic waste, NO3, PO4.....to the water, you don't want to add more food (in your case live phyto) into the water column for the hair alage to grow again. Don't stop the Big 3 dosing all at once. You have to lower them very slowly at a rate like 0.1 every 2 to 3 days. Pulling out of the alage of course help. But you are not killing them. Depend on how much light and the interval of light you have with your tank, the alage could grow faster than you can pull out. That is why I say used H2O2 to kill them one rock at a time.

ok, that makes sense. I will pick up some peroxide this weekend.

Aluco said:
I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure my tank is close to stability, if your interested I can share what I've done. I got a reactor and am running gfo. My po4 had been up above 0.4 and gfo dropped it fast, then I turned the flow all the way down on the reactor and seems to be staying stable now at about 0.13. As for dosing, my tank began with alk around 9.3, after adding the corals I now have I noticed it dropped to around 7.5. I hooked up all for reef to a dosing pump and was dosing 10ml everyday for around a week. It was slowly raising the entire time and when it got to the point it was about to go over 10 I changed the dosing days to every other day. It now seems to be staying at 9.6, ca is about 450 and mag is about 1350.

The only other thing that's taken me a while to dial in has been light intensity. I'm using radion xr15 blue and they had been set at 50% intensity. This was actually giving out a pretty low par for my tank and i have been raising it the last couple weeks. Its now at about 85%, water surface is now receiving around 216 par I believe and corals do seem to be more happy in general. I'm not sure what your lighting conditions are but may need tweaking either up or down over time, I'm not sure tho.

So, my tank was stable at least from a big 3 perspective for about a year. I did have issues with nutrients being stable. Then in July corals started dying and the stability went away.

I have two radion xr30 Blue's at about 40% brightness and 100% intensity... I think. I will have to double check the par readings on it.

Llorgon · Oct 17, 2022

I'm slowly making a bit of a dent in the algae. Since all the snails I added seem to have survived, I'm going to slowly start adding more.

I can see more bubble algae showing up on the rocks. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I guess I will need to get some hermits or an emerald crab.

I really need to find a good way of getting the algae off the LPS bases. They are really annoying the corals. I'm thinking of trying a peroxide dip. Unless anyone has better suggestions?

I did a 10g water change(making sure to match alk) on the weekend and I vacuumed the left side of the tank. Obviously I didn't get all the cyano because I can see small patches starting to come back.

Tanked_Timmy77 · Oct 17, 2022

Llorgon said:
Ok. I assumed it was the zeroing out, but I wanted to see if there may have been something else I missed.

I'll give smaller water changes a try. I thought 15gal for 75gal+sump tank would be fine. Maybe I was doing tooany water changes.

As far as I know, this is the first time I've had the big shift in nutrients. Mostly when I test nitrate was around 2-4ppm and phosphate around 0.03-0.05.

I've been having some cyano issues lately, but I haven't added anything chemical wise. It started about the same time as the corals looking unhappy. So most likely due to the nutrient issue.

I do have a sump with a skimmer and refugium. I think the skimmer is the reef octopus 110 and it runs 24/7. Refugium light is the tunze submersible one. It runs opposite of the display lights. There's some caulerpa in there that doesn't seem to want to grow...

I've got cleanup crew of various snails. Mostly astrea and cerith and one fighting conch. They seem happy as there's always new batches of eggs on the glass.

Browning was probably not the best to describe it. I would get green, but not much else for colour in the SPS. Blue, red and any other colour was never as vibrant as when I picked up the frags.

((FORDTECH)) said:
What I’m confused about is Browning corals especially SPS is 99% of the time due to high nutrients yet OP is claiming they keep going low so what is really happening my guess is his nutrients are swinging all over the place way high and Way low

Here is a pic of my tank and I just tested nitrates and phosphates last night
No3 was 49
Po4 was 4.1
I stopped worrying about to high and just worried about balance and this is what I got

Llorgon · Oct 18, 2022

Tanked_Timmy77 said:
Here is a pic of my tank and I just tested nitrates and phosphates last night
No3 was 49
Po4 was 4.1
I stopped worrying about to high and just worried about balance and this is what I got

Great looking tank!

I'm trying to be less concerned with the nutrients, but I am fighting a bunch of algae right now, so I'm trying to not let them get too high. Once I get algae under control then hopefully things will start to balance out again.

Sent an order off for some more cuc
1 - emerald crab
1 - mexican turbo
5 - Blue legged hermits
3 - astrea snails
plus some free extra shells for the hermits.

Tanked_Timmy77 · Oct 18, 2022

Llorgon said:
Great looking tank!

I'm trying to be less concerned with the nutrients, but I am fighting a bunch of algae right now, so I'm trying to not let them get too high. Once I get algae under control then hopefully things will start to balance out again.

Sent an order off for some more cuc
1 - emerald crab
1 - mexican turbo
5 - Blue legged hermits
3 - astrea snails
plus some free extra shells for the hermits.

thanks its been a long road

Llorgon · Oct 22, 2022

New snails and crabs have been in the tank for a few days and seem to be doing well.

I have been really focusing on the two top rocks for algae removal this week and I seem to be making some progress.

I have been looking into peroxide dipping euphyllia, everything says they handle it well. So I'm going to try that this weekend to get the algae off the frags.

DaveWrasse · Oct 24, 2022

If this was my tank I would do the following. Pull out each rock and do a big scrubbing of each to remove all of the algae's, you can use old water change water to do the scrubbing and rinsing in. Scrape the glass on all sides and vacuum the sand. Manually remove any algae on the LPS branches. Crank up the flow and get all that junk down the overflow. Remove dirty socks and replace with clean ones. Your corals don't need a lot of feeding right now, focus on just feeding the fish a small amount that you see them eat, and no more. The fish waste will feed the corals. Go get a clean-up crew of Astrea snails and hermit crabs, maybe 10 - 20 ea. Also look at the flow in the tank, you should have a power head on both sides to provide sufficient flow for the corals. If you want to spend money, a UV sterilizer would be nice to add (15 watt). Hang in there, the ugly stage lasts about 6 months to a year.

Llorgon · Oct 24, 2022

DaveWrasse said:
If this was my tank I would do the following. Pull out each rock and do a big scrubbing of each to remove all of the algae's, you can use old water change water to do the scrubbing and rinsing in. Scrape the glass on all sides and vacuum the sand. Manually remove any algae on the LPS branches. Crank up the flow and get all that junk down the overflow. Remove dirty socks and replace with clean ones. Your corals don't need a lot of feeding right now, focus on just feeding the fish a small amount that you see them eat, and no more. The fish waste will feed the corals. Go get a clean-up crew of Astrea snails and hermit crabs, maybe 10 - 20 ea. Also look at the flow in the tank, you should have a power head on both sides to provide sufficient flow for the corals. If you want to spend money, a UV sterilizer would be nice to add (15 watt). Hang in there, the ugly stage lasts about 6 months to a year.

My ugly stage was apparently delayed and didn't start until 1.5 years in... I'm actually starting to see some progress on the algae and I have been slowly adding CUC. I have a 2k gyre I haven't setup yet. Still trying to find the best spot for it. I have octo pulse 2 on each side right now. Do I move the pulses to the same side with the gyre on the other side? Maybe put one in the back middle of the tank?

I did another water change yesterday and sucked out a bunch of the algae and scrubbed the rocks. I'm definitely seeing progress. One of the trochus snails is even on the rocks today!

I tried a h2o2 dip on the euphyllia frags. I put them in a bucket of tank water and then added h2o2 until I saw bubbles and left them in there for 3 minutes. This morning, most are open a bit more than before, but I didn't succeed in killing off the algae. I think I will try a stronger dip later on this week and see if that will kill the algae.

My space invader pectina, which took a big hit still has algae at the dead parts, but is looking way more puffier than it has been.

On the downside, because there always has to be a downside, I can see small red dots on a bunch of my LPS. I'm guessing my original dip of the corals when I put them in the tank, didn't kill them all off. The guy I got these from said they could be red planaria. Hopefully if I do a h2o2 dip of all LPS it will get rid of these guys as well.

Llorgon · Oct 24, 2022

Tank after water change last night

52728299 · Oct 24, 2022

Llorgon said:
My ugly stage was apparently delayed and didn't start until 1.5 years in... I'm actually starting to see some progress on the algae and I have been slowly adding CUC. I have a 2k gyre I haven't setup yet. Still trying to find the best spot for it. I have octo pulse 2 on each side right now. Do I move the pulses to the same side with the gyre on the other side? Maybe put one in the back middle of the tank?

I did another water change yesterday and sucked out a bunch of the algae and scrubbed the rocks. I'm definitely seeing progress. One of the trochus snails is even on the rocks today!

I tried a h2o2 dip on the euphyllia frags. I put them in a bucket of tank water and then added h2o2 until I saw bubbles and left them in there for 3 minutes. This morning, most are open a bit more than before, but I didn't succeed in killing off the algae. I think I will try a stronger dip later on this week and see if that will kill the algae.

My space invader pectina, which took a big hit still has algae at the dead parts, but is looking way more puffier than it has been.

On the downside, because there always has to be a downside, I can see small red dots on a bunch of my LPS. I'm guessing my original dip of the corals when I put them in the tank, didn't kill them all off. The guy I got these from said they could be red planaria. Hopefully if I do a h2o2 dip of all LPS it will get rid of these guys as well.

Hey I just got an octo Pulse 2 today. You like it ok?

Llorgon · Oct 24, 2022

Aluco said:
Hey I just got an octo Pulse 2 today. You like it ok?

They have been good so far. I do find you have to really keep them clean though. I can see a noticeable drop in flow if I don't clean them regularly

Llorgon · Nov 2, 2022

While the tank is looking better than it was, the fact that corals aren't doing great and it still looks like crap is really getting to me.

I did another water change over the weekend. I have been making sure to match the alk of the new water to the tank water. During the water change I vacuumed more of the sand and sucked out as much algae as I could.

I also dipped all the euphyllia except the big one in h2o2 for 30s. Got rid of the algae, but mostly all the frags are still unhappy. This morning I noticed one head on my large euphyllia colony had completely died overnight.

I missed 2 days of rock scrubbing as things got busy and I can see the algae has come back significantly. So I guess the daily scrubbing is still needed.

I noticed one hermit has already killed on of the new astrea snails and is wearing it's shell even though I got a bunch of extra shells for them. I still haven't seen the emerald crab or turbo snail since they went in the tank. I assume the turbo snail has died. I found some tuxedo urchins, but I don't want to get one if, like the turbo won't eat the algae and have it die.

I still haven't added the gyre to the tank, not sure where the best place for it would be. I could move the octopulses to the one side or the back wall and have the gyre on the side?

As for positives with the tank, fish are doing well, I still have tons of little snails that come out at night. And my montipora has been getting it's colour coming back.

I'm going to try and rent a par meter from the little LFS just so I can get an accurate reading and rule out any lighting issues.

Other than that, I guess I stay the course and hope I don't lose all my euphyllia too...

HomebroodExotics · Nov 2, 2022

Llorgon said:
While the tank is looking better than it was, the fact that corals aren't doing great and it still looks like crap is really getting to me.

I did another water change over the weekend. I have been making sure to match the alk of the new water to the tank water. During the water change I vacuumed more of the sand and sucked out as much algae as I could.

I also dipped all the euphyllia except the big one in h2o2 for 30s. Got rid of the algae, but mostly all the frags are still unhappy. This morning I noticed one head on my large euphyllia colony had completely died overnight.

I missed 2 days of rock scrubbing as things got busy and I can see the algae has come back significantly. So I guess the daily scrubbing is still needed.

I noticed one hermit has already killed on of the new astrea snails and is wearing it's shell even though I got a bunch of extra shells for them. I still haven't seen the emerald crab or turbo snail since they went in the tank. I assume the turbo snail has died. I found some tuxedo urchins, but I don't want to get one if, like the turbo won't eat the algae and have it die.

I still haven't added the gyre to the tank, not sure where the best place for it would be. I could move the octopulses to the one side or the back wall and have the gyre on the side?

As for positives with the tank, fish are doing well, I still have tons of little snails that come out at night. And my montipora has been getting it's colour coming back.

I'm going to try and rent a par meter from the little LFS just so I can get an accurate reading and rule out any lighting issues.

Other than that, I guess I stay the course and hope I don't lose all my euphyllia too...

What are you feeding and dosing now?