Pale, dying corals and algae

[ZaneTer]

Dont get disheartened. ICP testing isnt perfect. For instance you could have hydrogen cyanide in the tank but an ICP test will only find minuscule amounts of Hydrogen, Carbon and Nitrogen. Hydrogen cyanide will kill everything in your tank but is effectively undetectable via the ICP tests we use.

Have you considered changing out your carbon? It could be chemicals in the water from fragrant candles or floor polish or insect spray. There are so many things it could be.

 

[dean.reef]

If you concerned about metals try a poly filter,it will remove metals,but not convinced that’s your issue again I would add proper live rock and sand and a few t5.kz has a product called cyano clean it a bacteria that out competes cyano you mix it wit kz coral snow it’s a filtration aid,I have had good result with this although it does seem to take a few weeks to kick in.in the past if I ever had bad dinos or cyano it does cause stn in my sps.there no magic cure just be persistent,but I think kz coral snow and kz cyano clean will help.i would also stop dosing po4 if you have fish and feed them there is po4 present [emoji106]

 

[dean.reef]

Also dosing iodine it is a pain to test so start with a few drops a day,you can normally get a feel for the level based on how your coral looks helps with blue colour,iodine gets used up quickly in a reef tank also might be worth checking your potassium aim for around 400 also helps red colours and health in sps

 

[Matt Carden]

KP Aquatics:

https://www.kpaquatics.com/product/aquacultured-live-rock/

Tampa Bay Saltwater Aquaculture:

https://www.tbsaltwater.com

 

[ZaneTer]

Live rock is probably a fantastic idea but also don’t worry so much about a little bit of cyano. It will come and go in just about every tank I have ever known. Perhaps up your flow a bit and it should resolve itself as soon as something can outcompete it. By the way starving it does not work.

 

[ReefSlice]

I'm not concerned with a little cyano or algae. I am very concerned with my corals however, as there is seemingly nothing wrong here, yet every coral I place in the tank continues to whither away and die other than a few zoas. Woke up this morning to my candy cane STNing, have had it for over a year and it never grew in the slightest, it opened up great every day until about 2 weeks ago and then slowly started to die out of nowhere. I don't see how adding live rock would solve this problem as this rock was in a well established, flourishing reef for years with real Fiji live rock. However something is definitely wrong here. I also tried running carbon for about a month and the many corals got worse, with some RTNing in that time. I stopped the carbon and things returned to "normal" (just slowly dying over weeks/months instead of overnight) I have 20 lbs of TBS rock in QT, I plan on removing any corals I can from the rocks and moving them over to a 20 gallon with the new rock temporarily while I break down this tank and decide how to move forward. It's very hard to continue throwing money at something that is just dying and frankly quite ugly. The only thing different about this tank vs. my previous tanks was using Kessils instead of MH or T5s. You can bet I'll be going back to T5 on the next build.
I did receive my RO/DI test back, and it was all 0's across the board, so no contamination of any kind, and decent stable parameters, yet constant death plagues this tank.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Maybe you mentioned this and I missed it, but how strong are you running your lights. I was having a problem with my corals not growing and some dying. All of my water parameters where within range. After several posts on R2R and trips to my LFS, my LFS owner asked to see my light schedule. He said that my lights were way to low and I needed to double the output at a minimum. I increased them 50% immediately, and then ramped them up the rest of the way over 5 weeks. Everything colored up and started to grow. The owner of the LFS said I was starving my corals because the zooxanthella weren't getting enough light and slowly dying in the coral. Made sense to me and increasing my light intensity worked.

 

[ReefSlice]

As of right now they're on 90% blue and 50% white, they're the older kessil a350w's. Throughout this tanks life I have tried (with slow adjustments) anywhere from 50% blue and 30% white, to 100% blue and 70% white. At the lower spectrum, zoas stretched but no other real change, as I had no real indicators in this tank due to nothing ever growing or having good color. At the higher end, the only SPS that have some color in my tank began to bleach, and some things looked pretty irritated. I settled on this medium 3 months ago, and the color on those few pieces returned slightly but they continue to not grow and definitely have a lot more potential that I can't bring out in this tank.

 

[dean.reef]

Sounds like your done with with tank,I don’t blame you,we all just passing advice based on our own experience with our own tanks.ultimatly it’s gonna cost money in any scenario,if u tear it down and restart is money then what if you end up in the same situation,if you add 4 t5s as a supplement it’s money,if you add proper live rock it’s money,look at the coral snow it’s not just for cyano,personally I think it’s biological or lighting problem,that’s why the suggestion of adding live rock and t5s.good luck hope you sort it[emoji106]

 

[ReefSlice]

I don't mean to be turning down your guys advice, it's greatly appreciated from all of you! I agree it's either biological or lighting, either something went funky in the 2 years I ran it as a fowlr tank that I can't test for or these lights just aren't cutting it for me. I plan to break down the tank and keep the corals and tbs live rock in a temporary tank with one kessil until I can afford to get my new tank running and plan on using all new rock in the new build, as well as an ATI t5ho fixture.
Again I appreciate all the advice given so far! It just seems a major overhaul is in order regardless of which direction I want to take the tank.

 

[Thewatchmangoby]

I don't mean to be turning down your guys advice, it's greatly appreciated from all of you! I agree it's either biological or lighting, either something went funky in the 2 years I ran it as a fowlr tank that I can't test for or these lights just aren't cutting it for me. I plan to break down the tank and keep the corals and tbs live rock in a temporary tank with one kessil until I can afford to get my new tank running and plan on using all new rock in the new build, as well as an ATI t5ho fixture.
Again I appreciate all the advice given so far! It just seems a major overhaul is in order regardless of which direction I want to take the tank.

It sucks that your tearing it down. IMO you should keep on until you have a eureka moment. Youll learn something. But thats just my 2 cents haha.

 

[dean.reef]

It sucks that your tearing it down. IMO you should keep on until you have a eureka moment. Youll learn something. But thats just my 2 cents haha.

I agree if you can find what’s up it a valuable lesson and will make you better if u ever run into a similar situation,u say u ran it fowlr,did u ever use copper or antibiotics or any other treatments to treat any fishes?old live rock which don’t contain correct bacteria or loaded with fish poop and bad bacteria.?

 

[dean.reef]

Good luck on your next build[emoji106]

 

[Rjukan]

I guess the older Kessils have different settings/controls? The one I have has a color knob and a intensity knob. Imo, the pic of your tank looks very white, and I've heard/seen that with these lights they need to be set to heavy blue with little or no white, and intensity cranked way up.

On your Kessil, how do you adjust the intensity of the light? It's odd that there would be color adjustments without intensity.

 

[ReefSlice]

I figured over the last year and a half that I'd eventually find the cause as I've never even heard of a tank being this troublesome for such a long period of time. No copper or anything weird dosed in this tank. It will be more of a rebirth than a tear down luckily, hopefully to much greener pastures with a healthier system.
The tank looks white in the picture because I took it with an orange gel filter to cut out the blue glow and get a better sense of coral colors. And yes the old kessils have no intensity, just white (par) and blue (Pur).

 

[Skep18]

I will add I know how you feel. While way less experienced than you, I am also having my share of struggles. With all the work put into these tanks, when they don't turn out like you plan, it can be very disheartening. That said, so far I'm in the camp of pushing through if at all possible. However, I could imagine a point where its time to start anew, but the thought of having to go through all the time consuming things at the onset really would suck.

Good luck however you proceed!

 

[dwest]

Did you ever check your “algae” for possible dinos? Some of your symptoms sound like mine when dinos were prevalent. If you don’t run GAC, I would try it.

 

[Stephers]

Any resolution here @ReefSlice ?
I'm having almost identical problems in a tank.

 

[Heart of Dixie]

I am having the same problem with tank started with 100% dry, pukani rock and live sand. When I cranked up the refugium about a year after the start up, the nitrate and phosphate dropped to zero. I started dosing up to .03 p04 & 2.5-5. n03. Hammer, zoas, torch all doing fine, sps struggle. This week I added 17 pounds of Garf Grunge to the refugium and the DT. I believe the system did not have enough biodiversity. We shall see.

 

[ReefSlice]

Nope, no progress sadly. Even added 10 lbs of TBS rock. All of my tanks are now full of cyano and algae, despite very light feeding and huge weekly water changes. All of my sps have stned and I just have tiny patches of what they used to be surrounded in cyano and bubble algae. I've tried every possible solution I can think of and the tanks are just going downhill. Sadly I think it's time I leave the hobby for now, as I really don't have the money to dump into a cyano refugium and this tank has killed my love for this hobby. It just seems like the tank gets worse over time, even though I haven't made any changes, just 15g water changes once a week and dosing alk and calcium. Got a small amount of coralline a month ago, and then it all died overnight again. Really stumped! I use 0 tds water out of the same ro/di unit that ran multiple algae free, successful reefs in the past, but something is obviously horribly wrong with my water. Not sure how else to put it. Bubble algae overflowing out of every crevice, hair algae blocking my overflow to the point it needs to be cleaned every week, and cyano slowly killing my corals.
Still sitting at 15 no3, 0.00-0.04 po4. Feed a 1/2" piece of LRS daily, my skimmer hardly even produces anything, but something is fueling the algae like a wildfire, and the corals obviously don't like it. My last attempt would be to add 2 more DI stages and another carbon block, but I just don't see the point in spending the money because my TDS is always 0, only 2 coming out of RO.