Tank Crashing

[Dragon174]

I have an unknown something on some of my rocks and sand. Thought it was cyno so I ran chemiclean. Waited the 48 hours and did a 20% water change. Had the water mixing over night. As soon as I started adding the water back into my tank, my sps started bleaching out.

I thought it might be a bad batch of salt, so working with my LFS we ran a little experiment. Took a 10 gallon tank, filled it with 5 gallons of water from my tank. Added a couple little frags (including a little sps). Waited a day for all of the polyps to come out (only took a couple hours). Today, I added 5 new gallons of freshly made salt water with the suspect bag. After a couple of hours, the polyps are fully extended and looking good.

When I took the 5 gallons out of my tank, I replaced it with 5 gallons of freshly made saltwater with a new bag of salt. As soon as I added it, my other sps which were looking okay also started to bleach. Forget the zoa's they are completely closed up and my LPS (hammers and frog spawn) are barely out when they used to be huge.

Here are the parameters of my tank tested today:

Mg = 1600
KH 3.0 Meq/L 8.4 dKH
Ca = 450
PO4 = 0.03
pH = 8.2
Ammonia = 0 ppm
Nitrite = 0 ppm
Nitrate = 5.0 ppm

What in the world is going on and causing my tank to crash? All of the fish are fine and eating.

 

[brandon429]

Post pics we need to see those most important, your first move is reduce lighting intensity by half a few days. Stop the quickburn

have a new way of handling algae and cyano and don’t use cc again, we have better ways that do not harm.

 

[Moscar]

Chemiclean = harsh! You have to hope the bad stuff dies before the good stuff dies.
Bad salt? Maybe undissolved salt in the water. Maybe something else. But "bad salt"? If a maker had a bad batch it would likely impact hundreds/ thousands of users.

 

[Dragon174]

there is something growing on my rocks and substrate that I can’t figure out what it is, but it should have caused my corals to bleach during a water change.

 

[brandon429]

in general, early start hand-cleaning is wise, and needed more in this hobby

we are aimed to buy things and dose/run the machine

but unless a reef is so exceptionally large that you couldnt practically clean it, learning how to control what expresses on the rocks and sand is a matter best done by direct cleaning intervention, and coral params simply are always set to what corals want. Nothing ever goes through the water to affect algae; none is there. no param has to be adjusted, no feeding cut back, because algae isn't there to warrant the change

there is no algae bc its cleaned off in a special way. that is a nice tank

blue the lights, the whites are burning things badly.

lots can be saved. its in great condition. some sps are in question.

considering the nice corals, those lps can easily be saved, you should use our manual technique for a while it never harms any tank. it focuses on you burning calories (feed input then mini water changes above normal, to cycle clean protein through the system and not spike wastes) to effect a condition> the opposite of dosing something to the water.

 

[Dragon174]

I turned the whites up just to get the photos. I have turned down the lights to 50% of what they were as suggested above.

 

[brandon429]

I truly would just take a siphon hose and use scissors to cut angle one end where it has pointy edges for the siphon inlet, go around poking rock areas in between corals, hitting topical sand areas, and be guiding it out

let's see how resilient it is to a mere 1 week total mass refusal by this targeted siphon work. if during the last mini cleaning of 7 days it comes back strong, we have other amplifiers that wont wreck like cc does. keep the blue as is and the lights like u said, plus feed directly a little for this busy week vs broadcast feed

you're trying to pack nitrates back in the corals, but not via the water thats more algae. food in the piehole

change water out even though you dont usually; be busy for one week its the triage for sure.

and you can apply all of it to any reef, even one not in distress, its safe. when u run out of target to be taking up, keep up the feeding + mini changes for coral purposes. find detritus somewhere, in the corners. change water anyway, its exercise and keto time for the reef. there is no doser or measure you could possibly implement that would beat clean protein cycling for tank regeneration.