Help-my sps aren’t surviving!

[Charlie’s Frags]

You’re correct. I think I had a Dino outbreak. I have since turned off my skimmer, been feeding more and turned my lights down. In spite of efforts I think my corals are toast

Do you play with light settings? I had many issues with stn and rtn and they would look great for a week or so then the stn would kick in and rtn would follow. Some of the stn would start at the base and some would start at the tips. I’d also get some kind of brown slime on the tips as well. Anyway, at this time I was using gfo, nopox, bio pellets and I would change the intensity and spectrum all the time. Once I got a par meter I discovered that I had really low par readings. So I got the par up, stopped messing with light settings, and got rid of all of my nutrient export other than my skimmer. Acros look better than ever. They’re finally encrusting.

I know this will get some criticism but I also turned my flow way down. I know other sps keepers scream high high flow but I have live sand in my tank. If I held a flash light to the water when the lights were off it looked like little particles were literally sand blasting the Acros.

 

[Jackcarp]

So I took some time to re-calibrate my pH meter to see if my pH was off. Turns out all this time I thought my pH was around 8.3 all the time but in reality it is about 7.92. Would that cause that much damage to sps? To make matters worse, since my nitrates and phosphates were zero, I shut off my fuge lights and shut off my Alk (since it may have been too high for my nitrate levels). I even turned off my skimmer for a while.
With these changes, I wonder if my pH went down even lower. Not only did most of the frags bite the dust, but the monti that I had also turned pale and I think it is dead as well. Ugh-you guys make this look too easy!

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

So I took some time to re-calibrate my pH meter to see if my pH was off. Turns out all this time I thought my pH was around 8.3 all the time but in reality it is about 7.92. Would that cause that much damage to sps? To make matters worse, since my nitrates and phosphates were zero, I shut off my fuge lights and shut off my Alk (since it may have been too high for my nitrate levels). I even turned off my skimmer for a while.
With these changes, I wonder if my pH went down even lower. Not only did most of the frags bite the dust, but the monti that I had also turned pale and I think it is dead as well. Ugh-you guys make this look too easy!

I don’t even check my ph. I would guess it’s 7.9-8 when the lights go off and 8.2-8.3 with the lights on.

 

[x2uranium]

So I took some time to re-calibrate my pH meter to see if my pH was off. Turns out all this time I thought my pH was around 8.3 all the time but in reality it is about 7.92. Would that cause that much damage to sps? To make matters worse, since my nitrates and phosphates were zero, I shut off my fuge lights and shut off my Alk (since it may have been too high for my nitrate levels). I even turned off my skimmer for a while.
With these changes, I wonder if my pH went down even lower. Not only did most of the frags bite the dust, but the monti that I had also turned pale and I think it is dead as well. Ugh-you guys make this look too easy!

First off take it slow my friend. Your pH at 7.92 is not a problem at all. I would keep the fuge lit which is going to help with the pH . Everything back the way it was minus the dosing, you have hardly anything in there (including lack of coraline) regardless of that I would feed the heck out of your tank / fish for a few weeks to bring the nutrients up a tad. Then when everything is back and stable get some good CHEAP aqua cultured frags that are hardy as tester frags.. when they start to show growth on those frags then you can step it up. Otherwise your just throwing money away....Once these are growing you can try the harder type sps that need the matured tank to flourish ie any deepwater more or less any smooth skinned acro minus the Hawkins echinata.

 

[Prestomagic17*]

others can chime in, but tips turning white is a sign of alkalinity burn or bleaching from the light.

at what ppm dies sps burn from alkalinity?

 

[Hans-Werner]

It depends much from the phosphate concentration which alkalinity will be tolerated or used with benefit. I think there is a competition between calcification and tissue for phosphate. Every coral tolerates the natural alkalinity of 6.5 °KH when phosphate is low. With higher phosphate concentration corals will tolerate higher alkalinities and grow faster. I estimate that from 0.05 ppm to 0.1 ppm SPS tolerate up to 9° KH and with more than 0.1 ppm phosphate they may tolerate alkalinities up to 11 or 12 °KH. How corals react will also depend from species and clones and typical aquarium clones may be more tolerant.

 

[ZaneTer]

It depends much from the phosphate concentration which alkalinity will be tolerated or used with benefit. I think there is a competition between calcification and tissue for phosphate. Every coral tolerates the natural alkalinity of 6.5 °KH when phosphate is low. With higher phosphate concentration corals will tolerate higher alkalinities and grow faster. I estimate that from 0.05 ppm to 0.1 ppm SPS tolerate up to 9° KH and with more than 0.1 ppm phosphate they may tolerate alkalinities up to 11 or 12 °KH. How corals react will also depend from species and clones and typical aquarium clones may be more tolerant.

You are concurring a long held belief of mine. Burnt tips and an inability to adequately repair tissue damage seem to be caused, in my experience, by low PO4. Low NO3 provided extremely dull colours before slowly killing the corals.

 

[EMeyer]

I cannot wrap my head around suggestions to buy a lux meter. Thats one of the few things I have bought in the hobby that once I did enough research, literally went straight into the garbage can.

"Correction factors" to convert lux into PAR depend on the spectrum (the mix of colors). In modern LEDs, where you can tune 2 to 5 channels as you like, it is simply not possible to come up with a meaningful correction factor. Or rather, there is a different correction factor for literally every combination of different settings.

People are spending >$300 each on lights but wont spend the ~$100-$150 required to measure their output correctly. I dont get it.

Me, I'd rather spend the money on the PAR meter (Apogee + multimeter) so I know what I'm getting. Light is measurable, and important. Why not measure it?

 

[markalot]

There's a lot of advice in this thread, none of it wrong.

IMO get your Alk down to 7 (near natural levels), period, things will go better. Turn all dosing off and let it fall, dropping Alk is rarely if ever an issue. Don't worry about PH, it's not going to be an issue, just ignore it for now. Adjusting lighting without a PAR meter is tough but favor dimmer and more blue for a while and things should go ok. If the tank looks white to your eyes using only LED then you're blasting them with too much white. Pick something and then do not touch for 6 months. If you want a whiter looking tank then invest in one or two T5 retrofits. It doesn't take much to provide extra spread and a nice whiter light due to the very narrow green peak in T5 bulbs. That said, I don't think lighting is your issue.

You have a big enough tank that algae control should be fish and nothing else. Cut the chaeto way back, see if you can come up with a schedule that keeps some of it alive but not enough to remove nutrients. As BRS has shown, especially with a grow light, it's too dang efficient unless you are shoveling food into the tank. Running natural KH gives you a lot more room for error. My acros do not notice a drift from 6 to 7, they suffer damage from a drift from 8 to 9. Every tank is different and it really depends on a bunch of factors but when in doubt do everything that gives you more room for error IMO.

Good luck!