Sps dying
- Thread starter Larsnauta
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You have your answers Lars, you just need to implement. The answers to all of your questions are the same. Acropora can't stand Alk spikes and they don't like high Alk if the nutrients are low.
You say you did an 80% water change so what questions do you need answers to? ALK <--- What was the Alk of your tank prior to the change, post change, and what is the Alk of your salt mix.
Stability is stability is stability is stability.
The only thing you can do at this point is concentrate on keeping things stable, EXCEPT I recommend letting Alk fall slowly since your nutrients are so low and the tank seems relatively new.
If it was my tank I would stop doing water changes, lower the light levels a bit and make the spectrum mostly blue, take all nutrient removal offline except for the skimmer, and feed something like Reef Roids or BRS Reef Chili every 3 or 4 days to give the corals something to eat. Make sure KH is steady or slowly falling and really do nothing else and hope for the best. If your rocks are green that's good, but it also indicates a newer tank so you will be going through the ugly algae phase. If you try to control it with Phosphate removers the acros will most likely die because the tank is too unstable for super low nutrients. It's the curse of a newer tank, which is why most of us recommend waiting to add acros until the tank ages a bit.
You say you did an 80% water change so what questions do you need answers to? ALK <--- What was the Alk of your tank prior to the change, post change, and what is the Alk of your salt mix.
Stability is stability is stability is stability.
The only thing you can do at this point is concentrate on keeping things stable, EXCEPT I recommend letting Alk fall slowly since your nutrients are so low and the tank seems relatively new. If it was my tank I would stop doing water changes, lower the light levels a bit and make the spectrum mostly blue, take all nutrient removal offline except for the skimmer, and feed something like Reef Roids or BRS Reef Chili every 3 or 4 days to give the corals something to eat. Make sure KH is steady or slowly falling and really do nothing else and hope for the best. If your rocks are green that's good, but it also indicates a newer tank so you will be going through the ugly algae phase. If you try to control it with Phosphate removers the acros will most likely die because the tank is too unstable for super low nutrients. It's the curse of a newer tank, which is why most of us recommend waiting to add acros until the tank ages a bit.
Larsnauta
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Let your alk drop brother. Acros can easily handle a 0.75 dKh swing a day. My alk goes from 7.5 to 6.7 every day. Stop ALL carbon dosing and feed your corals.
How can I drop it easily? Only thing I know is to do a water change.. it’s now on 9,3 dKh
Stop dosing alk. What salt do you use? I use tropic Marin pro because it mixes to about 7.0-7.5.
Next time your making up water. Use an air stone or even a power head sucking in air... something for a few days ahead of time it will drop your dkh of your makeup water. Also like everyone says go slow and steady... and lose the carbon and gfo. Don’t necessarily have to feed your corals but you need to feed your fish but don’t overfeed. If your import and export are on point you should never have to dose nitrates / phos or lower them with media if your on top of your water changes.
Instant ocean dkh 180ppm drops to 135 after 6 days of mixing in my containers
Instant ocean dkh 180ppm drops to 135 after 6 days of mixing in my containers
The few sps you have full size colonies. So once you get your alk down and your nutrients up a bit, the acros should recover and start consuming alk. You definitely want to switch to a lower alk salt for future water changes though.
Larsnauta
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The alk is 9,3 now, PO4 is 0,09 and NO3 is around 5/10. I understand that alk 8 is better than 9,3 But are these values really too bad to keep an acropra alive? I do not think it's very bad.
I know there are some reefers that keep alk at 9 or higher, but I have not had any success with acros above 8 dKH. Mine do a lot better closer to 7 dKH. I’ve talked with many big name acro farmers and they all keep their alk around 7 and no higher than 8. Closer to 7 allows a safety net if your nutrients bottom out, IMO. I think 9.3 is still too high, especially because they are still stressed. A couple of your pics the corals look just like the ones I had before all died off when I was carbon dosing, using gfo and had my alk closer to 9. The acros looked good for a couple weeks, then the polyps would slowly retract. Then they would start to look dark and “dried” out. After that they would develop stn from the base or brownish slime on their tips. I was told by several farmers that told me carbon dosing can cause stn and acro starvation. Within 2 weeks of no carbon dosing and gfo my acros started looking better and started encrusting a month later.
Good luck to you and your acros.
Larsnauta
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in the Netherlands we have a lot of "DRS" users and they almost all dat to do not stop adding carbon. I do not know exactly why. but I believe you and I see no other option like stopping carbon dosing so I'm going to try that.
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