Help me understand my SPS crash

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Llorgon

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Yeah they want their shells it’s like free housing lol.

get the small hermits blue and red legs tiny ones shouldnt be able to eat to many snails mostly detritus and algae the huge turbo snails eat a ton as well but they tend to knock things over

most people aim for 20 percent water change for the month so 15 on a 75 gallon tank with a sump sounds perfect to me

Remember algae and coral need the same thing to grow some nitrate some phosphates you put things in your tank that eat algae but nothing that eats coral to create an environment that looks like only coral grows

algae just grows faster and likes excess of both corals dont love excess like the algae does
15g water change once a month sounds much better than weekly.

I had blue legged hermits before. They still slowly killed all the snails. I do need to up my cuc though. Definitely something to put on the list.

I did some more rock scrubbing on the tank tonight. I also added 10ml of live phyto. I kept the skimmer on, but removed the skimmer cup. Hopefully that is ok?

I also tried to deal with the ever growing aiptasia problem. Another thing I will need to deal with as aiptasia x doesn't seem to keep up.

On the downside, I had an entire head of hammer coral bail out in the 25g so things there are still being affected by whatever is going on.

I also noticed that one of the cats has put a hole in the line coming from my ro/di booster pump, so that will be something else to fix...
 

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Go ham with the bacteria. The MB7 will help Id do the clean as well. Maybe even mix in some dr tims. It looks like your aquarium is just way out of whack and cyano is clearly winning with the looks of the back wall. Bacteria and stable parameters is what you need.
 

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So, when I do a monthly water change, how much of a water change should I be doing?
most people aim for 20 percent water change for the month so 15 on a 75 gallon tank with a sump sounds perfect to me
This means 15 gallons for the month. If you break it up to weekly you are talking 4 gallons. Do 5 gallons if your feeling you need it. Weekly will make the tank much more stable.
I do 1 gallon per day Monday thru Friday on my 100 gallon total system. My DOS is loud so it doesn't happen on the weekends.
Hope this turns around for you. Manual gha sucks but it needs to be done 3 or 4 times a week until it's under control.
 
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Go ham with the bacteria. The MB7 will help Id do the clean as well. Maybe even mix in some dr tims. It looks like your aquarium is just way out of whack and cyano is clearly winning with the looks of the back wall. Bacteria and stable parameters is what you need.
MB7 isn't supposed to arrive until Monday or Tuesday, but when it comes I will!
This means 15 gallons for the month. If you break it up to weekly you are talking 4 gallons. Do 5 gallons if your feeling you need it. Weekly will make the tank much more stable.
I do 1 gallon per day Monday thru Friday on my 100 gallon total system. My DOS is loud so it doesn't happen on the weekends.
Hope this turns around for you. Manual gha sucks but it needs to be done 3 or 4 times a week until it's under control.
I will try the once a month water change and see how that goes. If I can match new water params to the tanks I think I should be ok. If it seems like too much of a swing I will move to smaller weekly water changes.
 
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MB7 came today. I added 3 cap fulls and 10ml of the live phyto. I missed 3 days of rock scrubbing while away for the weekend, but I will get back to that tonight.

Some of the hammer and frogspawn are opening up more, so hopefully that is a sign things are turning around. No more tissue loss on the remaining SPS which is a good sign.

gha in the refugium seems to be out-competing the caulerpa. I'm not sure if I should just leave it be or look to into adding some chaeto instead.
 
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Llorgon

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So, I'm wondering what people do for maintenance on their tanks. I always wondered if I was missing something maintenance wise.
I usually clean glass as needed, empty skimmer as needed, replace filter floss as needed, I was doing water changes each week and vacuuming the sand every other week.

Now I am still cleaning glass and emptying the skimmer as needed, but also scrubbing and blowing off the rocks and changing filter floss pretty much ever day as it gets clogged up. I'll do a water change and vacuum sand bed once a month.
 

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Cleaning filter material floss
Emptying skimmer
Cleaning glass

I would leave the sand alone that’s more of a freshwater thing to vacuum sand I’m sure there’s lots of opinions on it but I’ve always had trouble when stirring up sand

I would suggest getting some sand creatures to do it for you

cucumbers, snails, conches
 
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Cleaning filter material floss
Emptying skimmer
Cleaning glass

I would leave the sand alone that’s more of a freshwater thing to vacuum sand I’m sure there’s lots of opinions on it but I’ve always had trouble when stirring up sand

I would suggest getting some sand creatures to do it for you

cucumbers, snails, conches
I always thought you should clean the sand?

I have a fighting conch, but that's it for the sand. I need to add more cuc.

On a happier note, it's not much, but I see a small hint of green returning in my montipora.
 

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branbray07

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Im literally in the same boat as you. With stable params as well.
 
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Llorgon

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Im literally in the same boat as you. With stable params as well.
Sorry to hear that. I hope things turn around for you soon!
man lmk if you find the answer cause I Just lost my walt disney after like 2 years or 1 year (idk)... and I dont know why
That sucks. I checked out your thread, seems similar to what is happening to me except my SPS got hit first. It very well could just be the nutrient swings I had, but it also hit my 25g which has been stable for a couple years now. In the 25g it hit SPS and LPS. I lost some acans and had an entire head of hammer coral bail out.
 

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Sounds like you are getting good advice from the sps experts. I won’t touch that topic as I don’t have the experience . I would suggest, as an answer to your question, nassarius snails to keep your sand bed stirred up in addition to your conch. Also as part of your cuc, to help battle your gha, a couple of tuxedo urchins, man are they a work horse and leave a trail of clean rock behind. Good luck.
 
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Sounds like you are getting good advice from the sps experts. I won’t touch that topic as I don’t have the experience . I would suggest, as an answer to your question, nassarius snails to keep your sand bed stirred up in addition to your conch. Also as part of your cuc, to help battle your gha, a couple of tuxedo urchins, man are they a work horse and leave a trail of clean rock behind. Good luck.
I have been waiting for the place I order cuc from to have tuxedo urchins in stock again. I will have to pickup some nassarius and a few other types of snails as well here soon. It's been cooling down so better livestock shipping weather.
 
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I missed a couple weeks of water testing due to holidays and a wedding. So, since I have been home on the weekend for what seems like forever I tested my tank water.

Temp: 78
Salinity: 1.026
Alk: 9.4
Cal: 490
Mag: 1500
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0.05

Should I dose some nitrate to get it above 0? I still have gha growing in the display so I assume it's not actually 0. Also, my montipora is starting to get some colour back now.

Next week, I plan to do a 15g water change and get on a schedule of once a month water changes.

I lowered my dosing of all the big 3. Aiming to let them drop slowly.

As for corals, no more tissue loss in the few remaining SPS and the one montipora is slowly getting some green colouring back. Euphyllia are still unhappy though.

I've been dosing 15ml phyto and 3 capfulls of MB7 daily.
 

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I missed a couple weeks of water testing due to holidays and a wedding. So, since I have been home on the weekend for what seems like forever I tested my tank water.

Temp: 78
Salinity: 1.026
Alk: 9.4
Cal: 490
Mag: 1500
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0.05

Should I dose some nitrate to get it above 0? I still have gha growing in the display so I assume it's not actually 0. Also, my montipora is starting to get some colour back now.

Next week, I plan to do a 15g water change and get on a schedule of once a month water changes.

I lowered my dosing of all the big 3. Aiming to let them drop slowly.

As for corals, no more tissue loss in the few remaining SPS and the one montipora is slowly getting some green colouring back. Euphyllia are still unhappy though.

I've been dosing 15ml phyto and 3 capfulls of MB7 daily.
I would dose some neo nitro or something similar to get nitrate to 2-5 ppm. Follow directions when starting involves testing and dosing everyday for a week or so.

your LPS won’t love 0 Nitrates.
 
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Llorgon

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I would dose some neo nitro or something similar to get nitrate to 2-5 ppm. Follow directions when starting involves testing and dosing everyday for a week or so.

your LPS won’t love 0 Nitrates.
Good point. Could be why the LPS are a bit unhappy. I added some nitrate and a bit of phosphate and I will test again tonight.
 
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Llorgon

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Nitrate was at 2.5ppm so I dosed a bit more. Once I get it to 5ppm, I will see how much it drops per day then I might put it on a doser.

I definitely need more cuc, I'm scrubbing rocks and in a few days the algae is back.

I can tell I am annoying the euphyllia by having to pull algae off the bases, hopefully I can get this under control soon.

PXL_20220921_012323753.jpg PXL_20220921_012338635.jpg PXL_20220921_012327265.jpg PXL_20220921_012334770.jpg PXL_20220921_012343275.jpg
 

cooltowncorals

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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
 

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