REALLY need coral advice: corals dying. Please help!

[Burrito]

my tank has been up and running since September which was a transfer/upgrade tank since april.
Stats
Tank: 100g mixed reef 31g sump w/ Cheato fuge
lights: Radion xr30g4 pros
Flow: 3 mp40s and a gyre 3k all about 50-70% flow throughout the day
Skimmer: Nyos 160
Marinepure and about 70lbs of live rock, shallow 1” sand bed
36w UV: bought in December to fight Dino’s after i hit zero p04, still running

Parameters:
No4: ~14 just started getting readings after having zero for a long time because of the fuge
Po4: .05-.08
Alk: 9.2-9.8
Ca: 425
Mg: 1450
Salinaty: 1.026

I use fritz rpm and do automatic water changes of 2-3g a night

Corals are having issues in my tank, my softies are fine, zoas, shrooms all grow well, LPS, my acans are all doing great, they all started 1-2 heads and all have 10+, that’s about where the good ends.

My euphylia all extend and look good haven’t grown any more heads. Ive had 2 separate hammer and 2 frogspawn heads that all have grow slightly but no heads in nearly a year.

My sps, they grow and then stop out of no where and begin to develop brown algae on its surfaces/tips until its browns out and dies. My montis seems most affected, i grow over a frag plug, encrust the rock and then BOOM no more growth. My best coral has ironically been a sunset millipora (see purchase and current state)

Am i missing something? Parameters are great, flow is varied and good, lights are ab+.

Why are my corals (SPS specifically) not growing or dying off slowly?

Please help, i feel like my corals all should have grown a ton by now and at the very least not die.
Sunset milli, Best grower so far and just in the last few days has 2 brown tips (before and now)

Sunset monti frag and the growth encrusting the plug and then the rock. The frag/plug have browned out and the encrusted growth is looking bright and nice still

Candy cane that in the last 2 days began receding on the right head

JF setosa, this was a small frag that grew great as well and slowly grew brown tips and is also showing white in the middle; stopped growing about 2 months ago and has been in slow decline since

Favia when i got it, now its great and big with ~10 heads

Fts

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Triton test. Par Meter. Get rid of some Marine pure blocks.

 

[TMB]

I agree with the above^^^, and I'll add this. I would recommend slowing down, and learning more as you go along. When you react to every "bad" situation, you cause an unstable environment. The SPS you are wanting to keep require the MOST stable environment we can create.
As an illustration, adding a UV because of dinos was aimed at getting rid of dinos, but the underlying cause was most likely instability.
No matter what others say, there is a definite progression that every tank goes through, including instability and the "ugly's".
Sure, some very experienced reefers can bypass some of the problems (but not all), and speed the process. However, that came from past experience that allowed them to jump right into a very high level of stability from the get-go. They also recognize problems way faster than a beginner will and correct them before it's an issue. SPS have a habit of not telling you there's a problem until 2-3 weeks after it happened, leaving you guessing at what it was.

If I were to give you any advice, it would be to slow way down and view changes from a longer perspective. Try adding an easy SPS and work on keeping it happy for like 3-6 months, then try something harder.
One way to tell what is what as far as difficulty? Cost, often times the lower the price - the faster it grows and easier it is. Higher cost is normally slower grower and harder care level. This is not always the case, but a pretty good indicator.

EDIT: I should have said cost and size - low price and a big frag = faster and easier.

HTH:)

 

[Burrito]

i could probably slow down a little, i didnt add any sps to this tank until about the 4-5 month mark and i did start with easier ones like montis, which grew, some double/tripled in size, i added some more montis, still doing well, even brought back an ugly looking brown one that is now growing/encrusting/ and colorful green. i'm just at a loss for why i have these random deaths or very slow growth when my tank isn't that new anymore, almost a year in and my parameters are spot on except for the dino issue in december. through all my research i never thought "too clean" a tank was bad until dinos hit. i am working to keep nutrients in order (po4 btw .03-.06 & no4 detectable and low 1-10)

i have begun to remove marinepure (since december) and trim cheato more often with less fuge photo period which are helping with keeping detectable nutrients but still having these issues despite "great" parameters. am i missing something? i'm not adding any corals until i solve this riddle

 

[TMB]

Well, I hate to say it but 1 year is still really new. I'll give a few of my observations, others may disagree, but here goes.
I think often times green in acros is really a transition color (or stress color), and the one you're referring to might actually "want" to be another color, but not there yet. Stability is key in helping get it there.
I also think from looking at your tank, it looks really new and clean. There isn't any coraline growing yet, unless you clean everything every week.
If you do, that's part of the problem (if there is one). Constant cleaning, hands in the tank, and changing things all upset stability.
Coraline growth is an indicator of stability, and while it's not necessary, it should be present somewhere. The "best of the best" end up hating the stuff because it's a pest to them, as it grows too fast and too much of it!
Try doing nothing for a while and see where the tank wants to take you. Make changes 1 at a time, then observe the result for a min of 1 month.
Weekly changes are not good - not enough time to see the real result of your change. Unfortunately, we all live and work in the weekly time frame. This is the undoing of an SPS tank. We cannot think of the task list in terms of "what's on the to-do-list this week", because it leaves you chasing a new supposed problem every week, and never fully realizing all of the implications of prior changes.

I have one more question - do you run filter socks? If so, you might try removing them. My gut feeling is that you're starving your reef. N and P are not the primary sources of food your corals need IMO. The really want to be eating fish Poo. So if we filter all of it, we starve the corals. Just remember there is a balance here, too little or too much of anything is never good.

 

[Burrito]

i stopped running filter socks in december, i have tiny bits of coraline on rocks and it grows on my pumps and weir (the plastics), the pumps i clean the weir still has it.

 

[TMB]

Well, you're probably on the right track. Give it some time to come around, I'm sure it will.:)

 

[McFly]

As others have mentioned the lack of Coralline algae is alarming, unless you scrap everyday. One things that sticks out to me is the amount of flow. "3 mp40s and a gyre 3k all about 50-70%" is a lot for 100g tank. I would ensure your SPS are not getting blasted directly. I had a green slimer grow directly into the path of a MP10 on my last tank and I had similar issues.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Burnt tips are usually caused by low nutrients and higher than 8-8.5 alk. Do you know what the par is on those stressed corals?

 

[Burrito]

The tips don’t look burnt although low nutrients and high alk fits my scenario. The tips actually look like “growth” but have algae on them. The algae doesn’t spread onto the body and seems to be on just points.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

The tips don’t look burnt although low nutrients and high alk fits my scenario. The tips actually look like “growth” but have algae on them. The algae doesn’t spread onto the body and seems to be on just points.

Algae on the tips means burnt tips

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Algae on the tips means burnt tips

Which I typically associate with alk swings. It could be that the alk is moving around a lot (constant H2O changes, plus newer tank). The other parameters look fine, but we don’t know how stable the alk is.

 

[Burrito]

So I used to use Red Sea pro and my alk was always high 9s-10 and I switched to fritz now. I dos 2 part but am going to stop since the fritz mixes at 8.5 which seems like where I want to be. Measuring alk I have always been between 9-10 most recently 9.4. It very well could be alk swings. I’m going to try and get a handle on that, stop 2 part and see if my daily water changes alone keep alk stable.

This is the last month.

For the sps with burnt/algae tips. Do I leave it be and hope for recovery or do i snip the tips ?

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

So I used to use Red Sea pro and my alk was always high 9s-10 and I switched to fritz now. I dos 2 part but am going to stop since the fritz mixes at 8.5 which seems like where I want to be. Measuring alk I have always been between 9-10 most recently 9.4. It very well could be alk swings. I’m going to try and get a handle on that, stop 2 part and see if my daily water changes alone keep alk stable.

This is the last month.

For the sps with burnt/algae tips. Do I leave it be and hope for recovery or do i snip the tips ?

Yeah...10.2 to 8.0 to 9.8 in a week and a half will do it.

 

[AspiringReefer]

Thank you for asking these questions! This helped me out as well.

 

[Burrito]

so snip brown tips affected by alk swings or leave them alone? i dont know if this a spreading concern or if the algae/sps will recover once water is more stable

 

[TMB]

That's a tough call, but I would lean toward leaving them alone until there is evidence of new growth. Once the coral is happy and growing you can clip the tip and it will cover itself rapidly.
The challenge is, if there is no growth, then clipping them will just expose more bare skeleton, and that will invite more algae growth there if the coral cannot cover the bare spot quickly enough.
The coral has self defense mechanisms that can heal the burn, and fight off algae, so intervention may not be necessary.

 

[Makers Marc]

Triton test. Par Meter. Get rid of some Marine pure blocks.

Can you elaborate? Ive had 2 blocks in my up since day one, which was Nov 2017.

All acros seem to struggle and peel after 2-3 wks, even if parameters extremely stable (alk= 7.5dkh, p04=.06ppm. No3= 12-24ppm.)

Triton test is next step, but thought maybe my 2 blocks may be an issue and would love to hear why you say that.