So I’ve hit a rough patch with the tank ever since I left town for a few weeks on vacation in May and lost a bunch of corals. Still never was able to definitively nail down the cause, and honestly it doesn’t seem like the issue has been resolved yet... ~6 months later. I’m still having issues with some SPS. Growth seems to have slowed, colors have slowly been coming back, but I lost my two largest plating colonies and some very expensive “high end” acros.
As a result of the weakened health of my corals and the subsequent coral deaths, I have now been struggling with a GHA outbreak. The stuff is everywhere in my tank now and I pulled out over two full pitchers worth of algae from my tank in October. On top of this, all of my sponge growth died back last month, I assume because GHA exploded and starved my sponges to death. Needless to say I have become discouraged with half a year of struggles and unsolved health mysteries.
I couldn’t take the GHA any longer and thought maybe it was compounding my coral health issues by outcompeting them and smothering them. I bought Vibrant and dosed the entire bottle to no avail. Then last week I gave up on hoping Vibrant would work and dosed Fluco 200. The GHA is still there, but I’m starting to think it is at least stunted, if not starting to die. The pH in my tank took a sudden drop and, even with windows open last night, is lower than it has been. This tells me that some big CO2 scrubbers in the tank are taking a hit and microbial activity is starting to break the algae down and drive pH even lower. I assume (and hope) this trend will continue and is indeed indicative of dying GHA. Here’s a snap of my pH trends this week:
As a result of the weakened health of my corals and the subsequent coral deaths, I have now been struggling with a GHA outbreak. The stuff is everywhere in my tank now and I pulled out over two full pitchers worth of algae from my tank in October. On top of this, all of my sponge growth died back last month, I assume because GHA exploded and starved my sponges to death. Needless to say I have become discouraged with half a year of struggles and unsolved health mysteries.
I couldn’t take the GHA any longer and thought maybe it was compounding my coral health issues by outcompeting them and smothering them. I bought Vibrant and dosed the entire bottle to no avail. Then last week I gave up on hoping Vibrant would work and dosed Fluco 200. The GHA is still there, but I’m starting to think it is at least stunted, if not starting to die. The pH in my tank took a sudden drop and, even with windows open last night, is lower than it has been. This tells me that some big CO2 scrubbers in the tank are taking a hit and microbial activity is starting to break the algae down and drive pH even lower. I assume (and hope) this trend will continue and is indeed indicative of dying GHA. Here’s a snap of my pH trends this week: