Need help

[shores94]

For the past 2-3 months I’ve had pretty bad coral loses unfortunately. I’ve been trying to do water changes more frequently and have been testing Alk, Temp, salinity, nitrate and phosphates pretty regularly.

So alittle back ground I always tested nitrate and alk and my nitrate has always been around 4.5-6 and alk around 8.5 pretty consistently. When I first started losing corals I finally decided to get a phosphate kit and got a .54 reading. So I’ve been doing water changes more frequently and added a little bag of about 4 grams GFO to the rear chamber. Phosphates now fluctuate between .15-.3 over the past couple weeks. I try not to feed heavily but I am having trouble keeping it steadily decreasing.

Most of my loses have been LPS mostly chalices, some acans and now my trumpets went. I have a wilsoni and some of my button scolys are doing very poorly. Is the phosphate my main enemy or could I be missing something else?

My tank is a IM 25 gallon lagoon with a filter tower stacked with filter fabric, filter floss and carbon. I have two media bags with filter media from algae barn and a filter sock on the other outflow. It’s a new setup I put together in march. I cycled it for two months very thoroughly and seeded it with a ton of copepods but it’s been very difficult so far. I have the stock return pumps and an MP10 running on the back wall at 2%. My light is a radon XR15 pro running at 20%.

I will include some pictures and if you need anymore information I can give it. Will include some pictures of my struggling corals for reference.

 

[shores94]

 

[EnterName]

Those zoanthids make really long necks. To me it looks like they are not getting enough light and zoanthids don't really need much light compared to other corals I'm seeing in your tank. As you are running your lights at 20% this kind of makes sense to me.

 

[shores94]

Those zoanthids make really long necks. To me it looks like they are not getting enough light and zoanthids don't really need much light compared to other corals I'm seeing in your tank.

Yes two of my types of zoas extend very high so I figured I’m not blasting the tank with two much light but with a lot of things looking very stressed and dying I’ve been hesitant about increase the Par

 

[shores94]

This is my lighting schedule I know I set it at 30% intensity maybe I did something wrong with that and it’s blasting too much par?

 

[helmsreef]

Yes two of my types of zoas extend very high so I figured I’m not blasting the tank with two much light but with a lot of things looking very stressed and dying I’ve been hesitant about increase the Par

Why are you hesitant? Lighting is the building block of your coral health. If your zoas are stretched out like that I would suspect you are below 80 par at your peak

 

[Privateye]

I agree on the zoanthid stalk length. It looks like they're healthy otherwise though. If light is suspected to be the issue with the LPS then it might be worth trying to move a colony to a higher rock. It does look like the affected corals (at least those that remain) are in the lower portion of the tank. The pavona looks a bit brown too, which could be from low light.

Any signs of disease such as brown jelly or slow tissue necrosis? I see recession, but idk if it just receded cleanly or if there was decaying tissue in the process.

If everything was fine where it was for a good period of time before the issues occurred, then light may be a stressor but not necessarily the main problem. To answer your question about phosphate, I would not expect it to cause this, but I do believe it's a stressor. I have seen increases to lower levels (maybe 0.2) result in BJD and STN. While I don't think they caused this directly, they added stress. My issue did not resolve until I removed the rocks that supplied the extra PO4, and my levels fell again. So personally I would address the phosphate either way.

 

[shores94]

I agree on the zoanthid stalk length. It looks like they're healthy otherwise though. If light is suspected to be the issue with the LPS then it might be worth trying to move a colony to a higher rock. It does look like the affected corals (at least those that remain) are in the lower portion of the tank. The pavona looks a bit brown too, which could be from low light.

Any signs of disease such as brown jelly or slow tissue necrosis? I see recession, but idk if it just receded cleanly or if there was decaying tissue in the process.

If everything was fine where it was for a good period of time before the issues occurred, then light may be a stressor but not necessarily the main problem. To answer your question about phosphate, I would not expect it to cause this, but I do believe it's a stressor. I have seen increases to lower levels (maybe 0.2) result in BJD and STN. While I don't think they caused this directly, they added stress. My issue did not resolve until I removed the rocks that supplied the extra PO4, and my levels fell again. So personally I would address the phosphate either way.

Pavona is healthy that’s its normal color. I have had RTN with some ACRO frags

 

[Privateye]

How's the calcium?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Why running the lights at only 20%? some of those corals are obviously stretching. It looks like a low light issue to me

 

[shores94]

Is this a better lighting schedule?

 

[EnterName]

[image]
Is this a better lighting schedule?

How many hours is that? Many people simply use 1h ramp up, 7 - 9 hours peak intensity and then 1h ramp down. So the "shape" matches, but the duration is important as well.

 

[shores94]

11:30-8:30