Why are my corals dying? Help!

[QuinnLee512]

I've had my RSR 350 for a little over a year. Over the last month I've had torches, alvepora, frogspawn, Duncans, gonis, etc.. die on me. I feed twice a day with benepellets. My phosphates fluctuates wildly between .04 to over .3. My nitrates is always low so I dose Neo-Nitro to keep it around the 5-10ppm range. I would love to be able to lower my phosphates but nothing's working. I'm using chaeto, rowaphos, and lanthanum. I don't even know how my phosphates goes from .08 to .37 in an afternoon. Any help to save my remaining corals would really be appreciated.

 

[Tahoe61]

I would pull the rowaphos and stop lanthanum. How are you measuring phosphate and nitrate?

 

[Glenner’sreef]

How old is your tank? Would you say it’s “established”?

 

[QuinnLee512]

It's 1.5 years old. It's mature enough to have coraline algae. I test using Hanna checkers. Also with all this phosphate I don't have green hair algae issues. Everything looks normal except my corals suffering.

 

[QuinnLee512]

I have already stopped the lanthanum. Currently growing chaeto and using rowaphos in a nyos reactor.

 

[Red_Beard]

It sounds like something else is going on then. What else can you tell us about the tank. Waterchanges dosing, other test numers etc. You check for rusty components or swollen magnets?

 

[QuinnLee512]

This is my current Trident readings. Ph between 7.8 - 8. I don't do water changes. I dose all for reef. The only thing I need to export is phosphate since I have low nitrates to the point that I have to dose it.

 

[Lavey29]

What is your par?

 

[Red_Beard]

If that were my tank, I would be getting ready for a 20% water change. I feel you though on the nitrates, i am dosing multiple times a day (ammonium though not neo nitro. But i have used that in the past) and my nitrates tested at .5ppm today. There are some things that dont show up on our teat kits that a good couple waterchanges can take care of for us, and that would be my recommendation here. That and go over all your equipment carefully and look for anything out of line.

 

[DonTavo27]

First that came to thought is rust, second, would be feeding coral, LRS reef frenzy has worked wonders for some of my dying coral in the last month.

 

[QuinnLee512]

I will occasionally feed AB plus. So high phosphates won't kill corals?

 

[Red_Beard]

Not lps for sure. I had po4 .5 -.6 ppm and my hammers and lobo were super happy. Not that i would aim for those numbers, just that they can tolerate a pretty wide range as long as that range doesnt swing all over all the time.

 

[Matt L]

I would test lighting, it may be too intense. I assume you are feeding fish twice a day, and not the coral. A fish list may help too. When all else fails, I do a large water change of over 50% then retest and adjust parameters as required.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

What jumps out at me is that you don't do water changes, when is the last time the water was changed? We can only test 5 or 6 parameters, but there is much more in the water that we can't test. Changing the water removes some of the things we can't test and replenish some things we can't test. To me, not changing water is a very advanced technique.

Also wonder about the lighting and flow... if corals are growing for the past year, lighting and flow might need to be adjusted to accommodate the coral growth.

 

[exnisstech]

I will occasionally feed AB plus. So high phosphates won't kill corals?

Last Sunday in this tank my PO4 maxed out Hanna ULR tester at 0.9 so its something higher than that. My experience has been too low is much worse than too high but TBO I don't know what is too high but it's much more than what usually gets recommend 0.05 -0.03 for sure. This tank has been running a bit over a year and has zero nuisance algae.

A few coral close ups. Coral came from a previous tank that I broke down when I set this one up.

This is the previous tank I broke down. It ran over 6 years with PO4 levels 0.3 - 0.6+ and coral thrived.

This acro colony grew in the old tank from a little frag even tho my PO4 levels were too high according to many. It did RTN a couple of months after the move but it was the only piece that perished so unrelated to nutrient levels IMO

This tank has been up for just over 2 years. I dose AFR but I still do small weekly water changes of 2g, TV is 65g. I've always had to dose nitrates and phosphates to keep them off of zero. A couple of months ago I started experimenting with ammonium dosing (Randy has a thread on it) and am finally seeing some decent test numbers NO3 9 and PO4 0.05 when they typically would be at or near zero.

I suppose I could have just said I would stop adding all that stuff to reduce PO4 start doing 10% weekly water changes and maybe look into ammonia dosing but I wanted to give examples why I do not believe your PO4 levels are the cause of coral deaths. Rapid changes in levels can cause problems but IME constant levels often considered too high are not a problem.
As far as high levels of N and P driving nuisance algae like many people say I do not find that to be true in my tanks. I've had one tank that I battled GHA in for over a year and that tank ran chronically low N and P.

 

[Glenner’sreef]

Is your tank a mixed reef? Chemical warfare between healthy soft corals can’t be seen or tested for. With no water changes and possibly no carbon, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

 

[Hemmbone20]

I think if you started doing weekly water changes you’d see a massive improvement. Just start doing that until the problem corrects itself then re-assess.

 

[DonTavo27]

every tank is different, it would help by maybe starting a build thread, and tracking everything you do to the tank, inhabitants, etc…

I haven’t performed a water change in six months, also dose AFR, and don’t run a skimmer, I just top off when my water gets low enough.
every coral in my tanks looks better then ever.
It could be water quality, lighting, rust, or and over stocked tank.

 

[DonTavo27]

This has always been one of my favorite videos on phospate

 

[QuinnLee512]

Most of my corals looks happy. For now anyways. This frogspawn on the same rock as my torches is looking rough.