Reef dying again. Any ideas?

[TheAsian0328]

I did not see how big your tank is, sorry. In my opinion, if this is a nano, you need to do 10% weekly water change. I run a 10gal, so with rock, its about 8 gallons of water. What are you feeding your corals and what are your lights set too? I also have the AI prime for my tank and you can screen shot your light schedule on here. You can also manually adjust the strength of each color of light. This can be good or bad depending on if you know what you are doing. Be careful fooling around with the spectrum too much (intensity wise). Another thing about nanos is the water top off. Are you running an auto top off or are you just filling it back up daily or everyother day? This will create a variance /swing in your salt level , which affects other aspects of water chemistry. Just some things to check.

It's a biocube29 with about 18/20gal actual. Lights set at

 

[BigKid4788]

I would do a triton test. Until you figure out what is in the water everything else is just a guess. I agree with many suggestions but those are assuming a certain thing is wrong. Find out what's in the water then it is much easier to make decisions on what needs to be done

 

[TheAsian0328]

I would do a triton test. Until you figure out what is in the water everything else is just a guess. I agree with many suggestions but those are assuming a certain thing is wrong. Find out what's in the water then it is much easier to make decisions on what needs to be done

Already in the works. Waiting on the sample results now.

 

[nwayne567]

I recently was overdosing GFO and killing my corals. Stopped and they rebounded!

I was doing the same exact thing!!!

 

[nwayne567]

Hey try looking for a small power head to add to the tank, I have a nano tank to, and it was looking sad! But I added a small power head to the tank and everything opened up, and came back to life, and the fish are loving it! Because from everything you've said so far your tank seems pretty stable with good readings, you just might need some more flow. And I only do 10-15% water changes and I don't run any carbon or anything

 

[TheAsian0328]

Hey try looking for a small power head to add to the tank, I have a nano tank to, and it was looking sad! But I added a small power head to the tank and everything opened up, and came back to life, and the fish are loving it! Because from everything you've said so far your tank seems pretty stable with good readings, you just might need some more flow. And I only do 10-15% water changes and I don't run any carbon or anything

I have a nano tunze powerhead on the tank. Might turn it up and see if it helps.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

No I haven't. Why should I???

corals like food.

 

[Atrain]

No temp swings. Normally at 79-81

Well that should not be it,it's higher than I keep my tank but I have fish... Curious if it has something to do with the sponge filtration..granted smallest tank I've ever ran was a 20g tall and I probably had another 10/15 gal refugium and skimmer, so not experienced in mechanical filtration or a tank that size.I wouldn't think feeding would cause that at all.. You have fish and surely some sort of clean up crew so that is food for fish and poo from the critters, I would think that they just wouldn't grow aswell...
Also I would not rule out the heavy metals or electric current. Not a pro just my 2cents good luck

 

[Rick.45cal]

0 and I'm not running gfo.

Is that 0 Nitrate and 0 phosphate? Because your corals look like they are suffering from a nitrogen deficiency. I personally think running 0 NO3 and 0 PO4 is only asking for trouble. There's a thread about dosing Potassium Nitrate (stump remover). It saved my tank from disaster. I would read the thread if I were you. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/potassium-nitrate-spectracide-stump-remover-dosing-steps.215730/

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Already in the works. Waiting on the sample results now.

in this close up picture of the zoas. do you have this brown junk any where else in the tank or on corals?
when I kill corals I dont see anything like that.

 

[TheAsian0328]

Is that 0 Nitrate and 0 phosphate? Because your corals look like they are suffering from a nitrogen deficiency. I personally think running 0 NO3 and 0 PO4 is only asking for trouble. There's a thread about dosing Potassium Nitrate (stump remover). It saved my tank from disaster. I would read the thread if I were you. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/potassium-nitrate-spectracide-stump-remover-dosing-steps.215730/

I forgot about this. That's a good point and something I've never dosed. Thank you for the idea.

 

[TheAsian0328]

in this close up picture of the zoas. do you have this brown junk any where else in the tank or on corals?
when I kill corals I dont see anything like that.

The brown thing I can't id. It's actually a living organism and kinda has clam coloring and characteristics but doesn't look like one.

 

[Rick.45cal]

I forgot about this. That's a good point and something I've never dosed. Thank you for the idea.

It saved my reef and my friends reef from nitrogen deficiency. All of my corals healed and are actively growing like crazy now. Good luck. NeoMarine makes a source of phosphorus if you need it too. I try to keep my tank at 2.5ppm NO3 and .02ppm PO4 and everything seems to thrive right there, at least in my system. Good luck!

 

[TheAsian0328]

Mixing my salt tonight and doing a water change tomorrow afternoon with distilled water. Might help but I'm not sure. I'll update Monday on those results.

 

[Joshua Hurst]

Could be that Black sand man. Ive seen some peoples tank turn to hell like that and it seems like they have black sand.

 

[ClownnGoby]

I didn't see u post what your PH is at , I had a similar problem and all my parameters were spot on and I took PH for granted and didn't test it , turns out was at 7.6
Added a CO2 scrubber to my system and all my corals made a recovery

Pretty sure my home ac is the cause

 

[TheAsian0328]

I didn't see u post what your PH is at , I had a similar problem and all my parameters were spot on and I took PH for granted and didn't test it , turns out was at 7.6
Added a CO2 scrubber to my system and all my corals made a recovery

Pretty sure my home ac is the cause

Ph is round 8-8.1

 

[HM3105]

I forgot about this. That's a good point and something I've never dosed. Thank you for the idea.

Mixing my salt tonight and doing a water change tomorrow afternoon with distilled water. Might help but I'm not sure. I'll update Monday on those results.

How often do you have to clean the glass and how much algae, if any, do you see in your tank? How much do you feed at this point and how often? I saw Reef Roids in one of your pictures, are you adding that?

Just our of curiosity, why are you using distilled water?

 

[TheAsian0328]

How often do you have to clean the glass and how much algae, if any, do you see in your tank? How much do you feed at this point and how often? I saw Reef Roids in one of your pictures, are you adding that?

Just our of curiosity, why are you using distilled water?

I have to clean the glass maybe once a week. Tds of water and ice water was around 30-40 ppm and needed to drop that number. Feed corals and fish every other day with a very heavy feeding. Half a cube of brine and about a 1/4 tsp of reef roids with phyto.

 

[TheAsian0328]

Installed ground probe tonight. Might see if my hammer coral comes out soon.