SPS healthy or starting to have an issue?

[Dolfan-Mike]

I'm relatively new to SPS but not corals in general. I've got two different SPS a Grine Slimer and Starry night. The Stary night seems to be doing well and for a good while so was this Green Slimer, but in the past few weeks, I notice that a couple of the tips looked red like they had cyno on them? I am battling some cyno on my sand bed and a bit around on my liverock.

Setup and Parms
90g DT, 25g sump
Current LED combined with 2 T5 39w with ATI Blue and Coral Plus

Parms
Salinity =1.025
Temp = 78.4-79.2
PH = 8.05-8.2
KH = 9
CA = 440
MG = 1340
NO3 = 0
PO4 = 0

I've included a couple of pictures that I hope you can see the red color on the tips of a couple of the branches. There is new growth as well so I didn't' think things were terrible. But really want to figure out if I have an issue. This morning I dipped this coral in CoralRx for about 15 minutes to see if that would help.

 

[Beardo]

Looking over your parameters I would say your main issue is low nutrients with higher alk. I would bump you nitrate and phosphate and let your alkalinity slowly drift down to between 7 and 8. Higher alk with very low nitrients is a recipe for burnt tips.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Looking over your parameters I would say your main issue is low nutrients with higher alk. I would bump you nitrate and phosphate and let your alkalinity slowly drift down to between 7 and 8. Higher alk with very low nitrients is a recipe for burnt tips.

 

[SifuMemphis]

Having zero nitrate and zero phosphate essentially is starving your coral. Try to keep around 5-10 ppm Nitrate, and 0.03-0.05 p04

 

[fcmatt]

a lot of shading going on with the lighting?

 

[Dolfan-Mike]

OK, so no shading on this coral, it's got a good direct path to lighting.

I also should have mentioned that I do feed directly with a turkey baster every 4 day a bit of coral frenzy combined with phyto. I mix that together and shoot some in the vicinity of all my SPS and Zoes with all the circulation off for a bit.

So if I'm to raise my NO3 and PO4 then the only thing I think I can do there is feed more? Skim less? Other?

 

[Dolfan-Mike]

The thing I don't get though is just about 12-16" away from where this Green Slimer is my Starry Night seems to be just fine, even thriving. I wouldn't think nutrients would be the issue if just one of my SPS shows this issue???

 

[Crustaceon]

Some corals will be more sensitive than others, but eventually all can start having issues with low nutrients. I have a few “canary” frags that stn when I get too low on phosphate. Everything else will look ok.

 

[Caseyoidae]

I’m going through the same thing, ran a carbon/gfo reactor with high alk And burnt a few tips. My starry night could care less. I think it’s the toughest Acro I’ve come across. I started feeding heavier and turning skimmer off for 8 hours during day.

 

[dadnjesse]

It looks like you have some hair algae on the rocks. If so I doubt you have zero phosphate.

 

[Dolfan-Mike]

I don't have much of the typical long hair algae, but I have been battling a bit of cyno. I did a test last night both PO4 and NO3 showed zero using API testing. I'm thinking immediately I might help by moving that Green Slimer to try to help it.

 

[dadnjesse]

The Api test kits are not accurate. For Phosphate you need the Hanna Ultra low tester. But in general if you have Algae you have Phosphates.

 

[Dolfan-Mike]

So any immediate things I should do. I can immediately try moving this coral to see if that helps. I stopped my GFO reactor yesterday. Other ways to try to keep from losing this coral?

 

[joseserrano]

Your rocks and back glass show you are not low nutrient, also you saying you have cyano and hair algae says you don't have low nutrient. Pick a lane and stick to it. Too me your corals look brown, which would say your tank is dirty.

 

[Dolfan-Mike]

I've ordered a couple Hanna checkers so I can get more reliable numbers to go off. I guess I would agree somewhat with you @joseserrano, my tank is showing signs of high nutrients with cyno and some algae but my test come back zero. I know test kits can be flaky but I was following the PO4 being zero as the same kit some time ago did register detectable levels so just figured it had been reduced.

 

[Crustaceon]

Oh it’s very much possible to have cyano and nuisance algae in a display and simultaneously have low nutrients. I actually had that exact problem when my refugium filled with chaeto (basketball-sized in a 65g system) stripped all detectable No3 & P04 our of my tank. When I first added the chaeto, I had a really annoying turf algae sprout up and completely cover my back glass. It remained pretty much unchanged even after nutrients bottomed out. What happens is N03 & P04 become locked up in the algae and act as a food reserve for it when nutrients are expended. Our corals don’t have that reserve and suffer pretty much immediately by stn’ing while that annoying algae can “ride it out”. Another problem is most strains of beneficial bacteria can start becoming out-competed by cyano in low nutrient environments, which would explain that as well. In a nutshell, if your test is showing low nitrates & phosphates, you indeed have low nitrates and phosphates. Algae and cyano is only indicative of a nutrient imbalance with algae merely starting at elevated nutrients and cyano popping up when conditions in the tank are better for it than they are for beneficial bacteria, whether that’s higher or lower nutrient levels.

 

[oscarjinjer]

Good question.

 

[Beardo]

I think you are headed in the right direction getting some decent test kits to find out where you actually are for nutrients as well as taking the gfo reactor offline for the time being.
I don't look at cyano as a sign of high nutrients since it can pop up in a N or P limited system.
Once you know where your nutrients are you can look at next steps.
Personally I wouldn't run gfo without monitoring phosphate levels ( I see you were testing with api kits, but wouldn't rely on that for phosphate especially). It is pretty easy to drive phosphates too low or make too rapid a change which can be harmful to corals. Been there and done that myself.
Just take things a step at a time and don't overreact and make drastic changes.

 

[Dolfan-Mike]

So I did a quick test this morning on ALK and it is higher than just a few days ago. I'm still dosing kalk as always no change there, but I'm wondering if by shutting down the biopellets that has caused the AlK to go up? It's gone up to about 10 now.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Why did you turn off your bio pellet reactor? That should be done slowly or it can cause issues on its own ime. Can we see a picture of the healthy coral?