Good day friends, as the title states my corals are struggling and I have come up with a few thoughts as to why, but I would like you to chime in with your experiences please.
So my tank is 1 year old as of today!
It is an aio with a skimmer and some filter floss for filtration. It was started with maybe 25-30 lbs of dry Carib sea base rock and 2 20lb bags of live sand. I used turbo start I the beginning and added some pods a couple times.
Livestock consists of
1x tomini tang
1x sunrise dottyback
1x lubocks fairy wrasse
1x bicolor blenny
2x firefish just added a few days ago
1x conch
Handful of snails and hermits
Parameters are pretty consistent with phosphates being a concern at undetectable most of the time and nitrates normally at 20. No major fluctuations in alk either.
Interestingly my alk or calcium have not needed to be dosed once. I have started growing coraline and then all of a sudden it will stop and what's grown will start to turn white and dissappear. I have noticed also that sometime my alk will actually rise by itself about .5 and I have done nothing.
Anyway, I have added quite a few corals and have had only a few successes. Most anything that is sps will pretty much slowly wither away. A couple cases like this hollywood stunner seems to be hanging on but has paled out.
This montipora frag almost died but is still hanging on.
And this chalice is slowly receding like most.
I have a couple candycanes that seem to be doing well.
This green one at one point was popping heads for some reason but finally stopped.
This is not my first reef tank and I have successfully started and grown corals in tanks younger than this.
I have submitted an icp before and it came back clean. I do weekly 5 gallon water changes and also change out 1 gallon of water 5-3 times through out the week as well.
I have checked for stray voltage and that came up clear.
I got a par meter and verified that I'm not blasting corals with to much light. And running light cycle 8hrs full blast with 4 hour ramp up/down.
I used this rock on a previous build and it had the same problem, but I did start that tank with dry sand too.
Also I have pretty much no bio diversity when It comes to worms or stuff in the sand bed, so have recently tried adding some.
My thoughts a
1. The rock is maybe leaching something that is not being picked up in the icp I did.
2. There is a lack of biodiversity or biome.
3. Phosphates need raised.
4. Or I'm just being impatient and need to chill!
Please let me know what you think, and if you have had any similar experiences that could shed some light on this for me.
So my tank is 1 year old as of today!
It is an aio with a skimmer and some filter floss for filtration. It was started with maybe 25-30 lbs of dry Carib sea base rock and 2 20lb bags of live sand. I used turbo start I the beginning and added some pods a couple times.
Livestock consists of
1x tomini tang
1x sunrise dottyback
1x lubocks fairy wrasse
1x bicolor blenny
2x firefish just added a few days ago
1x conch
Handful of snails and hermits
Parameters are pretty consistent with phosphates being a concern at undetectable most of the time and nitrates normally at 20. No major fluctuations in alk either.
Interestingly my alk or calcium have not needed to be dosed once. I have started growing coraline and then all of a sudden it will stop and what's grown will start to turn white and dissappear. I have noticed also that sometime my alk will actually rise by itself about .5 and I have done nothing.
Anyway, I have added quite a few corals and have had only a few successes. Most anything that is sps will pretty much slowly wither away. A couple cases like this hollywood stunner seems to be hanging on but has paled out.
This montipora frag almost died but is still hanging on.
And this chalice is slowly receding like most.
I have a couple candycanes that seem to be doing well.
This green one at one point was popping heads for some reason but finally stopped.
This is not my first reef tank and I have successfully started and grown corals in tanks younger than this.
I have submitted an icp before and it came back clean. I do weekly 5 gallon water changes and also change out 1 gallon of water 5-3 times through out the week as well.
I have checked for stray voltage and that came up clear.
I got a par meter and verified that I'm not blasting corals with to much light. And running light cycle 8hrs full blast with 4 hour ramp up/down.
I used this rock on a previous build and it had the same problem, but I did start that tank with dry sand too.
Also I have pretty much no bio diversity when It comes to worms or stuff in the sand bed, so have recently tried adding some.
My thoughts a
1. The rock is maybe leaching something that is not being picked up in the icp I did.
2. There is a lack of biodiversity or biome.
3. Phosphates need raised.
4. Or I'm just being impatient and need to chill!
Please let me know what you think, and if you have had any similar experiences that could shed some light on this for me.