I've had my Peninsula 650 up for almost 4 years and had very little success. Care to help me get on track?

[Miami Reef]

Good luck OP! 77F does not cause problems.

I wish for the best! You are very resilient and this thread is an inspiration for me to always fight through! I’m proud of you!

 

[youcallmenny1]

Haha thanks. I'll credit the communities resilience rather than my own.

 

[willieboy240]

I’ve skimmed through your thread. I’m gonna tell you what I would do to eliminate items. I would set up a small aquarium. Using your water but not your live rock or sand. If things thrive then you know. If your tester coral dies then do the opposite. Water from a different source and live rock and sand. If it lives. Then you know.

 

[willieboy240]

Btw. Using too much carbon or all the time isn’t good either. Sometimes stripping the water isn’t good. Keep things simple.

 

[youcallmenny1]

Agreed but if that were the case then my nutrients would be too low, yea?

 

[Reefing102]

I’m going to take a stab at it however please take what I say with a grain of salt. It does appear iodine needs to be raised (I believe that’s been addressed) however it’s reccomended you don’t dose anything you can’t test for.

Other than that, as reccomended by your reefer friend, possibly a change in salt may work (I can’t comment as I only use instant ocean).

I don’t recall seeing it addressed, do you vacuum your sand bed when you do your water changes?

 

[willieboy240]

This is off the brs site.
Commonly used in reef tanks, activated carbon is great for a whole variety of reasons, ranging for removal of general contaminants, dissolved organics, undesirable odors, yellowing pigments in the water, removing the build-up of toxins that corals and algae emit to fight each other, and much more

I would stop everything your doing except skimmer. Just test and watch for a few months. Let whatever is going on either get worse or correct itself. About 10 years ago. I was using a product called heat. It was a diy calcium. All my sps started dying over the course of a year. I used heat for 5+ years. So I didn’t think much of it. It turned out that heat had a extremely small trace of copper in it. It took all that time for the copper to build up in my aquarium and finally start killing my sps. Sometimes we are the ones who is responsible for all the damage in our aquariums. Sometimes doing nothing and keeping it simple is the best.

 

[youcallmenny1]

I’m going to take a stab at it however please take what I say with a grain of salt. It does appear iodine needs to be raised (I believe that’s been addressed) however it’s reccomended you don’t dose anything you can’t test for.

Other than that, as reccomended by your reefer friend, possibly a change in salt may work (I can’t comment as I only use instant ocean).

I don’t recall seeing it addressed, do you vacuum your sand bed when you do your water changes?

No, I vacuum my sand bed every 6 months. It stays pretty clean.

 

[youcallmenny1]

This is off the brs site.
Commonly used in reef tanks, activated carbon is great for a whole variety of reasons, ranging for removal of general contaminants, dissolved organics, undesirable odors, yellowing pigments in the water, removing the build-up of toxins that corals and algae emit to fight each other, and much more

I would stop everything your doing except skimmer. Just test and watch for a few months. Let whatever is going on either get worse or correct itself. About 10 years ago. I was using a product called heat. It was a diy calcium. All my sps started dying over the course of a year. I used heat for 5+ years. So I didn’t think much of it. It turned out that heat had a extremely small trace of copper in it. It took all that time for the copper to build up in my aquarium and finally start killing my sps. Sometimes we are the ones who is responsible for all the damage in our aquariums. Sometimes doing nothing and keeping it simple is the best.

Works for me! Carbon reactor is off. I guess the yellowing is the main reason I use it but I do use almost a full reactor full of reef rox which as I understand it is A FREAKING LOT. How often would you run it? 1 day a month or so?

To everyone else, this is the type of thing I am most interested in. I am very much of the mentality that simpler is better. I am at this point going to be much more prone to removing things than adding them. On that note I think I'll remove my green toadstool if I'm not going to run carbon all the time.

 

[willieboy240]

I think your only supposed to run very little. Like less than a cup for 250 gallons. And your supposed to rinse it extremely well. It’s not supposed to tumble at all. Only once in a long time. Like every 3 months. That’s only for a few days. Marc levenson had a talk on it on YouTube.

 

[youcallmenny1]

I do rinse and it doesn't tumble but yea in a total volume of ~180g, I'm using 2.5-3 cups of Reef Rox (ie super carbon) once a month. I'll check out the talk you mentioned. This is extremely actionable advice and I very much appreciate it. It seems I have been misuing the carbon at the very least.

 

[jakepapp]

I assume you calibrate your refractometer with the calibration fluid?

I have a similar issue in my tank with failure to thrive. For a long time I was shooting myself in the foot without realizing it because I was still using a hydrometer instead of a refractometer. I had another person check it who had a refractometer and discovered my crappy hydrometer was way off, tank had been living close to 1.030 for a long time. And the refractometer and calibration fluid are super cheap.

I love the advice of the other responder: set up a small test tank to check the water, and then the sand/rock. That is what I should do too

 

[youcallmenny1]

I use a MA887 Milwaukee Instruments digital refractometer. I use calibration fluid to zero it maybe every 3-4 uses. I did order the older style of analogue refractometer as soon as someone mentioned it though. I agree you should use 2 measurements.

 

[Wasabiroot]

Love your scape!
Is your salinity normally that low? Hope we can get this figured out!

 

[youcallmenny1]

The thing is, I'm not sure what happened with that Oceamo test with regards to my salinity. No, that is not my intention. My digital refractometer has always shown 33/34/1.026 which is my chosen salinity. I'm very careful in how I use it also. The water is heated and I only use the device indoors in the same environment the tank is in. As I mentioned, I have the older "periscope" style refractometer (with LED!) ordered from BRS and will be using both to verify in the future. I'm still switching back to Red Sea blue bucket instead of Fritz blue box. Either way, I really feel like I've already made some significant progress thanks to the community.

 

[anthonygf]

Thank you for the kind words. I agree it shouldn't be given up on but I just can't keep hurting myself with a bunk tank. I agree that I should give the community a chance and I'm sorry for throwing a tantrum to the contrary.

I won't be touching my lights, ever again. I'm satisfied where they're at. It was a very slight change and hadn't been changed for a long time prior.

1. What are your TDS measuring and when last was the filters changes?

0 ppm. Filters were changed 3 months ago and 6 months prior to that. We have very clean water here.

2. Do a full ICP test, and if you already have, post the whole printout for everyone to see. Maybe some one picks up something that the rest of us missed.

I just did an oceamo test which is similar. I'll attach it.

3. What carbon are you running? How much of it? How often do you change it? And do you rinse it in RO water or tap water? ( Because toxins from tap water can be absorbed into the carbon and released back into your water Colom after the carbon absorption has been exhausted.)

I have a 2LF reactor that I run Reef Rox in, maybe 60-70% full with a tiny bit of space to fluidize. It gets completely changed on the 1st of the month, every month. I rinse it with tank water. I put it in dry, hang the outlet out of the sump in to a bucket and turn it on till it runs clear.

4. Any magnets or clamps used some where that's busy rusting away? Because i get the gut feeling one or more heavy metal is at fault here!

No. No rust anywhere and I've looked. Replaced a bunch of little things just to be sure. If you missed my earlier post, I have been running phosguard in a 2LF reactor as well and the test showed 170ug/l aluminum. It's since been removed and waterchanged back to a reasonable level, I have another test on the way to verify though. Before you latch on to this though, keep in mind that the problems have FAAAAR outdated the phosguard and past tests as recent as a year ago showed no elevated levels of heavy metals.

5.Your rocks could be leaching something back into the water over time. Please tell us what you used for rocks. Dry or cured. What type. And did you use a reef safe putty or cement to secure them. Because most putties and cements available at the hardware store is NOT reef safe and will leech toxins back into your water.

When I did the soft reset 3 months ago, I replaced it with dry liferock trees. This again, like the lights, did some very obvious damage but just like the aluminum and phosguard, the problems far predate the aquascape replacement. Prior it was all reef saver. I used Marco cement to glue them together and gave it 2 weeks to dry.

6.Ive never heard or seen of green coralline.(Not that i can remember of) That could also be a sign of a toxin or heavy metal that causes the pink/purple coralline to turn green and rock hard???

Maybe? It comes in thick patches and is just impossible. I'd like to reiterate that the algae is an annoyance and maybe a symptom of something but the primary issue is the coral not growing.

Hey buddy. Sorry for your troubles, I am sure we have all been where you are now. My corals seem to do better since my nutrients went up, nitrate at 25ppm and phosphate at 0.178. That may or may not be good for you but try it. You mentioned the carbon is fluidized in a reactor. Are the granules tumbling in the water flow? If so you are grinding up the carbon and creating finer particles that is getting into the water column and killing off your corals. May be something to look at. I stopped using carbon about a year ago because of this and possible cause of HHLE in Tangs. I now use poly-filter, I believe is safer and does not strip the water of the good stuff.

 

[youcallmenny1]

Hey buddy. Sorry for your troubles, I am sure we have all been where you are now. My corals seem to do better since my nutrients went up, nitrate at 25ppm and phosphate at 0.178. That may or may not be good for you but try it. You mentioned the carbon is fluidized in a reactor. Are the granules tumbling in the water flow? If so you are grinding up the carbon and creating finer particles that is getting into the water column and killing off your corals. May be something to look at. I stopped using carbon about a year ago because of this and possible cause of HHLE in Tangs. I now use poly-filter, I believe is safer and does not strip the water of the good stuff.

I appreciate the advice but those numbers are too high for my liking based on past experience. The carbon reactor has been removed and no it was not tumbling whatsoever. If you don't give it an extra inch or so of space to fluidize it just binds up in this reactor. I have plenty of other filtration and will probably put fresh carbon in maybe for a day a month or so.

Anecdotally, since shutting the reactor off yesterday the corals, LPS in particular, look happier today.

 

[anthonygf]

I appreciate the advice but those numbers are too high for my liking based on past experience. The carbon reactor has been removed and no it was not tumbling whatsoever. If you don't give it an extra inch or so of space to fluidize it just binds up in this reactor. I have plenty of other filtration and will probably put fresh carbon in maybe for a day a month or so.

Anecdotally, since shutting the reactor off yesterday the corals, LPS in particular, look happier today.

Just to give you a little look at my tanks. First pic was my 46 bowfront, 5 years old before upgrading to 75 gallon October 2020. After the transfer it struggled a little until until it balanced out, final pic is one year after upgrade.

Two months after transfer I had a major aiptasia outbreak and needed to remove everything and cut up corals because the aiptasia was growing between polyps. I cleaned all rocks, sand, plumbing, overflow, sump and all equipment. Spent a month of that. Two months later red slime, then GHA and wiped that out. That is when my nutrients went up to were they are now and has been clean now for 6 months.

The only sps I can grow is branching Montis. For some reason I can't grow Duncans, the polyps or tentacles will come out a little and retract. I have one still in there for a year now still alive, will come out and test the water and go back in. I notice more activity in my Duncan's this last couple of months, maybe the higher nutrients, I don't know.

 

[youcallmenny1]

Minor update: things are continuing to perk up!

Can carbon really do that much damage?

 

[stephj03]

Maybe I missed it, but what is your coral stocklist right now?

Zoas, softies, shrooms, lps, sticks?

of those, which is perking up?

Where have you been getting your corals from? How long does it take for them to waste away/decline?