I don't know what to do! I didn't listen but I will now I promise!

Fla04gbf

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I’ve heard of people having success with high nitrates and low phosphates. My tank is at 15ppm of nitrate and .1 ppm of phosphate and doing well.
True, but we all know how accurate those test kits are... lol. Sometimes the error could be quite high and hence you don’t even know the exact parameters unless you do an ICP. Lol.
 
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Alberta79

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Agree. I am also quite new to this hobby but I think it’s the high Nitrate that’s causing the problem. That would mean that your waste export is messed up. Is your algae reactor still running properly? Getting decent cheato growth? Maybe cut down in the feeding a bit to reduce nutrient input. Patience is the key. Keep reefing!
Just installed it this week. Sooooo a little early to tell lol
 
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Alberta79

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My plan,
-Setting the Radions with diffusers at 45% and 6 week acclimation at 50%
-Switching back to Red Sea Coral Pro. Read to many horror stories about sps and Fritz. My tank did amazing with the RSCP so going back to what it likes.
-Removing the rowa floss as GFO might have a part in this and letting my new RO ALR150 do its thing to naturally remove no3 po4.
 

45ZoaGarden

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How does gfo have anything to do with your problem? Gfo is actually the glue holding your tank together right now. Once you remove the gfo, your phosphates are going to shoot up. High nitrates are fine with low phosphates but once both are high, you’re ******. Let the gfo run.
My plan,
-Setting the Radions with diffusers at 45% and 6 week acclimation at 50%
-Switching back to Red Sea Coral Pro. Read to many horror stories about sps and Fritz. My tank did amazing with the RSCP so going back to what it likes.
-Removing the rowa floss as GFO might have a part in this and letting my new RO ALR150 do its thing to naturally remove no3 po4.
 

ScottB

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Just paying catch up and seeing some conflicting advice. We all have different systems and therefor different experience and advice.

A couple questions:
How old are those acro frags?
How did you acclimate/dip them?
How current are those nutrient and ALK parameters and how much shift has there been in 4 weeks? What direction?

Statements:
Your light acclimation method seems fine.
Nitrates never hurt anybody at that level aside from encouraging some GHA.
PO4 at .04 is only .02 away from zero given testing error. Caution flag here. No GFO IMO. Strong opinion.
Acros are good at ingesting nitrates, less good at ingesting PO4 so do not strip the water with GFO.
Everybody has their own salt. Assuming it is working don't switch. Yes, switch back. Or switch to blue bucker if you are contemplating big WCs given your numbers.
 
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Alberta79

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Just paying catch up and seeing some conflicting advice. We all have different systems and therefor different experience and advice.

A couple questions:
How old are those acro frags?
How did you acclimate/dip them?
How current are those nutrient and ALK parameters and how much shift has there been in 4 weeks? What direction?

Statements:
Your light acclimation method seems fine.
Nitrates never hurt anybody at that level aside from encouraging some GHA.
PO4 at .04 is only .02 away from zero given testing error. Caution flag here. No GFO IMO. Strong opinion.
Acros are good at ingesting nitrates, less good at ingesting PO4 so do not strip the water with GFO.
Everybody has their own salt. Assuming it is working don't switch. Yes, switch back. Or switch to blue bucker if you are contemplating big WCs given your numbers.


Thank you for responding.

Acro frags are all between 4-9 months. My Alk is always been between 8.5 to 9.5 but never been out more than .3 from week to week. I use a doser. When I first noticed fading in the motnipora and birdnests bleaching there was a rise of .5 dkh from 9.0 to 9.5 and I backed off my dosing and alk has been steady for a month.some acros had bleaching at the tips, my digys bleaching from the base, 1 acro has bleaching in spots at the base and some tips. I tested po4 yesterday and my hanna read 0.00. Nitrates still at 35. My green slimer my oldest biggest sps has green where it gets most light brown everywhere else and tips are bleaching. I am currently mixing 50g of fresh coral pro salt.
 

ScottB

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Thank you for responding.

Acro frags are all between 4-9 months. My Alk is always been between 8.5 to 9.5 but never been out more than .3 from week to week. I use a doser. When I first noticed fading in the motnipora and birdnests bleaching there was a rise of .5 dkh from 9.0 to 9.5 and I backed off my dosing and alk has been steady for a month.some acros had bleaching at the tips, my digys bleaching from the base, 1 acro has bleaching in spots at the base and some tips. I tested po4 yesterday and my hanna read 0.00. Nitrates still at 35. My green slimer my oldest biggest sps has green where it gets most light brown everywhere else and tips are bleaching. I am currently mixing 50g of fresh coral pro salt.

I'd bet my paycheck on lack of PO4. I am retired so not saying so much. :) My frag system consumes 12ml of phosphate solution per day, and I feed the fish heavy. For some reason I don't have to dose my display but again I feed heavy.

Try not to bump your ALK too much with a 50G WC. That RS Pro mixes high.

Call your LFS for some phosphate, or get it on Prime as soon as possible IMO.

Ready mixed:


Lifetime supply mix yourself:
 

Fla04gbf

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Just paying catch up and seeing some conflicting advice. We all have different systems and therefor different experience and advice.

A couple questions:
How old are those acro frags?
How did you acclimate/dip them?
How current are those nutrient and ALK parameters and how much shift has there been in 4 weeks? What direction?

Statements:
Your light acclimation method seems fine.
Nitrates never hurt anybody at that level aside from encouraging some GHA.
PO4 at .04 is only .02 away from zero given testing error. Caution flag here. No GFO IMO. Strong opinion.
Acros are good at ingesting nitrates, less good at ingesting PO4 so do not strip the water with GFO.
Everybody has their own salt. Assuming it is working don't switch. Yes, switch back. Or switch to blue bucker if you are contemplating big WCs given your numbers.
[/QUOTE
I'd bet my paycheck on lack of PO4. I am retired so not saying so much. :) My frag system consumes 12ml of phosphate solution per day, and I feed the fish heavy. For some reason I don't have to dose my display but again I feed heavy.

Try not to bump your ALK too much with a 50G WC. That RS Pro mixes high.

Call your LFS for some phosphate, or get it on Prime as soon as possible IMO.

Ready mixed:


Lifetime supply mix yourself:

hi scottB, are you saying that the lack of phosphate is causing his tank to crash? I am not an experienced reefer and I get it that maybe if his nutrients are really super super low then that may somehow slow the growth of corals... but generally all sps keepers try to shot for the low .02 p04 range, right? Am i missing something... my tank has very low p04 and no3 and the moment, 0.2 no3 and below .03 p04. So i should i fact be dosing p04 to my tank? If so to what levels? Thx for clarifying.
 

Fla04gbf

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Yikes! That phosphate is super low. .1-.15 is where The sps sweet spot is. Or Atleast where wwc and my lfs keep it.
Then i really need to up my feeding a lot... lol. I need to get a cpl more fish in there! Lol
 

ScottB

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hi scottB, are you saying that the lack of phosphate is causing his tank to crash? I am not an experienced reefer and I get it that maybe if his nutrients are really super super low then that may somehow slow the growth of corals... but generally all sps keepers try to shot for the low .02 p04 range, right? Am i missing something... my tank has very low p04 and no3 and the moment, 0.2 no3 and below .03 p04. So i should i fact be dosing p04 to my tank? If so to what levels? Thx for clarifying.

Hello!
There are reefers that run ultra low nutrient systems with considerable success. I would describe that method as relatively advanced. Can be done, but the tolerances are very small for mistakes. Plus you are always on the edge of dinoflagellate bloom.

Yes, there was a time when we were all told to keep nutrients at zero. Given the resolution of our test kits then, we thought we were running zero nutrients when in fact we were not. Think API test kits versus what a Hanna instrument can measure. API says I have zero PO4 while Hanna measures .05.

If you look at most professional aquaculture companies (eg WWC, UC, TSA, RR, Jason Fox...) they tend toward moderate nutrient figures for SPS: like 5-10 nitrates and .05 to .09 of PO4. Alkalinity around 8-9.

Of course the OP may have other issues that are causing the bleaching, but this is the low hanging fruit that should (IMO) be corrected first.

Lastly, the OP is not describing a system crash, merely some bleaching SPS. Tank crash takes out fish, all corals (except the indestructible paly, of course) in a cascade of trouble.

Happy reefing!
 

Fla04gbf

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Hello!
There are reefers that run ultra low nutrient systems with considerable success. I would describe that method as relatively advanced. Can be done, but the tolerances are very small for mistakes. Plus you are always on the edge of dinoflagellate bloom.

Yes, there was a time when we were all told to keep nutrients at zero. Given the resolution of our test kits then, we thought we were running zero nutrients when in fact we were not. Think API test kits versus what a Hanna instrument can measure. API says I have zero PO4 while Hanna measures .05.

If you look at most professional aquaculture companies (eg WWC, UC, TSA, RR, Jason Fox...) they tend toward moderate nutrient figures for SPS: like 5-10 nitrates and .05 to .09 of PO4. Alkalinity around 8-9.

Of course the OP may have other issues that are causing the bleaching, but this is the low hanging fruit that should (IMO) be corrected first.

Lastly, the OP is not describing a system crash, merely some bleaching SPS. Tank crash takes out fish, all corals (except the indestructible paly, of course) in a cascade of trouble.

Happy reefing!
Well said. I just remembered that i was still running my GFO... hence maybe my ultra low P04...... lol. Just taken it out like an hour ago! I would like to up my nutrients a tiny bit higher. So let’s see. Happy reefing!
 

ScottB

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Well said. I just remembered that i was still running my GFO... hence maybe my ultra low P04...... lol. Just taken it out like an hour ago! I would like to up my nutrients a tiny bit higher. So let’s see. Happy reefing!

Flying tang turds are a coral's best friend is my saying.
 

45ZoaGarden

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Hello!
There are reefers that run ultra low nutrient systems with considerable success. I would describe that method as relatively advanced. Can be done, but the tolerances are very small for mistakes. Plus you are always on the edge of dinoflagellate bloom.

Yes, there was a time when we were all told to keep nutrients at zero. Given the resolution of our test kits then, we thought we were running zero nutrients when in fact we were not. Think API test kits versus what a Hanna instrument can measure. API says I have zero PO4 while Hanna measures .05.

If you look at most professional aquaculture companies (eg WWC, UC, TSA, RR, Jason Fox...) they tend toward moderate nutrient figures for SPS: like 5-10 nitrates and .05 to .09 of PO4. Alkalinity around 8-9.

Of course the OP may have other issues that are causing the bleaching, but this is the low hanging fruit that should (IMO) be corrected first.

Lastly, the OP is not describing a system crash, merely some bleaching SPS. Tank crash takes out fish, all corals (except the indestructible paly, of course) in a cascade of trouble.

Happy reefing!
Wwc keeps their tanks far from those numbers LOL po4 at .15 and nitrate 30-40 ppm
 

MERKEY

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Man this is what's so hard about this hobby....

I will say pick 1 direction and follow it.

Which ever way you choose to go and who ever you choose to listen to please stick to that method.

What's really going to kill your tank is all of the constant changing.

It doesnt matter if you run alk at 11 and cal at 500 with mag at 1500, as long as its stable most corals will acclimate over time.

But trying to find what we think is perfect will never happen while changing constantly.

What ever you do I wish you luck!
 
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Infidel

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In a reef tank, bad things happen fast and good things happen slowly.
  • Don't make drastic, fast changes
  • Buy or rent a PAR meter (too much light hurts much faster than lack of light)
  • Focus on parameter stability
  • Think of it as keeping WATER, not fish and corals
I hope everything works out well for you.
 

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