I noticed in your one pic your coral was covered in algae. How old is your tank and have you been battling Dino's which can cause stress. I had a similar issue when I had a dino breakout and my only defense was to remove my sand bed and add a UV sterilizer. All is good now.
Why are my corals dying
- Thread starter BrettE
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OP
OP
Roger, I'll continue heading up to 1.025 or 1.026. I had previously used 1.025 since that's what my LFS uses, and I figured it would make acclimation easier.
8-9 was my goal, apparently it. got away from me, and I wasn't paying it enough attention. I also figured that a change over 2 months was slow enough that no one would mind.
They're XR15 G6. Half are the Pro versions and half are Blue version. The Blues are 100% for all colors, and the Pros are 100% on the blues, and 60% on the white/red/greens. The schedule intensity is set to 65% (which gives about 100 micro mol/m^2/s PAR, and I'm using acclimation mode to slowly move from my current low levels to that higher level.
Would I be better moving the corals up on the rock work to get higher PAR? I'm thinking that turning up the lights will also contribute to more algae/whatever growth in the tank, and if I just move the frags up, they'll get more light, but all the algae won't.
Ok, I'll try turning up the flow, and see how that goes.
I have a Vectra M2 return, and it's running at 75%. I feel like a lot of my flow is maybe from that. Should I adjust that at all if I turn of the MP40s?
It is fairly new. It's about 4 months old.
I do. I started feeding reefroids 2x per week. I mix about 1/2 Tsp of it with some water, and use a pipet to feed it to the candy cane, blasto, acan, zoas, and torch. My shrimp also love a little nip of it.
I'm also broadcast feeding what I feel is a lot. I have an Avast Plank, and it runs for 25 seconds 5 times a day. It has a mixture of Avast Reef Jersey and TDO pellets in there. I figured that with the Nitrate and Phosphate on the low end, I could feed them that much.
The tank currently houses 2 clownfish, 1 firefish, 1 fox face, 1 royal grama, 2 cleaner shrimp, ~5 astrea, ~5 turbo, ~5 ceriths, 6 trochus snails, and 1 small tuxedo urchin.
I'm running a reef mat currently, because I love how well it keeps the water clean. I figured that it would also help remove uneaten food.
I have a skimmer, but as I mentioned, I have it running w/o the cup currently.
Since my Nitrate and Phosphate have been low, I haven't been doing water changes either. I have a DOS setup for autowater changes, so it's easy to start them again, but I thought that would just lower my nutrients even further.
They are. Once a week a so, I give them a blast with a turkey baster and give them some gentle shakes to knock off the algae. I'm not sure if it's dynos, cyano, or what. I'm not entirely sure how to positively identify them. A microscope seems handy, but I haven't found and good references yet to help me ID what I see under there. A lot of the threads I find asking for microscope IDs don't seem to end with any IDs. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places for those.
OP
OP
I think so. The Alk is climbing, as I dose, so I'm not positive. The Calcium seems to be holding steady as I dose, so it's going somewhere. Phosphate is low-ish? It hit zero for a while, but it's coming back some.
OP
OP
Worth nothing on the phosphate results: the values that are 0.10 and 0.20 are likely from a Spin Touch, which isn't terribly precise for phosphate. The values that have a non-zero digit in the 100th's place are from a Hanna Checker. It was 0.12 ppm when I measured yesterday with my Hanna Checker.
blakeu21
Active Member
Those numbers sound about right I keep my tank higher on the phosphate with about 0.1. How long were the phosphates at 0. I ask because phosphate is a critical component of photosynthesis and the corals won’t be going though it without phosphates. The alk consumption seems a bit odd. How often do you dose? Maybe try missing a day or 2 of dosing and see if the alk goes down or stays the same. This will indicate if the corals are consuming alk.
OP
OP
I dos throughout the day using a Neptune DOS dosing pump. I had been dosing 20 mL/day. I dropped it to 10 mL per day. I've thought about a Trident to help monitory Alk, Ca, and Mg, but I'm not totally sold yet. I like the idea of more measurements to make it easier to ID trends earlier. They're kind of expensive though, and I'm not totally sure it's worth it over just buying something like a Spin Touch to make it quicker and easy to test everything (except maybe phosphate, which would need to be done separately with a more precise test).
OP
OP
For sure. I'm using acclimation mode to bring them up higher over the next week or so. My understanding is that increasing too suddenly is also not good.
Lavey29
10K Club member
Mine were at 70% and corals declined. I increased 1% per day over 30 days to 100% and corals thrive now. Use the AB plus setting. You don't want to much white or you will get algae growth. Corals don't need white light. It's only for our viewing pleasure.
My tank is half your size and I run my MP40s at 28%. You will need at least 50% intensity with your MP40s.
OP
OP
I upped the MP40s to 50% this morning. So far, the snails haven't blown away, so that's great!
Re: white light: I've read that. Perhaps I'll reduce my white lights. I like to see the colors of my fish though. But perhaps running blue-er for a while until things are more established would be good?
Lavey29
10K Club member
The AB plus setting has enough white for viewing and you can tweak it slightly if you need more for your astetics.
Ok this is my honest opinion. YOUR TANK IS TOO NEW! (No good bacteria) Stop fiddling with stuff and let it settle/mature on its own. First you start with zoas and GSP if that survives than you can move on with the LPS.
I wish you luck but looks like it will be an expansive LPS lesson.
I wish you luck but looks like it will be an expansive LPS lesson.
OP
OP
You are probably right. Luckily most of the stuff that's dying (so far) wasn't too expensive. If my torch starts looking sad, that will suck, but perhaps I'll have enough time he could at least be re-homed to someone that could keep him alive.
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