Puzzled

[pickupman66]

So I am having a fight with my tank. I just got a bunch of new frags and I am having an issue getting them to take off. some are even showing recession at the tips!!!! my pocilipora's wont open. I have two in the tank. added at different times and they wont open at all.:cry:

im running 250wt Halides with 1 month old bulbs. sg is 1.024, 8.6kh, 8.19PH (pinpoint), ca is 330 (working to raise) temp is 78. tests read zero nitrates and phosphates per salifert on all above tests

I have been running ecobak since christmas. I know I had a good deal of phosphates in there, and have been running GFO to strip them out. I have a good deal of HA that is receding at this time.

I am at a complete LOSS on this. getting very frustrated.

no bugs or worms noticed at all. all were dipped in coral rx pro before addition.

 

[m and m]

Do you dose anything? The only reasion i ask is if your relaying on WC to replenish your ALK/Cal each week you might have a bigg enough flux to hurt things.

 

[jonzee2006]

also how fast did you strip the tank of phosphates? If you load up on gfo and strip your tank to fast that will cause a problem to. any big change in water chemistry can be harmful even if its for the better.

 

[MimicOcto8]

how long have you had the frags? are you moving or touching them? I'm no expert but I have a SPS dominated tank and I know that the best thing for sps is to place them and leave them! sometimes it'll be 2 or 3months before any growth at all but then all of the sudden they take off like weeds!!

 

[Dave3112]

how long have you had the frags? are you moving or touching them? I'm no expert but I have a SPS dominated tank and I know that the best thing for sps is to place them and leave them! sometimes it'll be 2 or 3months before any growth at all but then all of the sudden they take off like weeds!!

++1 I have noticed in my tank that most of my new frags take anywhere from 1 to 6 months before they settle in and decide that they like their new home and start to grow.

 

[raymond]

i had this problem along time ago and what i did was run gfo every other day, also i started dosing kalc, started out with small doses and raised it up til i got tank were i needed it over 2 weeks. as for green hair algea nothing beats a blue spotted sea hair, they love the stuff

 

[dougers31]

The two things that stick out to me... ecobak(heard people have had issues with this), your cal could also be an issue. GFO if used too aggresively can do damage as well. Did you start your frags low and slowly move them up?

 

[pickupman66]

OK. so I tested tonight
1. CA was 400, alk was 8.5 with salifert. (I was told the saliferts read high)
2. I have stopped the CA reactor for the time being as I am still learning the darn thing. I did dose some of B-ionic part 2 to get teh CA up.
3. I got to thinking it could be teh GFO. I have it in a standard two fishies reactor and it is 5/8 - 2/3 full with a low tumble. the Phosphates have been undetectable on the salifert. reason I have been running is that until christmas I had been using tap water (yea I know) because I didnt have the ability to do Ro/DI. well we got the Rodi up and running in early dec. I have had a major HA bloom that was so bad, I hadnt felt like taking photos of the tank. I am attempting to starve it out at this point hence teh GFO. last week I tested with a PPB hanna meter and it came back at 11. I still have the HA in the tank and I am battleing it out now. a few rocks have been scrubbed 99 % clean so I am making progress.

Guess maybe it is the GFO. ill cut that off for a few days and see what I can test for.

all frags were placed on a rack on the far end of the tank and slowly moved to the light. I know I have alot of light with 250wt halides, a 24" tank and they are only about 8" above the tank. most of the frags are mid way in the tank. I know I have good poop in the tank as I have three large tangs from 6-9" plus 6 other mid to small fish.

 

[pickupman66]

OH yea, and my Zoanthids are BANGING!!! as are a frogspawn, Blasto Merletti, Acan Enchinata and Leathers.

 

[m and m]

I dont think i would of shut off the cal rex if it was dialed it i would have left id due to now your just asking for a cal and alk swing now.

 

[pickupman66]

it was not fully dialed in yet. im still learning it and trying to get the flow right out of it. the little needle valve on top is hard to adjust. I just shut off the CO2 for it till I can get a consistant 30 drops per minute and not have it slow down to like 10 within an hour. plus I would really like to get the KH down to 8.

 

[cmcneil]

alk swings can and will burn tips of acros but i think the GFO is the culprit.i stopped using GFO and went with biopellets.whatever you use for N and P removal,always start out with less than recomended.i have seen the damage first hand using stuff like GFO or biopellets for that matter,when using the rocommended dose.i feel its safer to start off with half of what the package states and add as needed.

 

[divewsharks]

did you say your Phosphate was at 11? So you have GFO which is very good at stripping the water but you still have phosphates, after a week even running alot of GFO like you are you wouldn't drop to zero. reduce the amount of GFO (as already recommended) do water changes to get the phosphates down as well; the GFO will help lower them and then keep them down with the WC doing alot of the heavy lifting.

 

[pickupman66]

11 parts per Billion. per Hanna checker. it does not register on my salifert. I have alot of HA that is in the process of dieing. was running hte gfo to starve it out.

 

[tangboy]

man with all of this going on I'm not sure I want to dabble in SPS :P Sounds like it's more of a major chemistry issue then with softies and LPS!

 

[divewsharks]

11 parts per Billion. per Hanna checker. it does not register on my salifert. I have alot of HA that is in the process of dieing. was running hte gfo to starve it out.

Outside of the Hanna checkers, most hobby-grade phosphate tests are about useless.

 

[pickupman66]

tangboy, once you get a settled tank, they can do quite well. my old 75, I never did anything to it and it did quite well. that was about 6 years into it once it took off though.