SPS STN. Need a sanity check

[CRABDADDY]

Hello all,

Apologies in advance for the long post... I'm having some issues with my SPS that have just begun in the last week or so. Details on my tank below. I have made no major changes since I've added these frags to the tank 2 months ago. Some of them looked to be coloring up a bit and beginning to encrust until this week.

Tank:
IM NUVO 40g AIO 2.5 years old.



Equipment & maintenance:
2 Nero 5 powerheads
2 Radion XR15 run at around 55% (Par ranges from 250-300)
Aquamaxx bullet 3 HOB skimmer, run about 50% of the time
Mightyjet return pump
Filter floss
Ceramic bio media
100w titanium heater controlled with inkbird
cheap uv sterilizer from amazon (only been running for the past few weeks, as I had a week long issue with dinos due to 0 phosphates)
Tunze osmolater
Dosing kalk every hour 400 mLs a day
20% weekly water change
Red sea blue bucket salt
BRS 4 stage RODI - reading 0-1 TDS on the output
I was running chemipure blue until a month or so ago, but I removed it because it was lowering phosphates. I'm planning to add some activated carbon tomorrow when it gets here.



Parameters:
No major swings, the biggest issue I had was low phosphates for a couple weeks, but it's been resolved. Dosing neo phos regularly. I know I need to measure calcium, but my reagents were expired. Getting more later this week.
Salinity - 1.026
temp - 78



Inland Cyclops - Had good color previously, now STNing from the base and losing tissue at the tips.


Poletti yellow tip - tips looking bad, lost most yellow color. Tissue starting to flake off.


Pink caddy - Was taking on a nice green color, but I'm seeing mesenterial filaments today.


Orange Setosa - Bad polyp extension compared to before, starting to see some white spots


Green slimer- losing color


Garf bonsai? - Tissue starting to degrade at the tip on the right.


Not sure what this is, but it's lost most of it's nice green/purple color and it's turning brown.


A few SPS that are still doing ok:





I do have this leather that is being stung by my BTA


I always seem to have this problem with my tank. I add corals, they do fine for a couple months, then things start to die. In the past it was always LPS, but I decided to upgrade equipment this year and give SPS a go. I'm very frustrated at this point. I have never been able to keep any stony corals alive long term. The only things I've been able to keep alive longer than a few months are softies and nems. I have some LPS that is doing fine right now, but I'm worried they'll be the next to go. I've sent in ICP tests in the past and found no irregularities, but I'm considering doing it again. I feel like I take good care of my tank, stay on top of maintenance, use good equipment, ect. I just always seem to fail. I'll never leave this hobby because I love it so much, but I'm feeling a bit down because of this right now. I feel like my tank is somehow cursed If anyone has input as to what's going on here, I'd appreciate it.

 

[LPS Bum]

Sorry to hear about your struggles. We’ve all been there.

Your mag is low. I like to keep mine north of 1,400. Salinity and temp are fine. So long as you have some nitrate and phosphate it should be ok (which you do). If your Alk is stable at 8.1 and your calcium is stable at 439 it should be fine.

Over my 20+ years in the hobby I’ve found stability to be the key. Decent light and flow. Stable water parameters even if they’re not perfect. And acquiring initially healthy specimens. Are these SPS coming in as healthy frags from good systems? No pests?

 

[CRABDADDY]

I think the magnesium level was a mistake. I couldn't remember what I was when I tested and dosed it a couple weeks back, but I did look it up at the time and got it to the correct range. I just didn't record it in the app at the time and I tried to go off of memory. It should be within the normal range, but I'll test it again later.

I got almost all my acros from battle corals and they were healthy upon arrival and were looking like they were recovering from shipping.

I think my parameters are stable from what I can tell. I did have low alk for a couple weeks, down to 6.5 at the lowest, due to low magnesium I think. Once I brought the mag up it slowly increased. It never changes more than a 0.1 or 0.2 in a day in either direction.

I don't have any pests that I know of other than a few vermitids. I closely inspect the frags regularly with the flipper magnifying glass and I never see pests on them.

 

[dwest]

STN is tough. One potential cause of STN in the past for me was when an acro grew into a green leather quite a bit. I removed the larger leather, but kept a smaller one that wasn’t touching acros. So, I am wondering if the leather getting stung by the anemone is causing problems. The carbon you have coming in might help. Just a thought.

 

[CRABDADDY]

STN is tough. One potential cause of STN in the past for me was when an acro grew into a green leather quite a bit. I removed the larger leather, but kept a smaller one that wasn’t touching acros. So, I am wondering if the leather getting stung by the anemone is causing problems. The carbon you have coming in might help. Just a thought.

Yes, I'm hoping so. I know leathers can give off some chemical that inhibits growth of corals. Maybe it's doing more of this since it's stressed. I'm thinking of just removing it all together. Really, I'd prefer to get rid of the BTA, but I can't get the dang thing out.

 

[leepink23]

What did you use to test par? Have you considered sending an icp? I lost a few acros with 1 tds in a tank with super healthy acros. After getting that changed out and consistent 0 tds everything recovered.

 

[CRABDADDY]

What did you use to test par? Have you considered sending an icp? I lost a few acros with 1 tds in a tank with super healthy acros. After getting that changed out and consistent 0 tds everything recovered.

I used an apogee par meter. Not sure what model, my buddy lent it to me. I will change out my filter media in my RODI and do another water change. The sediment filter is looking a little nasty. I am considering an ICP, this has started unfolding within the last few days, so I wasn't sure if it would continue or not.

 

[leepink23]

I used an apogee par meter. Not sure what model, my buddy lent it to me. I will change out my filter media in my RODI and do another water change. The sediment filter is looking a little nasty. I am considering an ICP, this has started unfolding within the last few days, so I wasn't sure if it would continue or not.

Yeah you should. I like ati because you can test your source water and tank. It’s usually water quality so I would start there.

 

[CRABDADDY]

Yeah you should. I like ati because you can test your source water and tank. It’s usually water quality so I would start there.

I just ordered one, wish they came back sooner, but it's good to check.

 

[leepink23]

I just ordered one, wish they came back sooner, but it's good to check.

Yeah that’s the worst part. Changing out the Rodi filters, getting 0 tds and doing some water changes may help. It’s hard to know with acros.

 

[ElementReefer]

Keeping anything alive long-term in a reef tank is a great triumph. This hobby is younger than the internet. Don’t lose perspective on what you’ve already achieved!

I had to remove all my leather corals to have success with any stony corals at all. So there’s that, but the overall evidence is mixed.

I have a montipora that’s thriving right now, I think this was attempt #4 over the past year at keeping any SPS. Two ideas to consider other than your water parameters:

1) Sometimes coral take many weeks after an insult to go south. Stressful shipping and/or acclimation is a common example.

2) I have a strong feeling that stony coral, in particular SPS, have some kind of microbial symbiosis that we don’t fully understand. The anecdotes are everywhere. A particularly interesting one is “I couldn’t keep SPS until a friend gave me a piece of rock from his sump.”

 

[Ancient Mariner]

Things to try:
1) higher lighting. In my experience Acropora usually needs to be blasted. You could try Red/orange dragon (A. carduus) as it tolerates lower lighting.
2) try 2 part alk/ca dosing instead of kalk. Your numbers look OK but I always have felt that 2 part dosing especially with a dosing pump really gets SPS going
3) increase microbial biodiversity as mentioned above (adding more live rock or letting it mature a little longer) but after 2.5 years and the way your tank looks I suspect you’re biologically good for SPS.

 

[PocketGoose]

I think I remember reading a few threads that had issues with unhappy leathers that essentially polluted entire tanks. I think they can put off a pretty serious slime and that only amplifies when under duress. Has the stinging from the BTA been a recent thing?

You had also mentioned low phosphates - which can lead to starving corals. As somebody else had mentioned, it could be weeks before SPS show a visible reaction.

Thats where my monies is at

 

[Pod_01]

So I read through your post and honestly your tank is where I was couple years ago. As they say perfect parameters but dead corals. I swear I tried to explain to the corals that the water parameters are right on the point but that did not help.
This is what I had:

slow coral death

So I made some changes and now the same coral looks like this:

Different coral,

So looking at your value’s I would do the following: (Just my humble suggestion)
1) Stop using all phosphate removers (like GFO etc…)
2) If you must use activated carbon but 20ml per 100l of display and change once every (4-6 weeks) gentle is the name of the game.
3) Use Tropic Marin Plus NP, start with 1/4 recommended dose. This is to promote bacteria growth and this bacteria will become food for corals. Hopefully this will naturally allow your Phosphate to get to 0.05- 0.15 range. I am not fan of phosphate additives.
4) Start to dose some trace elements like TM A-/K+. Or consider to use TM AFR, I did and that helped a lot with unbalanced trace elements and main elements.

SPS corals need food there is lot of mouths to feed so consider some type of quality coral food. Another source of food is to get fish and feed them quality reef fish food and they will make the right food for your SPS. Looking at your corals they look hungry. Lights are not enough to sustain your corals and it leads to slow starvation.

Longer term consider ICP test so you can track your trace elements and main the elements.

Overall you are almost there just few small tweaks are required. I would not recommending changes to your light, once the corals bounce back you can increase the light.

Good luck

 

[Dine]

I think the magnesium level was a mistake. I couldn't remember what I was when I tested and dosed it a couple weeks back, but I did look it up at the time and got it to the correct range. I just didn't record it in the app at the time and I tried to go off of memory. It should be within the normal range, but I'll test it again later.

I got almost all my acros from battle corals and they were healthy upon arrival and were looking like they were recovering from shipping.

I think my parameters are stable from what I can tell. I did have low alk for a couple weeks, down to 6.5 at the lowest, due to low magnesium I think. Once I brought the mag up it slowly increased. It never changes more than a 0.1 or 0.2 in a day in either direction.

I don't have any pests that I know of other than a few vermitids. I closely inspect the frags regularly with the flipper magnifying glass and I never see pests on them.

How fast did you bring the Alk up? How fast did you bring the phosphates up? As mentioned above stability is the name of the game. Generally with sps I look to a week or 2 prior for the answer. Other than some polyp retraction I find sps to have a delayed response to many things.

 

[MAB Reef]

I'm no expert but I've definitely felt what you've described. In my previous 50 gallon IM most of the acros I had either died, didn't grow, or just didn't look great. I was also relying mostly on kalkwasser through a reactor to keep my parameters up. I wasn't, however, testing as much as you are. It wasn't until November last year that I took advantage of Black Friday to pick up an Apex and trident which gave me the opportunity to consistently test more often (four times a day). This is where I saw how much alkalinity can swing within the same day. That led me figure out how to dose 2 part which in turn kept my parameters super stable. This is one thing I think that helped tremendously. I noticed you're growing coralline algae so I would think there's plenty of alkalinity being used up in your tank that kalkwasser alone wouldn't be able to keep up with unless you were doing a kalk slurry or something like ACI aquaculture does. Not sure how often you test based on the chart you posted but it really is true that testing should be done at the same time of the day when you test. You will get a totally a different reading before lights go on, middle of the day, and end of day.

The other thing that I've done in my new tank is get rid of my two large leathers. It looks like you know and I've read the same that there may be some chemical warfare going on. People have said carbon would fix that but I decided I liked my acros more than my leathers and didn't want to deal with it.

Last thing that I noticed was your nutrient level. I've been reading through this thread this week https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/high-end-tenuis-hoarder.757551/page-31 which has me really working on getting my phosphates and nitrate levels at a good level. What I've learned so far in that thread is, at least for SBB Corals, that any nitrate level 5 or lower and acros don't do well. Add in higher par and from what I read, they're not able to protect themselves well.

Anyways, since I've done these things and been more consistent with my husbandry, even the acro colonies that I have are starting to look so much better. I've had no losses except for kids knocking over my magnet frag racks while I was away . Even my nemesis millepora frags are still alive and thriving (knock on wood).

I'm glad you said you're not quitting. I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually. It's going to feel so good when you do!

 

[Dburr1014]

Raise your phosphates, 0.03 should be your bare minimum and you've been below that already and now you are at that level. Your corals are starving, feed them.

 

[Mwatts12]

I have 2 G6 xR30 pro and 6 G5 xr15 blue over a 225. I run the radions at 90% for 11 hrs. Crank the lights up. Way up. That is what they need.

 

[Jason_MrFrags]

I think your nitrates/phosphates might be a little low for having Alk at 8.1. Typically issues with sps tips are from alk burn - too high alk without enough nutrients. And the base is from Alk swings. If your having issues with STN they could be starving.

 

[Stephen Glover]

Sounds to me like you corrected the issue. Damage was probably done several weeks ago and it is just playing out now. Keep it stable from here and things should turn around. We have all been there.