Underwhelming corals- what to change?

[LesPoissons]

Hey all,
Ive had my 220g tank running for 4 years but I still feel like a total newbie.
I have a variety of corals that are growing slowly but the colors are disappointing and I never see their polyps extend. My mushrooms dont get larger than a quarter and then seem to disappear.
At this point I feed my tank 2-4 times a day depending.
I do not feed the corals.
Water changes every 2-3 weeks
I run 12 hrs black box lights with whites at 1% and blues at 45-70% depending on who they are over.
I do have a refugium but I recently used Vibrant to deal with a stubborn algae issue and it wiped my chaeto out.
My parameters generally run:
ca: 450
alk: 10ish
mag: 1500
nitrate: 10ish
phos- 0-.4 (Phos usually is at 0 on hanna checker, I just got some NeoPhos to elevate it a bit but recently due to algae/dino die off the phos is at .3 so im trying to bring it down and maintain around 0.03)

So what steps would you take? Change the lighting? Feed the corals? Change the flow? Change a parameter?
How long would you give to see if the change is working before trying something new?
I attached a few pics. The corals seem healthy and are growing.... but just blah coloration.

 

[0utworld]

How often do you do water changes and do you dose any trace elements?

 

[LesPoissons]

Water changes are every 2-3 weeks. I dont dose anything at this point other than alk to keep it stable.

 

[Neoalchemist]

Dinos, if they get to large numbers have a pretty strong effect on coral coloration which can take months to recover. Also the low nutient contitions that come along with the dinos also lead to drab coloration and slow growth. Lack of polyps extension is also a dino casualty that can take some time to reverse.
Right now the best thing to do is to maintian your no3 and po4 at around no3 10 -15 and po4 at .05 to .08. Be careful about dosing trace elements or coral foods like aminos. They may fuel a dino return. Which would be an obvious setback. This is the residual damage from a dino outbreak.

 

[LesPoissons]

Okay that is good information but prior to dinos I never had great growth, coloration or polyp extention etc. Assuming that is from the lack of nutrients available prior to dinos- does low nutrient availabilty affect polyp extention?
So basically just leave everything alone and keep it stable for a few months and then see?

 

[Neoalchemist]

Low nutrients can and will inhibit pe but so can elevated nutrients. Low nutrients can cause corals to be "thin skinned". The corals dont have enough building blocks to grow thick flesh. The result can be seen in successful ultra low nutrient tanks, where you see that the corals are pretty pastelles, no browns or even deep colors. These systems are on the razors edge of starvation. Your system has been swinging around quite a bit. So you seem to be seeing both ends of the spectrum. The dinos really take thier toll.
One of the most common pieces of advise in the reefing world is "don't chase numbers", but tanks that experiance a dino outbreak are the exeption. Dino tank owners absolutely need to closely monitor both po4 and no3 for a long period of time after the fight. Some even for the life of the tank.
Maybe bring onboard some lanthanum chloride for fast (careful!) po4 removal and conscider seting up a more measured and scheduled way to dose no3 or po4 until the tank settles down.

 

[Neoalchemist]

Can you list your tank inhabitants?

 

[Neoalchemist]

One way to speed up recovery is to use kalkwasser in your topoff. The effect can be dramatic and in a few short days (really overnight) you will likely start to see better polyp extension.

 

[LesPoissons]

I’m loosing my mind with the Dino’s. I did a water change yesterday after 3 weeks (before that did a blackout and the phos increased to .4) now this afternoon it looks like Dino’s came right back?
I dose alk but the calcium and mag stay within good areas with water changes. Was the water change what caused the Dino’s to come back? Argh!!!

 

[Duncan Tse]

May have missed it but are you using a rodi filter with 0 TDS output?

 

[LesPoissons]

My tanks inhabitants:
Cuc- cerith trochus and Nerite snails, hermits 3 urchins, a couple fuzzy chitons, a small conch- if he’s still alive, scarlet/cleaner/banded shrimp
Fish: hippo yellow and bristle tooth tangs, emperor and flame angels, dog faced puffer, 2 rabbit fish, 3 chromis, 2 cardinals, 2 anthias, royal gramma, 5 clowns, mandarin goby, chalk basslet, 2 stag horn damsels.
Corals- some acros, mushrooms, birds nest, hammer, torch, bubbles, stylos, favities, Duncan’s, psammacora, months
And 2 rainbow nems but I haven’t seen them since the black out.

 

[LesPoissons]

May have missed it but are you using a rodi filter with 0 TDS output?

Yes only RODi from 5 stage spectrapure unit

 

[ReefLab]

sorry to hear. Ive been dealing with Dinos also and dosing 1mL/10 gallons of H2O2 at night and the same of Microbacter7 in the morning has greatly diminished their population. They still grow back but it has definitely made a difference.
Ill be dosing silicates soon for a more (hopefully permanent) as well as adding more photo and pods.

There are options but from what I've learned on this forum is that Dinos require patience and persistence and while you will never get rid of them completely, you can outcompete them (once their population is reduced).

 

[Crustaceon]

I have a way of dealing with dinos that most people probably won’t consider. Let your nutrients rise and then carbon dose with the additon of beneficial bacteria. I’ve long theorized the appearance of dinos is due to them finding water parameters that allows them to out-compete beneficial bacteria. When we carbon dose at low nutrients, bacteria blooms and then dies off enmasse, which then provides a great source of nutrients for dinos because there isn’t enough bacteria in the system to compete. The balance is thrown off. Now if dinos have a foothold and nutrients rise, bacteria will still be outcompeted to an extent, until other things like hair algae take hold, which is what we don’t want. But if a carbon source and additional bacteria is added to the display that has let’s say over 5ppm nitrates and over .5 ppm phosphates, IMO the bacteria seems to absorb nutrients and multiplies faster than dinos can handle. I’ve had dinos, caused a slightly visible bacteria bloom by adding a little vodka and seachem clarity and when it cleared, the dinos were gone. I’ve always had some nitrates and p04 in the system ever since and dinos haven’t come back in over two years. I believe the goal is to replace one critter with another and that pretty much always needs to be bacteria.

 

[LesPoissons]

I was adding Vibrant for a time but it didnt seem to have any effect on dinos. So I will maintain a higher phos and nitrates and +/- feed corals for a while and give it a few months to see what happens. Frustrating.
Thank you all for the advice!