Need help/thoughts on problem in tank

[breutus]

So I’m having some die off with my SPS mainly. And am needing help/thoughts/opinions.

long story here but if you can spare a few minutes I want to provide as much detail as I can

For those that don’t know, I have a 180g mixed reef, total water volume is roughly 300g. Since the tank was established I have struggled with low nitrates, this has been tested through various test kits, they are typically less than 1ppm.

Recently, about a month and a half ago, I installed a much larger GFO reactor, as I still dealt with high phosphates. They typically hovered around .06-.09 but I was changing media often so decided to get one of the big guys. Since it’s introduction phosphates have dropped to .02-.04 and nitrates have gone to completely undetectable on any kit. this could possibly be part of the problem so that’s why it’s mentioned.

But also I have been dealing with a reef tank that is well stocked and growing heavily up till a month ago. So I have had to dose large amounts of alkalinity and calcium to keep up with the growth. About two months back my calcium started dropping and I just could not keep it up. Currently dosing 100ml a day and it still won’t rise above 340. I have done multiple large adds of it as well to try and boost the numbers directly. I realized it had been a while (couple of months) since I tested magnesium and I know it can factor in, so I tested it yesterday and it was 1250, it’s low but not crazy low, but since it can effect calcium precipitating into the water I mixed up some mag and will spread out the dose over the next few days to get it back up to 1350ishy

I know I could really use a calcium reactor to keep up with it better then dosing, I just haven’t been able to get it all together yet, as we all know money is tight (just missing controller and ph probe now)

with all this said, In the last month I have lost several large pieces of SPS including Monties, digitas, Acros, and now even my anacro is starting to loose color and polyps not coming out. So something in the tank is wrong.

im going to list all my numbers so you have an idea

salinity 1.026=35ppt STABLE

alkalinity 9.6 STABLE

Calcium 340 stabilized here for a few weeks now, but moved from 420 to 330 over a 2 month period, started increasing dosage heavily a month ago

magnesium 1250, 2 and a half months ago when I tested, it was 1300

phosphates .02-.04 depends on the day. Has been this since days after installing new reactor. Prior it was .06-.09 depending on how fresh the media was.

nitrates 0, undetectable prior to installing new reactor they hovered between 0.2-1.0

am I dealing with a calcium issue killing things or did I take away the corals only nutrient with having such low nitrates and now lowering phosphates even more?

any help would be nice. Im so sad with some of the colonies I’ve lost.

PS my LPS seems mostly uneffected, maybe some slight color loss but I might be stretching that. My zoas never grow fast and all seem normal. Fish are happy and healthy .

 

[bradleym]

I'm gonna jump the gun and recommend dosing to raise your nitrates. I've been doing it for about 2 months and everything in my tank has improved, including a BTA that had shrunk down to 1-inch tentacles despite being fed weekly.

If you're interested, ping me separately and I'll give you some of my powder/mix so you can try it. All my SPS had nearly stopped growing, and the only change to get them growing again was pushing my nitrates up around 20.

 

[smoothdog]

This sounds like growing pains, especially in a large tank where it can be difficult to keep up with dosing. I've been through the same thing a couple of times. Best thing you can do at this point is to bring levels up to standard and keep a real close eye on things. In my experience, things will go dormant for a bit until they stabilize, then once you start seeing color and growth appear watch real close again to be sure your keeping up with growth. It may happen quickly if you have a lot of stonies. I also agree on the nitrate dosing, but start real slow after you've got your levels straightened out. you don't want to introduce a new variable that could be detrimental to recovery. You may also start seeing your phosphate numbers go down on their own if you start dosing and you're nitrate limited now. Check out this page on Redfield ratio https://buddendo.home.xs4all.nl/aquarium/redfield_eng.htm

 

[mjcoussens]

Check all of your magnets. This sounds exactly like what I went through last year. I've had two go bad in the last year that killed off a lot of my sps. My lps and sofited were not affected.

 

[breutus]

My thoughts are pretty on point with your smooth, was gonna move mag up and try some bigger dosages to get calcium back in line afterwards. Will work harder to get that reactor going now as well as in theory it should help with all that.
The nitrate dosing is one we’ve talked about before and bradly I am with you too here, but till this last couple of months I was getting great growth so I wasn’t too concerned about bring it up. But now I may have to look at it if fixing the calcium/mag doesn’t fix everything.
Redfield ratio is important for sure, mine being out of whack yet great growth has had me scratching my for almost two years now.

 

[Lance A. Lot]

Question: when you say "dosing 100ml a day" are you doing this by hand all at once?
If you are doing it by hand I would suggest breaking it into more than 1 addition per day.

Have you tried an ICP test? When I have an issue I can't figure out I send in a Triton ICP test and see if something I am not testing for is out of whack and or my test kit is faulty/my eyes are faulty.

This is just my personal opinion: I don't put a lot of stock in the redfield ratio being the end all be all for fixing problems. Yes, there are trends that can be observed in the ocean but this doesn't always scale to reef tanks. Make your own opinion. I've tried chasing these numbers and all I can say is that in the end I felt it was a lot of fuss and I didn't notice a visual difference.

 

[smoothdog]

Question: when you say "dosing 100ml a day" are you doing this by hand all at once?
If you are doing it by hand I would suggest breaking it into more than 1 addition per day.

Have you tried an ICP test? When I have an issue I can't figure out I send in a Triton ICP test and see if something I am not testing for is out of whack and or my test kit is faulty/my eyes are faulty.

This is just my personal opinion: I don't put a lot of stock in the redfield ratio being the end all be all for fixing problems. Yes, there are trends that can be observed in the ocean but this doesn't always scale to reef tanks. Make your own opinion. I've tried chasing these numbers and all I can say is that in the end I felt it was a lot of fuss and I didn't notice a visual difference.

Agreed, mileage may vary, but it's a good starting point if you're nutrient limited and want to start dosing. I've had fewer losses and better color since I started dosing, but who knows, something else may have changed that helped too.

 

[breutus]

Thanks Tim! Dosing is not by hand, it’s all on dosers and they dose every hour on a space of 22 minutes from the other dosers. My large jumps have been by hand when trying to get the calcium to really move.
My last ICP test was august of last year when things were good so I agree it’s time to get another one and have already picked up the package to get it together.
Yeah I’m kinda on the same page as you about redfield, I never want to say it’s not important. But there is too many variables about it. It’s not a hard and fast rule just a relationship for typical ocean values. Randy Holmes did a great write up about why you shouldn’t even look at it and I think my tank has been a prime example of that up till this last month or so.

 

[breutus]

Lance a lot was kind enough to test my water on the spectrometer, turns out my calcium was not low, I had a bad test kit. And looks like I’ve moved my magnesium up to where it should be.

I’m far more niether of these things has/had anything to do with the sps loss or the lacking colors in the Lps.

move sent my water off for an icp test, I’m hoping it comes back with some good info to steer me in the right direction.

 

[Lance A. Lot]

move sent my water off for an icp test, I’m hoping it comes back with some good info to steer me in the right direction.

Did the ICP show anything?

 

[michealprater]

I'm gonna jump the gun and recommend dosing to raise your nitrates. I've been doing it for about 2 months and everything in my tank has improved, including a BTA that had shrunk down to 1-inch tentacles despite being fed weekly.

If you're interested, ping me separately and I'll give you some of my powder/mix so you can try it. All my SPS had nearly stopped growing, and the only change to get them growing again was pushing my nitrates up around 20.

What are you using to dose this? I have a couple nems that hate my ulns.

 

[bradleym]

What are you using to dose this? I have a couple nems that hate my ulns.

I am using potassium nitrate powder mixed with RO water, although I think sodium nitrate is typically preferred. I mix it 40mg/liter and then ramped dosing slowly up to about 50ml daily in a 200g system until I hit 40ppm nitrates. After that I just dose around 50ml for a few days whenever I get down to 10 or so, depending on my tank's consumption.

 

[carmodpg]

I am curious about your ICP results. When I first read your post (I know I am late), I was thinking that the test kits had to be off if you were dosing that much calcium and your levels were still that low...but you answered that question already!

Further, my thoughts were actually the same for your phosphates results. I can tell you that I was running GFO in my DT and my frag tank because I was getting higher phosphate readings on my Hanna checkers. I was confused by this as I really wasn't overfeeding, especially the frag tank which only has a tang. Nonetheless, I was distracted for a couple of months so didn't have time to think anything of it. During that time, the corals in the frag tank just did not look like they were thriving like they had been.

Anyway, fast forward to the time I was setting up the new fish room and tanks and I had read an article about the reliability of Hanna checkers after 1 year being spotty at best. After a couple more odd test results, I bought a new Hanna checker. First time using it, all 3 tanks came back at 0 phosphates (which was a vicious cycle because then I thought maybe the new one was wrong, so I purchased 2 other kits to confirm ). I removed the GFO from the tanks and then began to feed more regularly and phosphates rose back to normal levels (after dosing phosphates). Literally, you could tell an immediate difference between coloration and the corals starting to expand within days.

It was a life lesson for me...

 

[breutus]

Not sure why I haven’t been getting notifications for this post sorry guys!

so ICP test showed almost everything as good, very low on phosphates and a little low on some trace elements. I’ll post the results here after this!

So what have I done, and how is the tank. I raised nitrates by dosing sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate mixture and raised phosphates in the tank by adding fish and feeding even heavier. Along with taking my scrubber offline. I’ve managed to get nitrates up to between 3-5 and phosphates are back up to 0.07ish. I’ve also started dosing trace elements in my calcium and alkalinty daily dosing. Using tropic marin k/a in them.
The tank had bounced back as quickly as it started to deteriorate. And looks wonderful right now! I really think the main problem was I just let nutrients get to low with the addition of the new GFO reactor and the better supply chain with the new pump!

I’m looking to have a slash night at my house on the 23rd of June so hopefully everyone can come and check it out!!

 

[breutus]

Icp results.

like I said, slightly low on some trace elements but nothing major, way low on phosphates though. Getting that in order seemed to make the big bounce back though!