LPS issue driving me nuts

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MaccaPopEye

MaccaPopEye

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Can you name the softies?
I'm losing hope on LPS in my tank too. Prob is that i too have a lot of softies and by now it's hard to place them "far"
one thing that may cause the warfare is anemone. i got two huge ones in my tank and they are suffocating everything around themselves, so i'd assume the cabbage under it is not feeling too good...

Yup one is a Sinularia leather (when fully inflated it is about the size of my hand with my fingers outstretched) and the other is a Devils Hand leather (when fully inflated about the size of my palm). They are both not close to anything else or each other and certainly don't touch anything so if they are the cause they would have to be excreting enough toxins into the water to severely impact a 750L system.

When it comes to anemones my understanding is that they "sting" other corals through touch, they don't let toxins go into the water unless they get minced up by a powerhead so with them its not really considered "chemical warfare". They are a pain because they can move around and sting multiple corals though.

Actually i thought u're overdoing this as i have 2 of the similar LED's (viparspectra) and i keep them at 4 inches above water and run at 85%/65%. Always thought of getting the third one for more even spread, currently it's a bit shaded in the center. Perhaps the best idea for you too would be to move that thing lower. My tank is 900l (2mx0,8x0,6).
Next thing i'll do is tune up the whites to at least 80% and go to 90-95% with the blues.

If I lower them any further the spread won't cover very much. Every 6ft tank I have seen has them quite high up to ensure the spread covers the whole tank. If I lowered them then I would have to get a 4th. I assume you have the longer 300W versions? That would be similar to me having 4 165W versions over mine. Have you measured your PAR at all?

Hope you don't mind posting under this same thread, but my problem is that all LPS are fading with me too and the typical location i've been putting them is the circle on the left. Whereas the two on the right are clearly the regions where anemone is fighting the lobo's. I can't see anything bad happening to the softies nor the anemone, but the mystery of fading LPS seems to be hopeless. Not sure if it could also be the toadstool? I'm thinking of giving up on LPS and proceeding with the softies only as water parameters don't show anything bad, but i haven't been able to grow a single LPS so far. They don't even open up when in my tank mostly. Maybe someone can elaborate on the reach of allelopathy?
If it's a similar issue feel free to post in this thread.

It looks like your light drops off towards that area? Maybe there isn't enough. Or if you have a lot of softies then it could be a chemical issue but I don't know how to see if that is the problem or not.
 

taikss

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My thinking was to change step-by-step as i started out with halides, some archaic aqua medic monsters. My plan was to add 3 of vipar's in total and at this stage there's no hurry because nems are doing great, soft corals simply choking everything and i've only been experimenting with LPS without any luck.

When it comes to water parameters, it's only elevated phos i've been battling, but that shouldn't kill every single LPS @ 0,2 levels.

What i wanted to show with that pic was the fact that nems are sitting on top of crown leather (Lobophytum Sp) and makes it retract it's polyps. On the other end, where i tried to introduce my LPS', there are two large sacrophytons, the LPS were sitting behind them flow direction wise.

I tried different options with the lights, put a hammerhead directly under the light and it did well for a month, until the nem touched it and killed one of the head. the second lived on for about a week and followed.
 

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Any vinyl tubing in the tank? I notice you have PVC piping up top. I've personally had vinyl and other "soft" non-silicone tubing give off slime coats and cause problems in an old salt tank as well as 2 fresh water planted tanks.
 

taikss

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Any vinyl tubing in the tank? I notice you have PVC piping up top. I've personally had vinyl and other "soft" non-silicone tubing give off slime coats and cause problems in an old salt tank as well as 2 fresh water planted tanks.

Isn't the PVC piping the most preferred? For example all my piping is strictly PVC + some soft silicone tubes.
 

JCM

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Wow, this has been fascinating and infuriating to read! I respect your resolve. I would've broken the tank down and started over by now.

I faced this issue with a previous tank. Everything tested good, had nice lights and flow, great skimmer, etc. But could never keep corals alive for more than a month or two. I eventually sold everything off. I restarted with a whole new setup and not one problem so far. I still have no idea what was wrong with that setup but frankly I was sick of dealing with it, it had stopped being fun and was just an eye sore in the house.

Best of luck to you, hope you figure it out.
 

North Borders

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Isn't the PVC piping the most preferred? For example all my piping is strictly PVC + some soft silicone tubes.

Yeah PVC piping is fine, I'm talking like down below if you have any flexible tubing hooking like say a return pump to a pipe barb or anything like that.
 
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MaccaPopEye

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Any vinyl tubing in the tank? I notice you have PVC piping up top. I've personally had vinyl and other "soft" non-silicone tubing give off slime coats and cause problems in an old salt tank as well as 2 fresh water planted tanks.
I have a tiny bit connecting the return to the hard PVC. But as with most things on this tank it was the exact same brand as the soft pipe I used in the old tank.

The only things different on this tank are the rocks, sump, tank itself and to some degree location (but still in the same room). Rocks were acid bathed and then cycled (in a tub of circulating salt water + bacteria in a bottle and the occasional fish food) for 3 months before being used. And I have been told that it is almost impossible for the tank to have soaked up anything bad (it's a second hand glass tank and was cleaned thoroughly with vinegar and sat dry for 1 month before use).

Wow, this has been fascinating and infuriating to read! I respect your resolve. I would've broken the tank down and started over by now.

I faced this issue with a previous tank. Everything tested good, had nice lights and flow, great skimmer, etc. But could never keep corals alive for more than a month or two. I eventually sold everything off. I restarted with a whole new setup and not one problem so far. I still have no idea what was wrong with that setup but frankly I was sick of dealing with it, it had stopped being fun and was just an eye sore in the house.

Best of luck to you, hope you figure it out.

It's tempting. If I sold everything off though I wouldn't be able to afford to start again. However I have considered giving away the remaining livestock, binning the LR and shutting the tank down and starting again in 3-6 months. And that might still be my course of action if I don't get things sorted this year.
 

d5332

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LPS dying like that and so frequently from my personal experience:
  • Alk swings, particularly going to high
  • Temp to high
  • Tank stripped of nutrients via stuff like carbon, GFO, etc
  • Salinity too high
Anytime I deviate from the above, LPS start to die.
Suggestion to anyone that has large euphyllia corals that suddendly die.
Leave the large skeletons in your tank or QT tank.

Rectify the situation that is causing loses, watch those skeletons come back to life.
I will try to remember to post a picture later to show the proof.
I got lazy like 18-24 months ago and did not remove the skeletons, all came back to life, some very fast, others slower but all came back from the dead.
 
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MaccaPopEye

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LPS dying like that and so frequently from my personal experience:
  • Alk swings, particularly going to high
  • Temp to high
  • Tank stripped of nutrients via stuff like carbon, GFO, etc
  • Salinity too high
Anytime I deviate from the above, LPS start to die.
Suggestion to anyone that has large euphyllia corals that suddendly die.
Leave the large skeletons in your tank or QT tank.

Rectify the situation that is causing loses, watch those skeletons come back to life.
I will try to remember to post a picture later to show the proof.
I got lazy like 18-24 months ago and did not remove the skeletons, all came back to life, some very fast, others slower but all came back from the dead.

Thanks for the suggestions.

While I did have a low Alk swing and then a fast re-correction that was around the time that this all started it has been fairly stable at 8 since then (over a year). Every now and then it might get down to 7.5 or go up to 8.5 but that's just slow changes over a few weeks when I need to adjust my dosing.

The temp in my old tank that thrived was 29-30C and in this tank I have lowered it to 28C and its very stable there. While I am sure that sounds high to most people ALL of my coral are locally collected coral that naturally comes from water that ranges from 25C-35C in the same day. An average temp of the water that all my coral comes from would be 27-28C.

My previous thank had no coral issues (85% LPS, a few softies and 2 sps frags) with undetectable nitrate and phosphate.

A lot of people said that was my issue now so even though I never had problems with low nutrients before I raised nitrite to 10-20 and phosphate to 0.03-0.05. Still not change.

My salinity was at 1.026 which is recommended more for SPS but since I'm just trying to keep LPS right now I lowered it to 1.025 around 6 months ago. Still no change.

Edit: when I try and change things I generally wait 2-4 weeks before I try any more coral. But so far no changes have made a difference in the rate of decline as far as I can tell.
 

d5332

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i corrected and try to avoid what i mentioned.

coral was dead
coral came back
4 types out of 6 came back
4 types were multi head
2 types were single, never came back

1 grew 100+ new heads in 12 months
others are growing back much slower

if you corrected everything....
months ago....

buy 1 last euphyllia frag
if it dies and everything was rectified then something is in the water or you have sone sort of LPS disease in the tank
802792b5036272be799008819dd61d75.jpg
 

ot7

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Did you ever figure out what the problem was? Or did it stop by itself.
 
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MaccaPopEye

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Did you ever figure out what the problem was? Or did it stop by itself.
Not yet unfortunately, but having said that I started studying full time while working full time at the start of this year and have just had the tank sitting there more or less. I managed to do some of the things on my to-do list I posted earlier but I just haven't had time to invest into getting more coral and seeing how it goes. Maybe I'll get another hammer coral soon and see how it holds up, my parameters have all been pretty stable (even with infrequent testing and adjusting).

But Soft coral seems to be doing OK. The 2 leathers are still doing well and I also got some red mushrooms given to me almost a year ago now and they are still doing OK which is a good sign. I also found some of the old mushrooms that I thought I had lost have just blown to some weird out of sight spots and settled.

Out of the to-do list that I started this thread with I have:
1) Removed the filter socks and added a large refugium section (only a couple of months ago).

2) I borrowed a friends water collection set up and did 1 large (400L) NSW WC. It was so much easier than collecting 50-100L at a time so I bought my own a collection pump so I can collect large amounts of NSW at a time and do water changes with that. Hopefully by the end of October I will have a 2nd 200L barrel and will be able to start a regular water change schedule.

3 & 4) The sunken ship and black sand are still there. Mostly just due to my laziness. Once I get into a consistent NSW collection and WC routine I'll get the sand out slowly and then the ship can come out.

5) I did stop dosing Vibrant and unfortunately the Derbesia has come back :( but it does seem to not be spreading too much so it looks like the chaeto in the fuge is giving it a run for it's money.

6) I haven't yet started making a DIY fish food mix but I have a blender just for fish food and will hopefully start soon.
 

niQo

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Just read through this thread. I also have LPS issues, all my acans, which is luckily only 4, (who have consistently done well in my tank) are all dying right now. Some polyp bailout. Last February a wall hammer bailed out as well. My Par is pretty low, but that has not been an issue before. Very frustrating, I feel (some of) your pain!
 

saltwaterpicaso

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I will say when I used vibrant my tank did not like it all I lost a lot of zoas from it idk what in it but even a small amount my tank did not like it and it did not help with any issues I was having at that time
 

DangerDave

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I will say when I used vibrant my tank did not like it all I lost a lot of zoas from it idk what in it but even a small amount my tank did not like it and it did not help with any issues I was having at that time

You have to be careful with Vibrant. It seems best for tanks with huge algae problems, and you have to be careful. My first go round with Vibrant caused me to crash my nitrates and the imbalance of phosphates/nitrates cause a huge cyano bloom. When I upped my gfo to help with the imbalance, I crashed that and lost a couple corals to the low nutrients.

I’m still using Vibrant, but much more cautiously. You have to follow your nutrient levels closely.
 

Neo Jeo

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I have read everything.

I’m dealing with the same issue. My lps are dieing one by one. I think it’s a LPS infection because the heads that are dieing have a whiteish ring around the skeleton that looks like flesh. I take a tooth brush to it and scrape it off in a bucket then do a dip. It seems to be helping my frogspawn. I don’t see brown jelly but I think it looks like an infection. Any ideas?

I lost a torch, 2 hammers, all acans. Now my octo spawn is starting to receed and my brain coral.

This I changed that might be the reason.
Temp changed from 76 to 78
Switched salt from Reef Crystal to Res Sea non pro.
Increased lighting % on my LED but the coral dieing was before that.

Things our tank has in common that might be the issue:
We have RW-8 power heads
We have Marine Pure Block- maybe this is it!
We both use Red Sea salt
We both have a leather. I just got a toadstool leather and it’s super small.

One thing I notice on your torch is you had vermetid snails. You had a TON of those things on it. That means they are in your tank. I have them and hate them. They send out little stingers to collect food and they will big and kill corals. If those are active that might be your issue.

I’m getting T5 with my leds next week and starting slow.

What are you thoughts? @MaccaPopEye
 

Jimbo662

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Do you know what your par readings are? I've always had on average about 125 par on the sand. This past week I saw a video and read an article that said acans are best kept between 25 and 50 par. I just moved and had decided to move back to LPS after trying SPS for the last year. Pretty much only have zoa's in the tank right now so I've adjusted my lighting to see how acans respond. Par on the sand bed right now is 75.
 

Neo Jeo

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Do you know what your par readings are? I've always had on average about 125 par on the sand. This past week I saw a video and read an article that said acans are best kept between 25 and 50 par. I just moved and had decided to move back to LPS after trying SPS for the last year. Pretty much only have zoa's in the tank right now so I've adjusted my lighting to see how acans respond. Par on the sand bed right now is 75.

Alk 8
Calc 420
Mag 1350
Salt 1.026
Temp 78
Phos .01
Nitrate 20
 

Jimbo662

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I'd say phos is too low for LPS. They tend to like the water a little dirtier. I think most people try to keep it in the .1 - .2 range. Have you ever tested the par from your lights?
 

Neo Jeo

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I'd say phos is too low for LPS. They tend to like the water a little dirtier. I think most people try to keep it in the .1 - .2 range. Have you ever tested the par from your lights?

I did just have someone come test. 300 top, 200ish middle and around 100-150 bottom. I am adding T5 to the tank. I have hair algae atm so I think thats hiding my phos
 
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