Merry Christmas to me, all my chalices died.. why ??

[Scolymia88]

I came a acoss your post yesterday and going to watch/follow. Your 7.8ph hit home for me because thats where my tanks always hover. My 300 gal has a dedicated air line to the window that connects to the protien skimmer. My 155 does not. Both tanks hover at 7.8. I have a bluelabs(its for hydroponics but it works lol) ph meter that gets calibrated once a month. My ph has been 7.8 for a long time. I have a large 450ish cfs exhaust fan that runs 15 min every hour, and I open the window(not every day but pretty close).

I rely on water changes over dosing(have always used reef crystal)(can salt brand/type have long term effect on ph). Just this week I started doing daily 5 gal vs biweekly to monthly large water changes. I dont know if it will make a difference I just wanted to try something new....so much easier doing a quick 5 gal vs waiting and doing a 30-50 gal. I do vac my sand regularly on both tanks.


I make my own r.o water and have my set up seperated. After the water goes through ro membrane it goes into a degassing tank. Where airstones pull air from outside into the tank and will aerate atleast 24 hours before a seperate booster pump pushes it through the di resin.

Non of my fish seem to be struggling but always a ph of 7.8.

About all I dose is kalk in my auto top. Both sumps are packed full of dragons breath algea and it's timer is opposite of display. I gave up trying to hit higher ph because first I still cant find out why its low.

I just started caring again because I want to get back into keeping corals. I have a decent amount now, but most of it is softies. Ive kept lps, and sps but usually the same thing happens they live/grow and one day poof start melting away. When I check parms the only thing that seems off is ph. Minus the few times there were user errors lol..ops

Could location be a factor? Are oxygen levels across the earths surface equal or can a person's location have higher co2 lvls. I live away from the city and surrounded by trees. Because its heavily wooded area there is always decay(possible co2 source?)

Nice tank BTW!! Sorry to see your tank gave you a not so great Christmas present. Not trying to hijack your thread more jumping along to see all suggestions made because I'm in the same boat except I have a dedicated outside air line and still 7.8.

 

[SaltISlife]

Well little update.. i did a 85 gallons water change as mentioned.. no change.. did another 55 gallons for a total of 140 gallons.. basically the entire tank.. no change.. added socks if carbon. And s poly filter pad to see if maybe something toxic or heavy netals in the water.

No change.. now my jason fox lemon lime favis is melting. So is ny dragon soul favia.

I think this might be a parasite.. so i dipped it and still NO CHANGE.. so frustrating.

All my chalices are dead.. but oddly my plating chalices are unaffected. My dragon soul favia it seems to have stopped. And its healing i think.

But the lemon lime its still progressing. I decised to get some coral puddy and puddy over the dead spots and big chunks of thr living coral.. in hopes that itll stop it.

This sucks !!

My other corals like like other lps and all my sps and softies no one is affected.. my other 7 brain corals like my favias and favites and platygyra seem fine.

The ph issue is unrelated.. as my tanks been 7.8 or 8.0 for yearss. Im starting to think this issue is related to a rock i lut in the tank 2 weeks ago. It was a Lace rock advertized. I put it in and 3 days later looking back at pics.. this is when chalices started melting. I took that rock out a week ago.. but i think this lace rock leached something in the tank.

If this were caused by my dosing those kents products.. this would have happened 2 months ago.. if it were ph it woulda happened 2 years ago. If it were high nitrates.. nothing would live as my tanks always around 40ppm.. granted it was at 70 recently. Its 10 ppm atm with the big water changes i did.

I dunno.

Also i added a 2nd air pump and 2nd air stone. Ph is 8.0 but i cant get it higher. I just think itll be like this being a small bedroom and stuff. Its a 135 gallon tank in a 10x7 room and i sleep in the room.

 

[josephxsxn]

Sorry to hear. Saddly I have no real experiences here outside reading and my own initial RTN failures that I treated with h2o2 and iodine dips to no avail. Outside the antibiotics I have read being used, Fauna Marin makes an RTN/STN – X product that may be worth trying.

 

[Uncle99]

Very nice tank.
Those are big water changes. Would that not create in itself, instability?
Anyone in that beautiful tank capable of “testing” corals for lunch?
When you changed from Seachem 1 and 2 liquid to powder, did you match the concentration?

Most interested in any potential Alk flux....

 

[jesspal]

Could they have been stinging each other also?

 

[Wongfaihung]

Hi,
A easy way to increase the pH is to let the air run Through ''atemkalk'' it's the German expression. I think it's called soda lime in English. It is used during surgery. With this method I was able to raise my pH from 7.8 to 8.2 with the help with a refugium growing macro algae.
Here is the product I used https://www.intersurgical.com/products/anaesthesia/intersorb-plus-soda-lime-for-medical-use
It is used to remove co2 from the air. I used a media filter with inlet and outlet and let the skimmer suck the air through it. Maybe worth a try . Sorry for my English, no native speaker here.
Regards from Germany
Khoa