Ammonia in Red Sea Coral Pro? & ammonia issue in established tank.
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TilleysReef
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Tank is 110gallon
Randy Holmes-Farley
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The goal is to understand and stop the SPS bleaching?
Coral problems can be very difficult if they are not obviously from alk or N and P issues (usually too low or changing too fast).
IMO, a lot of our problems are potentially from pathogens such as bacteria and viruses that we have almost no useful window into.
TilleysReef
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Thanks Randy. My only plan now, if I can call it that, is just to wait it out. Just thinking out loud here considering what you and others have said, possibly a rapid change in the nutrient levels going from steady, then to overfeeding the tang, back to steady again.
Did this all appear to be happening soon after changing salts (not the Ich, obviously)?
TilleysReef
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It did. I am considering I'm doing another 50% water change back to Reef Crystals. Even if I did that and things recovered, there's only a casual subjective correlation...but, nothing I've done yet has helped. I can't see how doing that would hurt anything at the moment though.
TilleysReef
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My main concern is not doing a bunch of actions, which then could make things worse, and would make it more difficult to diagnose the issue. So far all I've done is a lot of testing, spending a week racking my brain, and the water change with CP.
I had an allergic reaction to changing salts from Tropic Marin Classic to one of the Red Sea ones. Changed back and allergy went away, stuck with the same one ever since. Could also have been coincidence, as you have noted.
TilleysReef
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This is something I had actually not considered. I know Red Sea Coral pro is manufactured by evaporating salt from the Red Sea and then adding additional minerals. Reef crystals is synthetic. Possibly the corals could just be exposed to some trace elements from CP they had never been exposed to before.
My experience was well before aquarium ICP testing, even then I'm not sure that would give any reliable insight, but maybe. I'd probably double check your salinity and temperature calibration and revert to your old salt, see if things improve.
TilleysReef
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Temp and salinity have both been checked with two different devices and both calibrated. Might just start with a 50% water change again back to Reef Crystals as you mentioned. I don't see a downside to it. Either things will change or they will stay the same.
A little fresh activated carbon would seem prudent also.
TilleysReef
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I immediately did that for 5 days as soon as I saw this start to happen in case of a toxin, no effect or slowdown on the decline/unhappiness in coral.
littlefoxx
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Your title says you use RS coral pro salt???
A week ago:
Today:
Thank for your help guys. (The zoas and gonis were more open just after the 50% water change and are now closed again.)
TilleysReef
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I switched to Red Sea CP from Reef Crystals. Please read my initial post for an explanation of this.
noticed something not tried here:
adapting lighting power and duration to your new water, that is required when my super old nano changes water brands and without that move, things will bleach. but if I drop the whites out, and lower the blues down from where it's at now, I can change to any brand without problem and the ramp back is over 10-12 days.
that trick works so well in bleach prevention during water brand changes I built work threads off it collecting tank save patterns.
you should drop your light levels because that's always safe to try, re ramp slowly while spot feeding corals with the flow off at times. just during bring-back/rehab time then you can back off later when the flesh has expanded and they're feeding better.
use simply less lighting, more spot feed, more tank export for the next 2 mos you'd be surprised what that can do for minor coral challenges. any of those moves cannot harm a perfectly normal reef, which is why they're best to try.
www.reef2reef.com
ironically, you might benefit from adding cycling ammonia to your system in addition to the above
it's benefitting my tank, the addition of ammonium chloride as coral food.
we can save that till later after stepped-up feeding with light power reduction.
*in some systems that can't control light level, we used black electrical tape cut into thin strips on their outside glass lid (for covered systems) and that obstruction reduced light penetrance.
simple sunburning drives lots of bleaching events in my opinion, preventable sunburns.
adapting lighting power and duration to your new water, that is required when my super old nano changes water brands and without that move, things will bleach. but if I drop the whites out, and lower the blues down from where it's at now, I can change to any brand without problem and the ramp back is over 10-12 days.
that trick works so well in bleach prevention during water brand changes I built work threads off it collecting tank save patterns.
you should drop your light levels because that's always safe to try, re ramp slowly while spot feeding corals with the flow off at times. just during bring-back/rehab time then you can back off later when the flesh has expanded and they're feeding better.
use simply less lighting, more spot feed, more tank export for the next 2 mos you'd be surprised what that can do for minor coral challenges. any of those moves cannot harm a perfectly normal reef, which is why they're best to try.
Reef Tank CPR - power outage biology, crash arrest, and recovery
Team Don‘t add bottled bacteria to the display during crash arrest as the cycle bacteria aren’t killed in still water. There are times where bottled bacteria can lower ammonia in fish holding containers especially if travel or transport is occurring, but by rinsing these displays out vs dosing...
www.reef2reef.com
ironically, you might benefit from adding cycling ammonia to your system in addition to the above
it's benefitting my tank, the addition of ammonium chloride as coral food.
we can save that till later after stepped-up feeding with light power reduction.
*in some systems that can't control light level, we used black electrical tape cut into thin strips on their outside glass lid (for covered systems) and that obstruction reduced light penetrance.
simple sunburning drives lots of bleaching events in my opinion, preventable sunburns.
Tilleys I thought you were being really patient and clearly stating all the details considering how challenging it is to work with people's web post takeaways/post semantics
but it's all worth it, all these reefers have strong means and methods
show some of the strongest corals in pics, let's see which ones haven't been affected so far post a standing back pic so we can see some other corals/curious to see
but it's all worth it, all these reefers have strong means and methods
show some of the strongest corals in pics, let's see which ones haven't been affected so far post a standing back pic so we can see some other corals/curious to see
TilleysReef
Community Member
Thanks very much. I did set the lighting to acclimatization mode 3 days ago, I did forget to mention this since it apparently had no effect. (I have 3 Kessil a360x) But your post is certainly good for thought and good to know, something I did more intuitively rather than having any qualitative or quantitative data to make the move, but based on your experience with that, I certainly appreciate the post and the experiences you've had!!noticed something not tried here:
adapting lighting power and duration to your new water, that is required when my super old nano changes water brands and without that move, things will bleach. but if I drop the whites out, and lower the blues down from where it's at now, I can change to any brand without problem and the ramp back is over 10-12 days.
that trick works so well in bleach prevention during water brand changes I built work threads off it collecting tank save patterns.
you should drop your light levels because that's always safe to try, re ramp slowly while spot feeding corals with the flow off at times. just during bring-back/rehab time then you can back off later when the flesh has expanded and they're feeding better.
use simply less lighting, more spot feed, more tank export for the next 2 mos you'd be surprised what that can do for minor coral challenges. any of those moves cannot harm a perfectly normal reef, which is why they're best to try.
Reef Tank CPR - power outage biology, crash arrest, and recovery
Team Don‘t add bottled bacteria to the display during crash arrest as the cycle bacteria aren’t killed in still water. There are times where bottled bacteria can lower ammonia in fish holding containers especially if travel or transport is occurring, but by rinsing these displays out vs dosing...
ironically, you might benefit from adding cycling ammonia to your system in addition to the above
it's benefitting my tank, the addition of ammonium chloride as coral food.
we can save that till later after stepped-up feeding with light power reduction.
*in some systems that can't control light level, we used black electrical tape cut into thin strips on their outside glass lid (for covered systems) and that obstruction reduced light penetrance.
simple sunburning drives lots of bleaching events in my opinion, preventable sunburns.
littlefoxx
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Yes I read it, just verifying the salt. I was having nutrient issues and had coral dieoff. My LFS guy thinks the salt might have been an issue with higher nutrient levela and suggested I switch salts. Might not be your issue but I figured I would mention it just in case
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