SPS Keep Dying - Please Help - Tank Parameters Seem Ideal

[jurgenph]

i was trying to figure out why one of my tanks has rising Alk not so long ago.
and concluded with the help of some folks on this forum that it was related to the uptake of NO3, that i was dosing to keep it from bottoming out.

now, why was it bottoming out?
i believe it was a combination of nuisance algae and bacteria that were stripping my water clean.

but the pictures you posted seem to indicate that your tank doesn't have that problem.

maybe it's the algae in your refugium?

if it was me, i'd do the following. remove, or seriously trim down the macro algae you have.

buy a few bottles of bacteria from different brands, and add small doses of each to your tank over time. increasing the biodiversity.


good luck!
J.

 

[BAUCE]

An excellent source of microfauna and bacterial diversity is IPSF. You can find them here https://www.ipsf.com/index.html

Their wonder mud is awesome. I was able to add SPS to my tank 3 months after start up with dry rock and dry sand. You get great biodiverity with their products...

Im looking to help out an old tank. I have a tiny amount of sand for a few wrasses. Would this still be the best thing to get from them?

 

[Cmooreinor]

Have you had any success figuring out what your problem is? I am in the same boat as you.... stated the same way.... I have a year old system that is doing well except with growing stony corals..... it sucks trying to figure this out! I hope all I am needing is time.... I hate putting in a so called easy coral only to watch it slowly die off!

 

[sgrosenb]

My tank was started with dry rock and it took 18 to 20 months to stop killing acros and getting them to grow. Acro success also seemed to correspond with rapid proliferation of coralline algae. I also started dosing iodine and potassium in response to low readings on icp tests.

Hi @BigAsh - just wondering if you attribute any of your acro success / coralline algae growth to anything? Did you change anything to get those going other than iodine and potassium?

 

[sgrosenb]

Have you had any success figuring out what your problem is? I am in the same boat as you.... stated the same way.... I have a year old system that is doing well except with growing stony corals..... it sucks trying to figure this out! I hope all I am needing is time.... I hate putting in a so called easy coral only to watch it slowly die off!

Nothing yet @Cmooreinor I just recently bought about 50lbs of live rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater a month or so back. I'm going to give it about 6 months and see how we do. I'm really hopeful that it gets better. If it doesn't get better, I'm going to start removing the old dead rock that I started with and also the sand. I'll go bare-bottom and replace the dead rock with Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock completely. And if THAT doesn't work, I'll be really bummed. All I want to do is grow acros....

 

[hobbyreefer]

This sounds so much like my situation. I want a tank packed with acros so bad and I just haven’t been able to make it work. My new tank is about 6 months old. I know it’s early for acros but my correline algae has exploded. I’m not dosing and my DKH continues to raise by about .2 each day. Drives me nuts. I’m also thinking about pulling the sand and pulling my man made real reef rock and replacing with something like TB live rock. I don’t want to keep making changes but I MUST figure out why my sticks mostly turn brown. I’m interested in hearing if anyone has been successful with acropora in their first year starting from man made rock??? To me success would be corals keeping most of their color and encrusting/growing.

 

[sgrosenb]

This sounds so much like my situation. I want a tank packed with acros so bad and I just haven’t been able to make it work. My new tank is about 6 months old. I know it’s early for acros but my correline algae has exploded. I’m not dosing and my DKH continues to raise by about .2 each day. Drives me nuts. I’m also thinking about pulling the sand and pulling my man made real reef rock and replacing with something like TB live rock. I don’t want to keep making changes but I MUST figure out why my sticks mostly turn brown. I’m interested in hearing if anyone has been successful with acropora in their first year starting from man made rock??? To me success would be corals keeping most of their color and encrusting/growing.

@hobbyreefer you're in the same boat as me. Can I ask what exact type of rock and sand you started with?

 

[KimG]

I'm in the same situation as all of you. Started the tank a little over a year ago with live rock. It grow everything fantastically, including acros. However, had so many pest come along with the rock (bubble algae, aptasia, red planaria and a couple more) that I decided to restart with dry rock......... why, ho why????? Within the first month almost all my sps were dead. After the tanks was up for about 5 months I gave it another go. Simpler corals (monti caps, stylophoras, seriatophora and one acro). For one month everything looked great and growing. And then, it all started to die again. Still not figure out what is going on. Parameters are the same as with the live rock....

 

[hobbyreefer]

@sgrosenb I started with Real Reef Rock (https://realreefrock.com) that I purchased from my local LFS. They have an unbelievable SPS tank that was started with this stuff so I was hoping to emulate something similar. I'm using Carib Sea Arag-Alive Reef Sand. It's the medium sized stuff so it doesn't blow around too much. All of my previous tanks have been bare bottom but I wanted to try sand with this build. Regretting it...

I've watched every BRS video dozens of times. I have T5s and a Kessil 360x for every foot of tank (5). My par is ~300-400 throughout the entire tank. I have 3 MP 40s and a Vectra L2. Flow should be plenty, but I'm adding more.

My tank has struggled with 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates no matter how much I feed. I can literally dump handfuls of pellets, Rods, LRS. I have multiple tangs, angel fish, clowns, rabbit fish, etc (tons of poop). If I run my skimmer (Nyos 160) my nutrients go to zero. My skimmer has been offline for a month and I've removed my filter socks and marine pure blocks. The only filtration I have is the sand and rocks. If I use reefroids daily I can keep my PHOS around .07 but I still struggle to get nitrate over 2-3 (they are above zero)

I'm just stumped. I work from home (even prior to COVID 19) and I test parameters and do water changes on a very consistent schedule. I've dropped thousands into this tank. I research constantly... Super frustrating,

 

[dohc97]

I'm not sure what the cause of your issue is but I can relate my experience. I started my tank with dead rock from reefcleaners and went through a lot of algae stages, diatoms, etc like a normal tank. Did not try sps for about 6 months, once a few frags went in they encrusted a bit and just stopped. Did not grow, did not decline just nothing. I blamed this on my lighting as everything else seemed good but after reading several threads such as yours I think it was the rock. I believe that beyond biodiversity our rock also lacks stability in something that we might not measure. I noticed sps do better once I started to see sponges( about 15 months after starting tank) and even through more algae they kept growing. On my last upgrade I have used all the old rock, old sand and added more dry rock but seems to be ok so far. Sps are once again growing and this tank has only been up a month. I really believe aged/live rock brings more to sps than just what we measure. If you start with dry I think you need to seed your tank with biodiversity and then let things get stable enough to grow sponges. Once you see sponges I think sps should be fine.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

How are you testing and calibrating your tester for salinity? Alk rising like that has to be from something I would think. Are you doing water changes, if so with what?

 

[sgrosenb]

@sgrosenb I started with Real Reef Rock (https://realreefrock.com) that I purchased from my local LFS. They have an unbelievable SPS tank that was started with this stuff so I was hoping to emulate something similar. I'm using Carib Sea Arag-Alive Reef Sand. It's the medium sized stuff so it doesn't blow around too much. All of my previous tanks have been bare bottom but I wanted to try sand with this build. Regretting it...

I've watched every BRS video dozens of times. I have T5s and a Kessil 360x for every foot of tank (5). My par is ~300-400 throughout the entire tank. I have 3 MP 40s and a Vectra L2. Flow should be plenty, but I'm adding more.

My tank has struggled with 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates no matter how much I feed. I can literally dump handfuls of pellets, Rods, LRS. I have multiple tangs, angel fish, clowns, rabbit fish, etc (tons of poop). If I run my skimmer (Nyos 160) my nutrients go to zero. My skimmer has been offline for a month and I've removed my filter socks and marine pure blocks. The only filtration I have is the sand and rocks. If I use reefroids daily I can keep my PHOS around .07 but I still struggle to get nitrate over 2-3 (they are above zero)

I'm just stumped. I work from home (even prior to COVID 19) and I test parameters and do water changes on a very consistent schedule. I've dropped thousands into this tank. I research constantly... Super frustrating,

@hobbyreefer your experience is almost identical to mine. I used Reef Saver rock from Aquacave, but it looks like it is similar. I did Tropic Eden Mesoflakes for sand. In terms of your nitrates - I too suffered from low nitrates. I used Reef Roids which upped by phosphates but not nitrates. I ultimately started dosing nitrate and am able to keep it stable around 5-10. You might want to try that. I work from home too - have for 5 years - and I test constantly and my tank is in my office so I'm starting it all day.... Just want to stare at some nice polys extending and blowing in the current.... Hoping that this live rock addition will work after a few months. There were some sponges on the live rock, so hopefully @dohc97 you are correct and my SPS will thrive eventually.

@Pedoconfuego I have 2 refractometers and an Apex probe that are all in line, so salinity is accurate. For dKH I use Hanna, LaMotte and a GHL KH Director so those are good too.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

So in my experience Coraline growth is a good indicator of your tanks readiness for sps. I would also do an icp test such as ATI. This will give you a base line and also let you know what’s in your water. After alk, MG, ca, I would check potassium and strontium. Bringing my K up to 410 made a difference for me. Salifert has tests for these. Also massive random flow. I can’t stress the importance of flow. I have 2 mp40’s and an mp60 on 10 second pulse. And am going to add more. I at any time only have two pumps ramped up at one time. I also after this feel some iodine is a good thing. Most the old school guys that had great sps dosed Iodine daily. I do also. I also dose one small drop of Brightwell FE daily, I do have cheato in the sump. My sps do not care for large water changes. They do like small water changes. This is clear to me by a decrease in alk consumption for a day or two after. I also dose coral amino daily 30 drops. I have included some pics. This is one year growth from frags. I found red bug and treated on 1/14/20. Growth and color took off after treatment. So some of these corals have only stated growing since beginning of treatment.

 

[drawman]

Following. OP hopefully the added live rock will help over time. I'm in the same boat with my new one year old tank so I definitely know how you feel. I truly question if some tanks with dry rock get off to a bad microbial start and it takes longer for things to equilibrate.

I will say @hobbyreefer I am not surprised you struggled with low nutrients with dry rock off the start. Some dry rock can act like a PO4 sponge and it will take time get PO4 to show up. I have a suspicion that this really compounds the problem for dry rock tanks.

 

[Robs Reef]

So what have you tried so far? I have done the very thing everyone is talking about that led them to a failed attempt to keeping sps. I started with dry rock, went through a 4 month cycle, after the cycle was finished, which was hell to say the least. I added over 40 1" high end acros. They are thriving to this day. From RRU angry Bird from the start after cycle, to my recently acquired RRC Jawdropper. I did a lights on cycle, with miracle mud and 1 thing I did was fired up my calcium reactor from day 1, at first my dkh was fairly high sitting at 9-10 dkh, wasnt really worried since I didnt have a thing in the tank, 1 month in I added a 15" Blue Squamosa which weighed north of 25lbs, then my dkh stabilized at 7, which where I keep it today, and also 7 was where I kept my previous sps dominated tank. That clam went through hell with bouts of white slime bacteria Alcaligenes faecalis, and like I said earlier when all the white slime subsided and turned brown, I knew my cycle was over, I added the sps frags. At this point, going through the cycle of hell, my ionic balance was maintained through the use of the calcium reactor and miracle mud and no other minerals or trace elements was dosed. And my baseball sized chaeto grew 10times. I dont use gfo or carbon, if I did. I would use it to make small corrections, like I have in the past. Month 9, is when my tank hit its stride, and my filtration system went into a slight overdrive, because I actually watched any traces of nuisance algae virtually disappear from the DT. I'm an now to a point, that my tank is a well oiled system, I dont use and broadcast foods or additives like amino acids or reef roids etc, dont dose anything else aside from the effluent coming out of my Crx. And have done 7 80g water changes in the past 16 months on a 600g system. If you do follow my thread, I dont do anything out of the ordinary, I keep everything old school, and simple to keep variables down if something does go wrong. And they're is only a several things. Lighting, flow, filtration and calcium reactor. Because I cant blame anything else, because I dont use anything else. So to end this long post.... Adaptability and stability long term is key, it's the rule of constant proportions. Make minute changes and keep stability especially Dkh on top of your list.

 

[Robs Reef]

You can watch this vids, to show my growth

8 months


Here is month 9 update


1 year


14 months


16 months

 

[ryshark]

You can watch this vids, to show my growth

8 months


Here is month 9 update


1 year


14 months


16 months

Great tank, high end acros and videos. I watched a some of your youtube videos a couple nights ago. You have me considering adding miracle mud to the small refugium section of my sump that I'm not really using right now. I just have a little bit of wonder mud and live sand in that section from ipsf.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

You sir have nailed it.

 

[Robs Reef]

Great tank, high end acros and videos. I watched a some of your youtube videos a couple nights ago. You have me considering adding miracle mud to the small refugium section of my sump that I'm not really using right now. I just have a little bit of wonder mud and live sand in that section from ipsf.

I dont know what ipsf is, and dont know what their concentration of trace elements and minerals are. Miracle mud is compromised of 20% in volume of trace elements and minerals. It wouldnt hurt to swap out, use it and keep doing your regular maintenance and act like it's not even there.

 

[ryshark]

I dont know what ipsf is, and dont know what their concentration of trace elements and minerals are. Miracle mud is compromised of 20% in volume of trace elements and minerals. It wouldnt hurt to swap out, use it and keep doing your regular maintenance and act like it's not even there.

That refugium section in my sump is about 7" deep and I probably only have 1/2" or so of the ipsf mud and sand in there (it comes from the ocean in Hawaii) So I could easily add to it some miracle mud.