ICP results are in - is it time to panic yet?

Calm Blue Ocean

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Prior to Feb/March I was maintaining Nitrate <10 and PO4 < 0.1.

In March I submitted an ICP test over a concern about a sudden rise in nutrients. As much as anything I wanted to confirm that my test kits weren't faulty. As it turned out, I was right, sometime between Feb and March things had gone off the rails.

march.jpg


At that time I wasn't sure of the cause but I started keeping a closer watch on feeding and continued with weekly 10% water changes as well as adding some bacteria in case the cause was some sort of deficiency.

The problem is, the numbers kept climbing.

This morning I got another ICP test back and now I'm really asking what on earth is going on?

June.jpg


IM 50 Lagoon, 1 Year, Dry Rock

Fish: 2xOcellaris Clownfish, 1xYWG, 1xMidas Blenny, 1xPink Streaked Wrasse, 1xRed Lined Wrasse
CUC: Assortment of snails (trochus, astraea, nassarius, cerith, conch) and hermit crabs (blue leg and red leg)
Other Inverts: Tuxedo Urchin, 2xPeppermint Shrimps, Tiger Pistol Shrimp

Corals (mostly smaller frags): Mix of Softies and LPS, a couple SPS

Algae is virtually non-existent

Feeding:
AM - approx 1/8 tsp TDO Chroma Boost Small pellets, PM - 1/3 cube PE Mysis
Perhaps twice a month freshly hatched live brine shrimp (home grown)
Live phyto a few times (purchased, not home grown)
Reef Roids perhaps once a month, just changed to BenePets last week
A single Hikari Algae Wafer or Carnivore Pellet once or twice a week for the inverts

Other relevant history - Had Ostreopsis dinos in December, fought with UV, blackout, Microbacter7 dosing, nutrients had bottomed out in September. In May I had an AquaBiomics test which found my tank to be unusually lacking in diversity.

This week I started a series of 30% water changes. I did the first on Wed last week and another on Saturday. I'll be doing up water for another this week.

Is there anything else I can be doing?

And the bigger question, what have I been doing that has caused this sudden accumulation of nutrients in the first place? I wondered if perhaps I'd had a bad batch of phyto. Maybe the CUC is too big (for whatever reason, vendors keep giving me free snails, please stop sending me extra snails).

But mostly I've been maintaining the tank the same way since I added fish and corals. I'm a little alarmed here.

It was a bad feeling looking at my tank this morning and questioning my tiny measuring spoon full of pellets.
 

jassermd

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What's your setup? Do you have a sump, skimmer, refuge?
And did you change anything in Feb/March? I'm wondering if something happened...
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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What's your setup? Do you have a sump, skimmer, refuge?
And did you change anything in Feb/March? I'm wondering if something happened...

AIO with a skimmer and UV. I run carbon passively. Recently I cut back the UV to nights only. Filter floss and live rock rubble in the filter compartment. I've been going through my notes and even invoices and I just don't see anything new. It makes no sense.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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Have you tested your RODI water and/or the "new" salt water you're adding to make sure you're not adding nutrients there?

The ICP tested the RODI and it came out clean. I did not test the new saltwater for nitrate but did for phosphate and got a zero on my Hanna checker. I will check the new batch for nitrate when I get it mixed.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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Test your RODI and new saltwater. I was chasing high PO4 for quite a while and I could not figure it out. Turns out that 0 tds on the meter was a lie and the RODI was at .9+ PO4.

RODI tested clean on both ICP tests. The last water change had zero PO4 in the new saltwater but I didn't test for anything else. I will definitely test for PO4 again in case I made an error.
 

jassermd

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Nutrients in/nutrients out... Either you're over feeding or there is not enough nutrient export, or combination of the 2. And I agree, 2 months is a sudden increase...
And you said no algae issues? That's the piece that's getting me. With nutrients that high, I'd think you'd have an algae outbreak...
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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I'm not sure 2 or 3 months is sudden increase. What was your WC frequency/amount before?

Also...how are things looking in the tank...corals have good color, polyp extension?

Water changes were 10% per week.
Corals are a mixed bag. At first glance things look ok. Some are great, some are not so great. Soft things seemed to be happy enough until the last couple weeks. My sinularia isn't as open as it used to be and zoas are a mix of open and closed polyps where they were growing quite quickly before. Had a few heads melt. Toadstools are open. My cyphastrea is disappearing. I had a monti cap turn brown and finally die. Skeletons aren't growing although some LPS are adding heads. My one little acro keeps defying the odds and continues to wave it's polyps with enthusiasm. My duncan recently started showing some strange tissue loss at it's base. Limited spots of coralline, mostly on snails and shells.
 

brandon429

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am I way off base here

or is it after watching about eight straight years of reported back ICP results, 89% are in a concerned/primed ready to react state and the other 100% have enough tin to make a six pack out of their water

the majority send samples from an otherwise perfect reef into ICP out of curiosity, and then the results convert those owners into not having fun anymore?


im no chemist but am a pattern watcher. a staunch relayer... of patterns.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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Nutrients in/nutrients out... Either you're over feeding or there is not enough nutrient export, or combination of the 2. And I agree, 2 months is a sudden increase...
And you said no algae issues? That's the piece that's getting me. With nutrients that high, I'd think you'd have an algae outbreak...

Yup, according to all the literature my tank should be a massive algae monster. But instead I'm worried my CUC is going to starve to death. Actually lost three astraeas and a red legged hermit in the last week which feels pretty crappy. I feel the need to supplement my urchin but even a corner off a sheet of nori feels like over feeding the tank now.
 

Uncle99

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Urchins can clean a 50 of a ton of algae.
Are you losing any of the larger snails or missing stuff maybe from a lack of food availability?

Seen many cases where CUC are too large and instead of removing algae, die and add back to nutrient levels.

If it was the case, simple water changes will manage that issue until the CUC level, matches the availability of food.
 

Quietman

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I know when I had dinos it tooks months to recover and some corals still haven't. Even lost fish weeks later - just were never healthy again.

But if were healthy all that time between then and now. Don't have much to offer. When something that's been limping along dies, it can have chain reaction. Then nutrients can be high to die off.

I'll let others speak...my thoughts are keep up with very high water changes. If something is looking on it's last legs, get it to different tank. Run charcoal. None of that id's problem for you though.

Good luck!
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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Urchins can clean a 50 easily of algae.
Are you losing any of the larger snails or missing stuff maybe a lack of food availability?

My Mexican Turbo died at the beginning of February. Lost a small trochus a couple months ago. Then had the recent astraea deaths and the hermit.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

Calm Blue Ocean

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I know when I had dinos it tooks months to recover and some corals still haven't. Even lost fish weeks later - just were never healthy again.

But if were healthy all that time between then and now. Don't have much to offer. When something that's been limping along dies, it can have chain reaction. Then nutrients can be high to die off.

I'll let others speak...my thoughts are keep up with very high water changes. If something is looking on it's last legs, get it to different tank. Run charcoal. None of that id's problem for you though.

Good luck!

My gut says I'm feeling fallout from the dino event. I suspect it did a fair amount of damage to the biology of my tank and it just took a few months for the consequences to show themselves. I even suspect the dinos are what killed all my algae. My thought process is, get these numbers knocked down (even if things are surviving with these parameters, continuing to climb can't be good) then try to rebuild the biofilter. I made a small live rock addition in May. It will likely take time like all good things.
 

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Do you have test kits? Which ones? What are your readings for the last few months? Have you measured Salinity, Alkalinity, calcium, magnesium and potassium?

I've had my phosphate up to 0.5ppm and nitrate 35-40 and not had algae issues. If your "literature" is this website, then your sources are not good.

One thing about new dry rock is that it will adsorb (e.g., remove from water column) phosphate for months and then it will stop when it reaches an equilibrium. When it stops adsorbing phosphate, phosphate will start rising with no change to feeding (import) or export.

Here's my theory. You noticed that your nutrients, phosphate and nitrate, were rising so you reduced feeding. Your corals may be starving now. If your corals stop growing due to imbalanced parameters, then they will consume much less phosphate and ammonia (excess ammonia ends up as nitrate).

It seems common that people say they haven't changed anything, only to find out they're changing many things. Here's the list of things you've changed recently: feeding less (feel guilty about tiny amount of pellets or a small corner of nori), large water changes several times in a week, cut back UV, added small live rock.

Things that change the most and the quickest about our tanks is us. We change how we feed (what, quantity, frequency), what we run (ATS, chaeto, skimmer, carbon, UV, water changes), lighting (schedule duration or program, lights), and what we dose. We aren't robots and we can't be ultra consistent.
 
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Calm Blue Ocean

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Do you have test kits? Which ones? What are your readings for the last few months? Have you measured Salinity, Alkalinity, calcium, magnesium and potassium?

I've had my phosphate up to 0.5ppm and nitrate 35-40 and not had algae issues. If your "literature" is this website, then your sources are not good.

One thing about new dry rock is that it will adsorb (e.g., remove from water column) phosphate for months and then it will stop when it reaches an equilibrium. When it stops adsorbing phosphate, phosphate will start rising with no change to feeding (import) or export.

Here's my theory. You noticed that your nutrients, phosphate and nitrate, were rising so you reduced feeding. Your corals may be starving now. If your corals stop growing due to imbalanced parameters, then they will consume much less phosphate and ammonia (excess ammonia ends up as nitrate).

It seems common that people say they haven't changed anything, only to find out they're changing many things. Here's the list of things you've changed recently: feeding less (feel guilty about tiny amount of pellets or a small corner of nori), large water changes several times in a week, cut back UV, added small live rock.

Things that change the most and the quickest about our tanks is us. We change how we feed (what, quantity, frequency), what we run (ATS, chaeto, skimmer, carbon, UV, water changes), lighting (schedule duration or program, lights), and what we dose. We aren't robots and we can't be ultra consistent.

Red Sea - Nitrate, Calcium, Magnesium
Hanna - ULR Phosphorus, dKH, Salinity
Apex - pH

I test Nitrate and Phosphate most regularly, particularly since I had the dino issue. No matter what I don't want to go there again.
Nitrate has been historically between 10 and 20 aside from a period between September and December where first it bottomed out and then stayed within the 1-2 range. After the dino battle they were back in the 10 to 15 range until Feb/March. PO4 similar pattern, originally 0.05, bottoming out in September, hovering around 0.02 until after the dino battle, then up to 0.1 until Feb/March when things started to climb.

I do not test Calcium and Magnesium as often but rarely see any fluctuation, generally around 400 and 1300.

Salinity is steady at 1.025.
dKH has gradually risen over the last few months to around 9.5.
pH can be a struggle but summer's open windows have kept us in the 8 to 8.1 range.

I probably should have put "literature" in quotes because it was really a bit tongue in cheek. I always have a chuckle about all the "definite" parameters that cause algae. Like so many things, it's more complicated.

The rock absorbing PO4 has definitely been a consideration and was just having a discussion about this possibility. My sense from water changes has been that numbers rebound within a day or two of a water change. This doesn't feel like a feeding thing, this feels more like the tank doing some sort of equilibrium thing..."oh you took out PO4, here let me fix that for you".

I don't think you're entirely wrong about the corals. While a couple (the monti and cyphastrea) I believe just flat out didn't like the water conditions, ones like my duncan might honestly have been hungry. Lately when I've been feeding mysis in the evening I've made a point to make sure the duncan gets a piece and although it's too early to say if the tissue problem will continue, the heads seem more open.

No doubt, this hobby isn't always obvious or straight forward and I've been reading everything I can about how the various systems interact to help my understanding. As I've been learning, it doesn't often take much to throw things off and it can be like dominos. Gentle nudges, right?
 
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