My tank is dying and I don’t know why!!! I’m frustrated and sad, please help!

motortrendz

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1.023 is a little low, but I don't see it causing any problems like tour seeing. Unless you refractor is off(you are using a refractor, right?)

What kind of lights are you running?

Have you tried a uv?

If your running leds, with adjustable channels, turn the red, greens off for a while and lower the whites and decrease the photo period for white. Thatll limit the spectrums that are feeding the alage. Run a uv, to cut back on free floating algae and bacteria in the water column and keep blowing off your rocks and corals to push existing algae into the water to get run through uv..

Algae cant grow on healthy coral, especially sps, sonthat means they're so thin that the skeleton si starting to show though, so I'd suspect they're slowly starving out. Maybe add a supplemental feeding regimen to add nutrients for the corals.
 

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I will check for stray voltage. This tank is new as is all of the equipment. I went through all of the equipment recently and haven’t seen anything that could leach

The tank is new? did you change rock or anything. Is the tank not fully established to handle the coral?
 
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I am very sorry to hear this, I understand how this feels. There are too many variables at play for me to be able to give anything too specific. It sounds like RTN which can go from coral to coral but this usually happens very quickly not over a few weeks. The appearance of Cyano suggests a stability swing, maybe a sand bed disturbance, significant tank flow change (mixing up crap that was previously undisturbed). Is the "algae" forming over corals diatoms?

Nothing you have written jumps out at me, the high mag wont kill corals in my experience. The salinity is low. Look for other parameters swinging, it is surely something. Sorry I cant be of more assistance.

Thank you for your input. No, the algae on the corals is not diatoms. It just looks like a dark green/brown algae
 
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I’m gonna go against the grain here. My vote is replace every single cartridge on your RO/DI asap. Buy replacement cartridges at the same time, so you have them on standby. Once you have the filters swapped, do some water changes and suck out all that sand. Make it go by by.

Keep up on doing water changes with your clean water, and see where you’re at 6months from now. I’d bet money that things turn around.

Swapping out those blue led things for some t5 or mh wouldn’t hurt your cause either. Good luck hope things turn around for ya


My RODI cartridges are brand new, but I may give what you said a shot. Thanks!

Although I can’t replace my lighting at the moment.
 
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Ok so you have 0 phosphates, whats your nitrates at? I'm going to guess 0 also and your having a dino outbreak that is killing your corals along with the slow painful death of the corals starving with no nutrients in the water.

Easy to figure this one out, although non blue pics would help immensely with IDing the algae. 0 nutrients = Dino's and starving corals. Starving corals typically starts with SPS RTNing, and LPS slowly receding till they wither away to nothing.

My nitrates are 5. I’ll get better pics as soon as the lights are on
 
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Unfortunately I have no idea what is wrong with your tank and because I can't see it from here, I would be guessing.

I know it is not salinity, phosphate, nitrate, magnesium, electricity etc.
Your sand, Not so sure because normally black sand is fresh water sand and dyed, not volcanic which is fine.
You do have dino's and cyano but those things won't kill your corals. I have those things and next week my tank will be 49 years old.

You are changing water enough, of course we aren't sure what is in your RO water although a reading of 1 is just about perfect.

What are you feeding this tank and how often? Are there any fish?
What is your lighting and flow?

When did you set up the tank and how did you do it?


I feed my fish homemade frozen food. Shouldn’t be anything harmful in there. Yes there are fish, would a stock list be helpful? Lighting is 4 radion g4s. Par is reading from 150-400. I have a lot of flow with 2 gyre wavemakers and an oversized return pump. I set up this tank about 6 months ago, but it was a transfer from an old tank because I upgraded. I used dry rock seeded with about 15 large pieces of live rock from my old tank. Live sand and live filtermedia from my old tank was used to help it cycle. I sprinkled food in the tank to let it do it’s initial cycle. I let it cycle for about a month, until the nutrient readings leveled out. Then I transferred all of my livestock from my old tank into this one. Everything thrived for several months, then this happened
 
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I had the same thing happen to my tank last year. My nitrate and phosphates bottomed out and sps started to rtn. Here’s what I did:
1. Turned off my skimmer. (I too have an oversized skimmer)
2. Removed the ceramic media from my sump
3. Stopped using phosphate remover (phosphateE)
4. Started feeding more (I set up an auto feeder and added a second feeding of frozen and weekly feeding of reef roids and BRS reef chili)
5. Began dosing KNO3 to get my nitrates up to 12 ppm
6. Did a chemiclean treatment (first I ever tried and it cleared up the algae)

Important to note: I didn’t do all of this at once but over the coarse of a couple weeks. It’s hard to make adjustments slowly when your tank is in crisis but we cannot forget rule number 1, nothing good happens fast in this hobby.
Take a deep breath and know that this can be resolved. I started seeing improvements within a couple weeks.

Thank you! I will give that a try
 
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When salinity is wrong, I think that is the first thing to fix. Because no other aspect of water chemistry makes sense unless the salinity is correct.

1.023 is very low relative to the ocean. Forgive me if I geek out on units for a moment.

1.023 sounds really close to 1.026, right? Not really. Thats 30 vs 35 ppt. Nearly a 16% difference in salinity. Offshore reefs essentially never experience such a low salinity, and even inshore reefs can suffer really badly when runoff from a rainstorm lowers salinity temporarily.

Which is not to say "no coral can ever survive 30 ppt". Just that its actually pretty far from the ideal, and the use of SG instead of PPT units masks this.

Personally, my theory is that *nearly everyone* who successfully keeps SPS has their salinity very close to 35 ppt, but since many people miscalibrate (or don't calibrate) their measurement devices, a range of different numbers are reported... :)

Thank you for the info! I am going to try raising salinity along with several of the suggestions on here.
 
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The tank is new? did you change rock or anything. Is the tank not fully established to handle the coral?

The tank is about 6 months old, but it is a transfer from an old tank because I upgraded. The new tank was fully cycled before I added my old livestock. I used dry rock and seeded it with about 15 large pieces from my old established tank
 
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1.023 is a little low, but I don't see it causing any problems like tour seeing. Unless you refractor is off(you are using a refractor, right?)

What kind of lights are you running?

Have you tried a uv?

If your running leds, with adjustable channels, turn the red, greens off for a while and lower the whites and decrease the photo period for white. Thatll limit the spectrums that are feeding the alage. Run a uv, to cut back on free floating algae and bacteria in the water column and keep blowing off your rocks and corals to push existing algae into the water to get run through uv..

Algae cant grow on healthy coral, especially sps, sonthat means they're so thin that the skeleton si starting to show though, so I'd suspect they're slowly starving out. Maybe add a supplemental feeding regimen to add nutrients for the corals.

Yes I am using a refractor and I just calibrated it using the BRS calibration fluid. I am running LEDs and no I have not tried a UV yet.
 

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This is probably dinos, ostreopsis likely, very toxic.
Without better pictures and a definite id the coorect treatment cant start.
I hope you experience a turn around but with all of this barking up the wrong tree no headway will be made.
Visit the dino threads and get working on a positive id.
 
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Send in an ICP test for sure.
What lighting are you using - including how many over what size tank? What fish are in the tank? Can we see a FTS?
I am using 4 radion G4’s over an 8 foot by 2 foot by 18 inch 180 gallon. Below is my stocking list. I will get FTS when the lights come on.

1 skeletor moray eel
1firefish
1 Hawaiian long nose black tang
1 naso tang
1atlantic blue tang
1fox face rabbitfish
2 clownfish
Assorted wrasses (all reef safe)
Clean up crew
 
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The tank is new? did you change rock or anything. Is the tank not fully established to handle the coral?

The tank is about 6 months old, but it is a transfer from an old tank because I upgraded. It was fully cycled before I added anything. I used dry rock and seeded it with about 15 pieces of live rock from my old tank
 
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This is probably dinos, ostreopsis likely, very toxic.
Without better pictures and a definite id the coorect treatment cant start.
I hope you experience a turn around but with all of this barking up the wrong tree no headway will be made.
Visit the dino threads and get working on a positive id.

Thank you. I will get better pics today when the lights are on. I will say it doesn’t really look like dinos from the pics I have seen though
 
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I have a relatively deep sand bed and I noticed air gets trapped under it, could this cause issues?

Also, would it be beneficial to set up a small qt tank with fresh salt water and place my dying corals in there? Or would the change just stress them more?
 

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Dinos appear very differant depending on which type. Many people never get the stringy bubbles. Especially if you have decent flow.

How deep is your sand bed. And what and how often do you do to maintain it?
 

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That is red slime algae it was the devil for me it killed all my coral and invaded my tank so much that I had to destroy that tank. The brown algae is normal and it is harmless. I know some people might not have time for this it is called a tank redo your levels are fine what you need to do is take all the corals and fish out put them in buckets then take the water out remove all the sand and most of the rockwork and just clean the tank up then get new sand and a few new rocks and slowly reacliemate the corals and lifestock this takes at least a day of work I have done it at least 5 times.
 

Neoalchemist

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That is red slime algae it was the devil for me it killed all my coral and invaded my tank so much that I had to destroy that tank. The brown algae is normal and it is harmless. I know some people might not have time for this it is called a tank redo your levels are fine what you need to do is take all the corals and fish out put them in buckets then take the water out remove all the sand and most of the rockwork and just clean the tank up then get new sand and a few new rocks and slowly reacliemate the corals and lifestock this takes at least a day of work I have done it at least 5 times.
Why woild you do this when red slime removers work so well?
 

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