Just can't keep sps anymore

Charterreefer

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I've always had problems with the Hannah reading little to no p04 but I had algea in frag plugs and rock. Nitrate is is near zero also according to redsea. I've dosed both with no success.

I'll share some thoughts I have on this matter:
Get your PO4 and NO3 levels up and go from there..0.02 (PO4) and 1.0-2.0ppm respectively. If those levels are not raised and then maintained in a consistent way you will not be successful with SPS (this is assuming that all other parameters are being met i.e temp, calc, dkh, mag, etc).
Algae will always have the potential to grow when you have your nutrients at proper levels for your SPS. You need a cleanup crew to maintain the algae that can grow when your sps are happy.

You say you're having no success with increasing nutrient levels. Your coral could in fact be taking up what you are adding to your system if your tank is very low in nutrients.

Try this:
Take a gallon of pure DI water and dose with (the calculated amount) what your are using to bring levels up. Measure the gallon for what the dose should yield per gallon. Use this # x gallons of your tank and dose accordingly.
If you can't measure it once it is in your system, the corals and bacteria on the rocks and other places in your system are taking it up. Furthermore, once they take up what they need the level will then start to go up. This is where folks get into trouble with the "all of a sudden" the levels went up too high.

This has been my experience.
I hope this helps.
 

Som1else

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I wonder if a case can be made that using NSW helps to avoid these kinds of issues since I would imagine that bacteria and other things make it through the sand filters at Scripps.
Did you start your tank with dry rock and a salt mix?
 
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RedneckReefer68

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I wonder if a case can be made that using NSW helps to avoid these kinds of issues since I would imagine that bacteria and other things make it through the sand filters at Scripps.
Did you start your tank with dry rock and a salt mix?

I started with all dry rock and instant ocean mix
 

Som1else

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Way back (late 80's) it was a practice to start fish only tank up and then put a few damsels in the tank to condition the water. Those fish only tanks were started with salt mixes and dry rock and I really never recall them growing any coralline or anything. There was definitely a nitrogen cycle going but I doubt that it was anything like what we get by seeding with LR, too bad we didn't have access to try some corals.
 
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RedneckReefer68

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Digi is doing so good I added 2 more acros a couple weeks ago.A pink lemonade and red planet. They are doing great so far also. I've never had polyp extension like I do now on the acros. P04 is a little high and nitrate is about 10. I'm happy I don't have to dose either any more.
 

nashorn

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My two cent
I believe a sps tank isn't stable till about a year or more.
Last time I crash my tank that what I did waited a year or more.
Another thing I notice coaline will start but as water become unstable it quickly turn white. Once you notice it growing and stay alive a few month then your on the right track.
Also do nothing with tank. Maybe just water changes and if u test only once a month. Don't do any adjustment it will all stabilize in time.
Sure not a lot of live rock in your tank?
Well that's what work for me in the past.
Yea, it's a long time to wait.
 
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RedneckReefer68

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My two cent
I believe a sps tank isn't stable till about a year or more.
Last time I crash my tank that what I did waited a year or more.
Another thing I notice coaline will start but as water become unstable it quickly turn white. Once you notice it growing and stay alive a few month then your on the right track.
Also do nothing with tank. Maybe just water changes and if u test only once a month. Don't do any adjustment it will all stabilize in time.
Sure not a lot of live rock in your tank?
Well that's what work for me in the past.
Yea, it's a long time to wait.

Tank was almost 3 yrs old and still couldn't get sps to live longer than a couple months. Most my live rock is in sump in that pic. After a week after adding the live rock I saw crazy changes in my tank. I'm not saying dry rock can't work but for me and some others (some well known reefers also) it didn't. To me it's hit or miss and I'll be using live rock in the future.
 

Rakie

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Always hear similar stories with people that setup with dry rock. I've personally never used dry rock so I'm not 100% on the effects. Just hear a lot of people talking about acros and sps not growing when they've used dry rock. In a healthy reef tank there should be a micro/macro ecosystem of life. Using dry rock you cut out a lot of the good bacteria.

I personally have the opposite experience, as do all of those I know.

I won't argue that true LR isn't BETTER, but I think all this stuff about it causing this problem and that problem are hogwash. SPS with dry rock immediately after cycle. No issues with growth or colors. The only issues I've had with corals were specifically my fault -- My rocks didn't make me too lazy to calibrate my refractometer haha.
 

bbgobie

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I had been having exactly your symptoms. How much LR did you add? To the display? Sump?

The only difference is be had is my SPS have been hit or miss. I started with dry + a couple small pieces of rock from an established tank. It wasn't teaming with life like LR from my old tanks so I'm not sure what seeded this person's rock.
 

pdiehm

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Tank was almost 3 yrs old and still couldn't get sps to live longer than a couple months. Most my live rock is in sump in that pic. After a week after adding the live rock I saw crazy changes in my tank. I'm not saying dry rock can't work but for me and some others (some well known reefers also) it didn't. To me it's hit or miss and I'll be using live rock in the future.

dry rock can work, it just takes time for the dry rock to become saturated.

I used dry pukani rock for my tank, acid washed it, bleached it. Put in the tank, and after a year, I had no coraline algae, nothing. corals were dying. my tests were good. had an outbreak of cyano, dino's and hair algae (was a vicious cycle where I'd fix one, then the other would show, I would get that under control and the last would show). got fed up, took out the clowns, put them in the 40 breeder, and tore my tank down. As I was taking it down, I saw why I couldn't keep anything alive. My sand was disgusting. I mean, just nasty, disgusting brown water.

Re-bleached my rocks for 2-3 days. acid bathed them. Put back in the tank, without sand this time. Added a pair of mp40's set to antisync, reef crest 100%. That was in july.

Keep in mind, I had this tank up for over a year, with no coraline at all. zero. By September, early october, i started seeing coraline algae. my parameters had stabilized to about 8.5/420/1400/3ppm NO3/0ppm PO4. Got a frag pack from @BoomCorals, mid to late October. Now, keep in mind, the first time, I had 5 sps frags from live aquaria, all dead within a week, give or take. It's now, February 16, 2018, the only real casualties from Boom have been the cliffs frag that broke off, and some smaller frags that broke during shipping. Everything else is alive. It's not growing a ton, but it's alive.

For my case, the sand was a problem. I don't know enough about how to clean it, so I just removed a variable from the equation and went barebottom.

My advice, for whatever its worth, is to be patient. Honest to god, if I can keep SPS corals alive (not growing yet, but alive) then anyone can. I assure you that much.
 

BoomCorals

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dry rock can work, it just takes time for the dry rock to become saturated.

I used dry pukani rock for my tank, acid washed it, bleached it. Put in the tank, and after a year, I had no coraline algae, nothing. corals were dying. my tests were good. had an outbreak of cyano, dino's and hair algae (was a vicious cycle where I'd fix one, then the other would show, I would get that under control and the last would show). got fed up, took out the clowns, put them in the 40 breeder, and tore my tank down. As I was taking it down, I saw why I couldn't keep anything alive. My sand was disgusting. I mean, just nasty, disgusting brown water.

Re-bleached my rocks for 2-3 days. acid bathed them. Put back in the tank, without sand this time. Added a pair of mp40's set to antisync, reef crest 100%. That was in july.

Keep in mind, I had this tank up for over a year, with no coraline at all. zero. By September, early october, i started seeing coraline algae. my parameters had stabilized to about 8.5/420/1400/3ppm NO3/0ppm PO4. Got a frag pack from @BoomCorals, mid to late October. Now, keep in mind, the first time, I had 5 sps frags from live aquaria, all dead within a week, give or take. It's now, February 16, 2018, the only real casualties from Boom have been the cliffs frag that broke off, and some smaller frags that broke during shipping. Everything else is alive. It's not growing a ton, but it's alive.

For my case, the sand was a problem. I don't know enough about how to clean it, so I just removed a variable from the equation and went barebottom.

My advice, for whatever its worth, is to be patient. Honest to god, if I can keep SPS corals alive (not growing yet, but alive) then anyone can. I assure you that much.
Hey give yourself some credit, it will get there! Anything that died because of breaking in shipping I can replace as well.
 

aarbutina

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I totally agree that there may be something to the live rock dry rock discussion. The have been a number of threads I have been involved with were we have talked about this. There maybe something to the too little nutrients suggestion. Certainly something to look into especially if you are running an alk about 8. The high alk level will start to burn sps if you nutrient levels are too low.

But I am also going to propose one addition thing to look into, which I haven’t seen mentioned yet, the quality of the Ro water that you are generating. How many TDS do you have on the outlet side of your system. While the absolute number may not be 100 inticative of problems with your water it may give you a place to start, especially if when you have new DI resin your levels were lower than they are now. On my system I can achieve O TDS water on the outlet side. Over the past couple out weeks I have noticed that my polyp extension was starting to decrease (among outlet things). When I was filling up my RO barrel a couple of days ago I noticed that my TDS had crept up to 1 and that my DI resin was completely exhausted. This made me remember that I had a very similar experience about a year ago and as soon as I switched out all my membranes and the TDS returned to 0 things started immediately returning to normally. Long story short it is possible the though your TDS is low that your resin is exshuasted and starting to kick out some pretty nasty stuff at concentrations higher that you would have seen in your tap water.

Just a though and something to look into. Best of luck with the puzzle.
 

markalot

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Digi is doing so good I added 2 more acros a couple weeks ago.A pink lemonade and red planet. They are doing great so far also. I've never had polyp extension like I do now on the acros. P04 is a little high and nitrate is about 10. I'm happy I don't have to dose either any more.

This was all a good read. Interesting how the live rock turned things around. I would stop testing PO4 and NO3, unless you can force yourself not to do much about any reading you get. If nutrients get too high the corals may brown but I've never seen death from high nutrients, only rapidly changing nutrients. Algae will be an issue of course. My biggest mistakes were made after getting a test result I didn't like and doing too much about it.

As far as acro health, I have always assumed it's more about food in the water column (microscopic, not something we feed) rather than nutrient levels (to a degree). Did that rock have any sponges on it, or anything that might have immediately altered water quality?
 

pdiehm

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my Pukani was pristine, very white, very clean. it went through various stages. First the diatom stage, that last about 10 days or so, the snails loved life. Then the rocks went through a green phase, snails loved life still. The rocks started to age, turning brown, and the coraline started to show. If you pick up a rock now, it's slimy. The snails have dwindled as the food supply has dwindled, and I'm absolutely awful at feeding the inverts.

I think the slime is just another step in the rock maturing. who knows.

I'm not sweating it @BoomCorals. nothing died as a result of shipping. It's all good brutha.
 
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RedneckReefer68

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This was all a good read. Interesting how the live rock turned things around. I would stop testing PO4 and NO3, unless you can force yourself not to do much about any reading you get. If nutrients get too high the corals may brown but I've never seen death from high nutrients, only rapidly changing nutrients. Algae will be an issue of course. My biggest mistakes were made after getting a test result I didn't like and doing too much about it.

As far as acro health, I have always assumed it's more about food in the water column (microscopic, not something we feed) rather than nutrient levels (to a degree). Did that rock have any sponges on it, or anything that might have immediately altered water quality?

Mark, I didn't notice any sponges as I added it. But after 3 yrs I'm finally getting Coraline popping up and I see tons of pods now. Before the live rock, even after adding some bottled pods to seed the tank, I never saw any. They are crawling all over my front glass any time I look at the tank now.
 

29bonsaireef

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I personally have the opposite experience, as do all of those I know.

I won't argue that true LR isn't BETTER, but I think all this stuff about it causing this problem and that problem are hogwash. SPS with dry rock immediately after cycle. No issues with growth or colors. The only issues I've had with corals were specifically my fault -- My rocks didn't make me too lazy to calibrate my refractometer haha.
I guess you could consider yourself lucky.. There are major benefits from using real cultured LR that you don't get with dry rock. Not saying that dry rock is bad or that its not possible to have a nice SPS system from DR base. Dry rock just takes more work to get there
 

nashorn

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Tank was almost 3 yrs old and still couldn't get sps to live longer than a couple months. Most my live rock is in sump in that pic. After a week after adding the live rock I saw crazy changes in my tank. I'm not saying dry rock can't work but for me and some others (some well known reefers also) it didn't. To me it's hit or miss and I'll be using live rock in the future.
A lot of the rock in my tank started as dry rock.
The only way I treated them was to throw in into my pond for 3-4 mo. I just figure anything bad would leach out by then. Quick hose off then into tank.
 

markalot

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Mark, I didn't notice any sponges as I added it. But after 3 yrs I'm finally getting Coraline popping up and I see tons of pods now. Before the live rock, even after adding some bottled pods to seed the tank, I never saw any. They are crawling all over my front glass any time I look at the tank now.

Interesting, though I'm not really surprised I'm wrong, seems we know so very little other than trying to recreate similar conditions seems to work well. People who start dry might be bringing in the goodies (for lack of a better term) in from frags or other things added to the tank.
 

LivinTheSwreefLife

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I had been having exactly your symptoms. How much LR did you add? To the display? Sump?

The only difference is be had is my SPS have been hit or miss. I started with dry + a couple small pieces of rock from an established tank. It wasn't teaming with life like LR from my old tanks so I'm not sure what seeded this person's rock.
Would like to know this info too. Having the same problem and added LR about 2 months ago with no improvement...
 

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