Tank still not doing well is it possibly chemical warfare?

Joe Batt

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My 350 reefer tank is not doing well and has been struggling for a long time.

I do weekly 20% water changes and keep my hands out, change the socks weekly, vacuum the sand bed weekly, run carbon and NoPox. Use RoDi water at 0 TDS from my home water station.

Kh 8.1 and steady(+- 0.1 maximum daily), Ca 460(+- 5 at the most daily) and steady, Mg 1390 and steady No3 5ppm Po4 0.04 and steady....good flow with 2x gyre, good lighting with AI Hydra 52 and T5 mix. Temp is steady 25.7-26.2.

Whatever I do things just don't seem to get any better. The sps and acros just die, the softies and lps seem to do fine though still slow, except for a Duncan that decided to follow the acro's. The tank holds around a dozen happy fish.

I am really puzzled and annoyed since I do everything that I should be doing.

The only thing left that I'm wondering is that I have a large elegance coral that I placed behind a large GSP that had grown all over its own rock. I wasn't worried about the elegance killing some of the GSP since the GSP is like a weed and the GSP was holding back the elegance. Could the battle between these two corals be polluting the tank and causing problems?

I'm running out of ideas :(
 
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Rixar

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Debe proporcionar más información.

Cuéntanos todo lo que haces en el tanque, el tiempo que tienes, cómo lo manejas y tus niveles de nutrientes, You can also tell how your acroporas die, do they become clear little by little?
 

reefwiser

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Do you have a good coraline algae growth. I would stop the carbon and no pox and cut the water change down to 10% As Rixar ask’s do the die from the tip’s or just do a rapid die off over night. Do they make it thru the first 30 days in the tank.
Any images of the tank.
I had similar issues in my Aquarium currently. I just went thru and removed all the areas of instability. I was doing daily water changes found that this tank didn’t like that so went down to once a week again. Went back to MH with led strip. Keeping the light even constant. I have kept SPS since the early 90’s and simple and stable is what I always go back to. Over doing can cause as much or more problems as under doing maintenance.
 

Rixar

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Do you have a good coraline algae growth. I would stop the carbon and no pox and cut the water change down to 10% As Rixar ask’s do the die from the tip’s or just do a rapid die off over night. Do they make it thru the first 30 days in the tank.
Any images of the tank.
I had similar issues in my Aquarium currently. I just went thru and removed all the areas of instability. I was doing daily water changes found that this tank didn’t like that so went down to once a week again. Went back to MH with led strip. Keeping the light even constant. I have kept SPS since the early 90’s and simple and stable is what I always go back to. Over doing can cause as much or more problems as under doing maintenance.

Are coral algae a good indicator for sps?
 

rock_lobster

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what salinity, any metal in the tank? any lab analysis test? pH? ammonia? How long tank setup? Acclimation process for the SPS, What fish in the tank?,
No the GSP and elegance are not responsible for your other corals demise.
 

rkpetersen

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Several things:

Seriously doubt any significant chemical warfare between those animals.

Any evidence of excess bacterial growth? White films on glass, rocks, or in the sump? Personally I'd ditch the NoPoX, at least for awhile, and see if that makes a difference. If you go back to carbon dosing later you might try vinegar instead. I'd keep the activated carbon although I wouldn't use a large amount of one of the powerful ones like Rox.

I personally limit my water changes to 5% at a time. I know many people do larger changes but I feel smaller changes more often is safer.

You should consider sending a water sample to ATI or Triton. It's possible that you have an undetected toxic buildup of something in your system. Or, you could have a severe deficiency of something, for example of potassium, since most people don't test for that at home.

Do you dose 2 part to maintain ca/alk? Manually or with a doser? I had major problems with stability until I got a doser.

Also, are you feeding just the fish or also the corals?

Vacuuming the sand bed is ok but I've found that my corals are doing better if I just leave the sand alone (it's less than 1", not a DSB). Some people also recommend stirring up detritus from behind rocks now and then, and I used to do this myself, until one time I stirred up 'something' (not sure what, shouldn't have been any H2S in a thin substrate), that killed several of my corals and made others very unhappy, so I no longer do that either.
 
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Joe Batt

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what salinity, any metal in the tank? any lab analysis test? pH? ammonia? How long tank setup? Acclimation process for the SPS, What fish in the tank?,
No the GSP and elegance are not responsible for your other corals demise.

Couple of clownfish, a damsel, blenny, yellow tang, sailfin tang, hippo tang, fire shrimp, 6 line wrasse. The tank is at a constant 35 on the salinity and using a Neptune Apex ATK.
The tank is dosed using DOS units through an Apex and as I said it is very stable parameter wise. I do test potassium and it's at 410. Ammonia zero Ph 8.4 (its winter here but my winter is warm with doors always open so lots of fresh air)

The sps polyps slowly stop extending then go white and that spreads down the branches. I had a really nice Setosa, started to die off in areas and now just a few bits left. I have checked everything for bugs at night, nothing, no bite marks etc. I have always acclimate and carefully dip and acclimate any new corals, using Bayer, freshwater dip, remove the plugs and replace with my own.

Triton test showed nothing out of the ordinary. There are no unusual films on anything. Standard green algae on the glass after a few days.

I feed the fish defrosted mysis, pellets, and nori. I feed the corals using ReefEnergy A&B....

You can see my dilemma, I'm running out of ideas.....
 

rkpetersen

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I feed the fish defrosted mysis, pellets, and nori. I feed the corals using ReefEnergy A&B....

Have you tried feeding your corals phytoplankton and zooplankton? Stuff like Reef Roids, or even better, Reef Nutrition's refrigerated products like Oyster, Phyto, and Roti Feast. Food they can catch.
 

Cory

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Ive got a simiar problem. I have narrowed it down to two possiblities.

1 is the leds. Im not sure but i suspect them. Next light will be all t5s.

2 was low nutrients. I had consistant 0 no3 and 0 po4 on hanna. Thought maybe it needed to be lower. Added rowaphos. Monti turned pale. Funny thing was i did the same thing long ago with a differnent tank. Added rowaphos after 0 ppm po4. The next day everytjing starting growing like crazy. Montipora got white tips. Corraline growth. Star polyps started spreading. At the time i thought it was the super low po4 from the rowaphos. Nope. Cant be. What caused this growth i believe now is i had a large basketball size chaeto in the tank. When i put the rowaphos in it a) gave iron to it and lowered po4 more or b) caused the chaeto to expell glucose and amino acids. Im going with b. Some sort of food source.
 
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Joe Batt

Joe Batt

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Have you tried feeding your corals phytoplankton and zooplankton? Stuff like Reef Roids, or even better, Reef Nutrition's refrigerated products like Oyster, Phyto, and Roti Feast. Food they can catch.
Yup I feed Reef Roids 1x a week.....
 

rock_lobster

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Well if your backed up in a hole then dig deeper. Get a second tank and start with different gear. Completely different paramateres like low flow, T5s different water source, different chemicals and see if you can have success in this second tank with cheap sps. If so then adapt your main tank to the paramters of your second tank.
 

Rick Mathew

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Wow....a real mystery!! Three questions to help me get a bigger picture of the issue

1 ) Was there a time when the tank was doing well or has this been consistent from the time it was set up?
2 ) When one of the sps or acros dies how long is it before you add a "replacement"
3) Do they all die off at the same time or is a gradual die-off ...one or two at a time?
 

wattson

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dont anything but leave your tank alone for 2 weeks,,fill your ATO up and feed your fish..do nothing but watch and see what happens..playing with tank constantly is bad sometimes..I get the best results when i dont do water changes and stop skimming for 2 weeks...check your params and leave it be for 2 weeks and see what happens..
I do 5 gallon water change every 3-4 weeks and dose Iodide twice weekly..skimmer runs for 6-8 hours once a week
actually getting rid of leds and moving to halides and T5,,loving the results but still early,,obviously better than leds already...
 

VP616

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As someone mentioned, I would suggest Triton analysis.

Could be rusty or exposed metal somewhere?

Triton test showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Have you cross-checked your test results with another test kit or your LFS? Just to be absolutely certain your N & P values are where they really are.

Are the SPS pieces all coming from the same source?

@Rick Mathew questions were good to help get a bigger picture idea.
 
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