Tank is Slow Motion Crashing

[Addicted2Acro]

I have a 200 gal mixed reef with acros and torches, etc. Tank is about 6 months old. Up until about a 2 weeks ago, everything was looking great. Finally got the acro polyp extension and they were growing. Torches and hammers were doing great. Everything was going perfect. Then....cyano breaks out. Ok no worries. I do daily removal with bacteria and coral snow and it is not really going away. I have a professional tank maintenance girl who helps with cleaning and stuff since the tank is at my office. A week ago I have a family trip to mexico planned and while I am there she tells me the cyano is crazy and chemiclean is needed. We had done chemiclean in the past once when I had very few corals and it worked fine. So she does it, and then everything starts to fall apart.

I get back and corals look absolutely terrible. Acros are pale and polyps are tucked in. Big hammer colony is completely closed. Torches are pale. Everything looks like **** and cyano is still all over the place. Since then I have been back to manual removal and bacteria and coral snow dosing. Before I left i had a ton of little life in the tank. Sponges, pods, etc all over the place. It looked super healthy. Now all of that is gone. Also, Nitrates went from like 8 to now I have to dose a lot of nitrates just to keep it above 0.0.

It just seems like the tank is dying off and I dont know what else to do about it. Here are the things I have been doing.
- Water changes
- Added lots of Pods
- Daily phytoplankton dosing
- Daily nitrate and phosphate dosing
- Daily manual removal of cyano using turkey baster and coral snow

Also....My PH used to never dip below 8 at night and would typically get to 8.25 during the day. For the last week it has been dipping to like 7.70 at night.

Things are a mess. Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

[KrisReef]

Could be growing faster then your nutrition and parameter replacement can keep up with?

 

[Patx]

Picture ?

 

[rcpiv93]

When in doubt...do a water change. If things look significantly better after the water change...do another. If not, it will be back to the drawing board.

 

[BryanM]

Bottoming out nitrate or phosphate seems to spell disaster for most of us. I suspect your phos may have hit zero as well.

I don't have answers here really, I've only battled dinos, twice now, and the 2nd round is putting me through the ringer. I'm now daily vacuuming sand in to a 1 micron filter sock, putting the filtered water back in the tank, and tossing the filter sock. I am running UV as well, as my dinos do go in to the water column at night.

I would check phos, and dose for that as well. You could inquire w/Reef by Steele, they've had customers that have reported back good results with their pods/phyto for fighting certain kinds of "bad stuff".

 

[Tahoe61]

How is the flow?
What type of lighting?
Are you feeding heavily?

I would get some LR from a quality distributor like Gulf Live Rock and put it in the sump to introduce bacteria wiped out from the Chemiclean.

 

[Addicted2Acro]

Here is a video of the tank. I can upload to Youtube if you guys are having trouble viewing it. Let me know. Alk and Ca consumption has decreased since this started happening. But nutrients are getting absorbed super fast. I am wondering if I added too much bottled bacteria and now that bacteria is absorbing all the nutrients. I stopped adding bacteria a couple days ago.

 

[Lavey29]

Chemiclean killed off your biome and often results in dinos after treatment due to bottomed out nutrients.

 

[Addicted2Acro]

Flow is pretty solid. 2 orbit 4 gyres and 2 nero 7's. 3 AI Blade lights. Feeding frozen food 1-2 times per day and chlorella flakes 2 times per day.

 

[Addicted2Acro]

Yeah I dont think there are dinos yet, but I am very much worried about them now that nutrients are so low. Which is why I am dosing nitrates and phosphates. Specifically NEO Nitro and Tropic Marin Plus NP.

 

[BryanM]

It appears you've got a lot of turkey basting to do, and manual removal from the sand, and if you're running filter socks I'd recommend swapping them out after every cleaning.

 

[Tahoe61]

I would run a UV if you have not.
The tank looks a lot better than I expected.

 

[Addicted2Acro]

SOOO much turkey basting. I am running reefmat and UV as well. I am less concerned with the cyano even though that is super annoying and more concerned with how pale the corals look.

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

IMO get an ICP test done to see if you have some type of heavy metal/toxin that is causing the major issues. Check that magnets aren't bursting and there isn't rust present.

 

[Addicted2Acro]

Here is a video of the tank after turkey baster and coral snow. Added 25ml of NeoNitro and 10ml of Tropic Marin NP this morning after nitrates read 0.0 again. Nitrates still reading 0.0 a couple hours later.

 

[Addicted2Acro]

FYI I tested the hanna checker on another tank and it is working fine. Also, phosphates are now .15. So we went from steady nitrates around 6 and phosphates at like .03 to 0.0 nitrates and .15 phosphates. OMG this thing is a mess.

 

[Lavey29]

FYI I tested the hanna checker on another tank and it is working fine. Also, phosphates are now .15. So we went from steady nitrates around 6 and phosphates at like .03 to 0.0 nitrates and .15 phosphates. OMG this thing is a mess.

You have already done water changes and running carbon to clean out the chemiclean?

 

[Addicted2Acro]

You have already done water changes and running carbon to clean out the chemiclean?

Yes. Have done multiple water changes and skimmer and carbon have been running. Skimmer is running normally.

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

FYI I tested the hanna checker on another tank and it is working fine. Also, phosphates are now .15. So we went from steady nitrates around 6 and phosphates at like .03 to 0.0 nitrates and .15 phosphates. OMG this thing is a mess.

.15 phosphates isn't bad if you have everything else available for the corals to process it.

Chemiclean probably also decimated your microfauna. Start reintroducing bacteria/phyto/pods and slowly see what happens.

 

[Addicted2Acro]

.15 phosphates isn't bad if you have everything else available for the corals to process it.

Chemiclean probably also decimated your microfauna. Start reintroducing bacteria/phyto/pods and slowly see what happens.

Right I agree. .15 phosphates and zero nitrates sounds like a recipe for dino. I am gradually increasing the neonitro dose until I start to see improvements. I introduced a bunch of pods and live phyto from Algae Barn a few days ago. Hopefully that will start to work.

*I am wondering if I overdosed bacteria over the past couple weeks trying to get them established but now they are sucking up all the nitrate immediately. I admittedly was putting a lot of bacteria in the tank.