Several corals dying slowly...

[xradikalx]

Hey all, firstly, thanks for helping me out.

I have a 310g display with approximately 500g total water volume, primarily geared towards SPS with some LPS lower down in the tank. Radion 30 pro x 3, blade 66 x 2, maxspect gyre 350x2, bashsea sump with carbon/gfo/biopellets. homemade filter roll on an optical sensor. Reef octopus 3000. UV filter, 40g breeder refugium, 50g lowboy frag tank, all plumbed together. 3 neptune cor 15s for returns.

Things were going along just swimmingly, until I recently ordered a new set of frags and fish to arrive together. I started with the fish, drip acclimating, and then pouring them out over a net to transfer to tank. Both fish are doing well at present! I then proceeded with the frags, which I had about 20. In 3 rounds, I floated, drip acclimated, did a Beyer dip x 10 minutes, then washed in a 5g bucket of tank water, then another 5g bucket of tank water, then into my frag tank. Same protocol for all 20 frags.

All frags are currently in the frag tank and are doing great with excellent polyp extension and coloration, no signs of stress. The other frags in my frag tank which were there before are equally happy.

The problem is in my display. Several of my SPS that had been thriving for months have suddenly had what I would describe as slow tissue necrosis, as it has happened over the past 2 days. Several duncans and torches have been retracted more than expected, as well. Some of the SPS and LPS show no signs of problems, but the 4 that do are getting hit hard.

Other observations - I noticed an urchin skeleton shell, which was new. I've never lost one of my 3 urchins previously. I also have not seen 1 of 2 cleaner shrimp and any of my peppermint shrimps since the acclimation.

Whenever I acclimate, I use some of the tank water, so I perform a water change to top it off afterwards. I noticed a slightly drop in temperature but this corrected after circulating throughout, minimal change in salinity. Lab values today are Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0 both via red sea master kit and via Hanna checker (I dose nitrate but did not since adding frags), Phosphate 0.04, Alk 8.0, Calcium 550, Mag 1420.

I feel like one of 2 things happened -
1 - frags still had beyer on them which killed shrimp and urchin, leaching urchin goo and making corals angry
2 - fish had been quarantined 2 weeks in copper prior to purchase, and still had copper, which killed corals

In either case, I need to be rinsing better, despite my efforts. Does anyone have an opinion which might be the smoking gun? Or any other leads?

Thanks!!

 

[Ziggy17]

Are they just unhappy with zero nitrate available to them? Albeit our systems are different, but when my nitrate hits 2, two of my torches get pissey as do some of the sps. Once I get it back over 5, they start to bounce back. My tank seems to like nitrates in the 10-15 range.
Takes a a couple days for mine.

 

[xradikalx]

I have been trying to up my nitrates via dosing a few times weekly, 1ppm at a time, though the refugium and GFO eat it up pretty fast. But I will say that my nitrates have run 0 for a few months and those same corals were doing 'ok'. Coloration wasn't as good as it should be for 2 of them, but for the other 2 they were fully colored up until the recent change.

 

[DenverSaltyFarm]

A couple of things. looking at those low nutrient numbers you should not be running bio pellets and gfo you are starving your corals. Only when your nutrients get high then use those tools to get your numbers back in line then stop. There is a ton of other things causing the issue like a trace element that is way too low or too high. I would highly suggest getting an ATI ICP MS test and send in your water for testing. Its the best $65 you can spend at this point and knocks out a ton of questions. Don't do their cheaper test make sure its the MS test to get everything.

After you have that and if everything looks good then you can start to look at par and flow and a bunch of other things, but already a big red flag is your low nutrient numbers.

Also I highly recommend getting the Hannah ULR phosphate tester, Nitrate tester, and alkalinity tester. they are spot on for the ICP tests I send in

 

[xradikalx]

I don't disagree with the over-reduction of nutrients. My approach was certainly to 'overdesign' it, in anticipation of adding livestock, which I have been doing slowly and cautiously. My current feeding is lower than my anticipated future livestock load. So I guess I designed the filtration with the total planned livestock in mind, but am not there yet, if that makes sense.

I do currently use the ULR phosphate hanna, high range hanna, and alk hanna. I was thinking of sending in for an ICP test though, so I'll probably go ahead with that. Maybe for now I'll just turn off my extra biopellet reactor.

 

[Ziggy17]

Have you thought about dosing ammonium? It’s been proving very effective for low nutrient systems. Randy has a DIY recipe. It’s easy to make and dose. The coral take up the ammonia much easier than available nitrate, thus improving coral health in a limited nutrient or nutrient deficient system. I dose it in my system and my sps started to explode after a couple months.

DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

Some reef aquaria have chronic low nitrogen availability. One indicator is very low nitrate. Nitrate dosing is a fine remedy, but it is possible that ammonia dosing may be more beneficial for some organisms since ammonia can be energetically easier to assimilate than is nitrate. For this...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[xradikalx]

Definitely had not thought to dose ammonia!

I will start with the ICP to get a solid baseline, and work from there.

Sounds like most do not think the culprit would be the Beyer dip or any residual copper on the QT'd fish?

I appreciate all of the input!!

 

[Ziggy17]

Sounds like you have a plan. In the meantime, I would try to get that nitrate up to 5 ppm

 

[xradikalx]

Hey all,

Appreciate your input! I have been working on putting into action what we described before:

- removed biopellet reactor and GFO, increased carbon
- Set up ammonia bicarbonate dosing regimen, approximately .11 ppm ammonia dosed daily
- Started dosing nitrates every couple days to keep nitrate hovering around 10ppm now (ammonia dosing keeps it around 8-9ppm, so I just give it a bit of nitrate every so often to keep it around 10)
- Started dosing phosphate daily. Despite dosing 3 tbsp daily, I have managed to only keep it at about 0.03-0.04
- Sent ICP analysis, shown below

 

[xradikalx]

i've noticed slight worsening of the corals losing color, then dying, or perhaps at the same rate.

A couple questions:

One - do you think the low fluorine and iodine could cause the corals to continue to slowly die? I have dosed iodine before as many supplements contain it, but I've never specifically added fluorine to any previous reef tank that I've had

Two - The salinity. My apex salinity probe and my refractometer read it at 35. The refractometer is calibrated with standard 35ppm solution and I recalibrate it weekly. However this test showed it lower, near 33. Which do I trust?

three - Obviously I need to keep hammering the tank with phosphates. I am starting to see a LOT more 'dirtiness' in the tank. Slime, algae, dinos, etc. i've read about the process and have embraced that this is just the ugly phase before we reach nirvana.

thanks for any input!!

 

[xradikalx]

Oh also, should have posted that my most recent Hannah checker readings from today:

Mag 1355
Calc 386
dKh 9.3
Phos 0.03
Nitrate 9.4

 

[xradikalx]

bump - just wondering if anyone has experience with fluorine specifically being a cause of coral death?

 

[CHSUB]

Set up ammonia bicarbonate dosing regimen, approximately .11 ppm ammonia dosed daily
- Started dosing nitrates every couple days to keep nitrate hovering around 10ppm now (ammonia dosing keeps it around 8-9ppm, so I just give it a bit of nitrate every so often to keep it around 10)
- Started dosing phosphate daily. Despite dosing 3 tbsp daily, I have managed to only keep it at about 0.03-0.04

am starting to see a LOT more 'dirtiness' in the tank. Slime, algae, dinos, etc

I see a connection. You started, maybe, over filtering and now your polluting based on the need to see a no3 reading. Stop all the nutrient dosing and allow you tank to find an equilibrium that will likely be more removal of waste vs adding nutrients, which is about 99.9% of the time. Stop believing zero no3 means starving corals. Your troubles could have and likely was something else besides low no3. Which really only is imported when high and yours is getting high.

 

[mcarroll]

Hopefully you are monitoring ammonia level while dosing this way.....IMO dosing nitrate is way better/safer.

Be VERY careful raising N levels significantly without raising PO4 first. I say that because even at your dosing target (apparently 0.04 ppm?) you are still at a pretty low PO4 level, perhaps still a level not very available to some critters. (N without P = coral meltdown)

IMO target 0.10 ppm at least for an initial PO4 dose....but it can also be a nice permanent target in a high demand tank, which yours may be.

Also, you've made a bunch of changes at once (pretty much all good!) but starting now, I suggest you become more patient with seeing how things play out and with making further changes. Focus should just be on keeping the skimmer clean and maintaining balanced N&P at target levels.

There's a good chance IMO that removing all the excess filtration (live rock and skimmer is enough) might really be all the tank needed. N&P might have equalized in time. The dosing is really only for the short term benefit of the corals in trouble and no other reason.

(Fl and I are not issues IMO.)

BTW, do you do regular water changes? Or only as-needed like mentioned earlier?

 

[xradikalx]

Thanks for the input!

I actually have stopped dosing the ammonia. Nothing bad happened, but I certainly made the tank 'dirtier' I went through the expected phases of dinos, cyano, green hair algae. I found that after dosing ammonia and phosphate for long enough, I reached a stable point and could wean off the ammonia. Now, with regular feeding, and without dosing, I am sitting at 11.3 for nitrate and 0.08 for phosphate. The corals that remain look much happier, as long as they around getting smothered with the hair algae.

I just re-stocked my clean up crew. Between them and the tangs, my main display looks much much better. However in the frag tank (no fish to help) it remains overrun with GHA. I will likely get a small tang for the frag tank to help clean it up as well as manual removal.

I plan to just ride it out for a few months without any scheduled dosing, unless testing shows I start to drop again. If it creeps up, I can always add back in some GFO or biopellets, but they are on the shelf for now!

I typically do a 10% change every 2 weeks currently.

thanks!

 

[BryanM]

Honestly I suspect lack of nutrients is your primary issue.

With the size of your system and the dipping and rinsing I really doubt there was enough beyer left to cause any harm.

No nitrates and pretty much no phosphates = starving....This seems most likely to me.