Baffled with acro deaths

BlueDevil · Aug 24, 2016

Over the past week or so several of my acro frags have been going downhill to the point of total loss in a few and I cannot seem to figure out what might be the cause so I thought I'd post here to see if anyone has any suggestions on things I might have missed.

Tank has not been up and running for close to 4 months. All my parameters have been stable. Following is the test from this evening:

Ammonia & Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 2
pH: 7.98-8.17
PO4: 0.02
Alk: 9 dkh
Ca: 420
Mg: 1350
SG: 1.025

I am running carbon and GFO via a reactor. Skimmer on 24/7. Plenty of in tank flow via one MP40 and one Jebao RW4.

I have not changed anything in the last month or so in the tank. About the only thing that is changing right now is my lights are being ramped up. They are currently at 40% Actinic and 17% Full Spectrum. I am bumping my full spectrums 1% a day every week day. The PAR that the majority of the corals are getting is between 3000 and 325.

I completely lost two frags to RTN in the past couple of days. One granulosa frag was fine yesterday and a total white skeleton this evening.

I have not seen any obvious signs of bugs or parasites on the sticks. I have 4 other SPS frags that are still colored up well and seem to be doing well. All my zoas and euphyllia are very happy. The acans have also receded lately but are still colored. They don't even open much during feeding. The two baby anemones are puffy and seem to be fine.

I am a total loss what might be causing this. Anyone have any thoughts? Something I might have missed?

Antics · Aug 24, 2016

When was the last water change? Any chance the water could be bad? Temperature swings? Have you checked your pumps, powerheads, algae magnets, etc etc to see if a seal is bad and you're rusting into the tank?

Mark75 · Aug 24, 2016

You are in the same boat I am Yash,....a young tank that can be difficult to keep sensitive corals such as SPS, and that may have something to do with your deaths.

Your parameters are perfect, but do they swing, especially ALK.?
I have seen RTN from my corals when I stripped the water to fast with GFO. I no longer run GFO.
How is your SPS growth/color? A starving SPS will seem fine for sometime(other than little to no growth and poor color) and when its stored energy finally runs out RTN for what seems like no reason.

Sorry for your troubles,..hopefully someone who knows more than me will chime in!

seased · Aug 24, 2016

What brand of test kits are you using for alk and calcium? Have you checked them against another kit?

BlueDevil · Aug 24, 2016

Antics said:
When was the last water change? Any chance the water could be bad? Temperature swings? Have you checked your pumps, powerheads, algae magnets, etc etc to see if a seal is bad and you're rusting into the tank?

I'm a stickler for maintenance and clean the glass and do a 10% water change every weekend. I checked my Apex log and don't see any temp swings either. As far as the water goes I really can't say for sure. I buy it at the LFS (have been for several years). All pumps and powerheads are less than 4 months old. I just cleaned them out a couple of weeks back and didn't see any damage to them.

BlueDevil · Aug 24, 2016

seased said:
What brand of test kits are you using for alk and calcium? Have you checked them against another kit?

I am using the Red Sea master kit for Alk, Ca and Mg. It has plenty of shelf life left on it. I don't have any other kits but might not be a bad idea to pick a couple up to cross check my numbers.

BlueDevil · Aug 24, 2016

Mark75 said:
You are in the same boat I am Yash,....a young tank that can be difficult to keep sensitive corals such as SPS, and that may have something to do with your deaths.

Your parameters are perfect, but do they swing, especially ALK.?
I have seen RTN from my corals when I stripped the water to fast with GFO. I no longer run GFO.
How is your SPS growth/color? A starving SPS will seem fine for sometime(other than little to no growth and poor color) and when its stored energy finally runs out RTN for what seems like no reason.

Sorry for your troubles,..hopefully someone who knows more than me will chime in!

My Alk runs a pretty tight range. The lowest it goes is 8.6 and highest I have seen it hit (once) is 9.8.
New tank syndrome was one of my thoughts too but I'm baffled that some of them are doing great while others not so much. One of my newest additions (a Miami orchid) has been doing amazing. Fully encrusted plug and has already started new growth off the plug.

DRoth335 · Aug 24, 2016

Did you try dipping any of the RTN'ing ones in Bayer (or something that will kill pests) and look to see if there are any AEFW's in the dip? I've never dealt with them personally but a friend had them almost wipe out all of his acros before he figured out it was them as he couldn't see them on the frags.

BlueDevil · Aug 24, 2016

DRoth335 said:
Did you try dipping any of the RTN'ing ones in Bayer (or something that will kill pests) and look to see if there are any AEFW's in the dip? I've never dealt with them personally but a friend had them almost wipe out all of his acros before he figured out it was them as he couldn't see them on the frags.

I have not done that thought I could try that. I do dip all my new frags in Bayer before they do in the tank and have not seen anything come off them. It also has been at least a month before I added anything new to to the tank.

Mark75 · Aug 24, 2016

A 1.2 swing in Alk. in a fast enough time frame is enough to really bother SPS!

BlueDevil · Aug 24, 2016

Mark75 said:
A 1.2 swing in Alk. in a fast enough time frame is enough to really both SPS!

I don't have hard data to back this up but the most I think my Alk has swung in a 24 hr period has been 0.5 dkh. That is when I was trying to bump my pH up a super slow kalk drip

Macdaddynick1 · Aug 24, 2016

3000 par? Or 300. Try dosing aminos ,

BlueDevil · Aug 24, 2016

Macdaddynick1 said:
3000 par? Or 300. Try dosing aminos ,

Whoops. That should have read 300 to 325. I am dosing Nyos Aminos - 2 drops daily.

CastAway · Aug 25, 2016

I aways think of household aerosols, pesticides, cleaning products & so on, although I never read much about it.

Sorry Yash. [emoji53]

fragit · Aug 25, 2016

My thoughts were starvation too. But with your Nitrates and Phosphates where they are and dosing aminos you should be good. Are you running a refugium?, do you have any soft corals in your tank and how closely packed are your acros? When was the last time you changed out your carbon and GFO?

BlueDevil · Aug 25, 2016

fragit said:
My thoughts were starvation too. But with your Nitrates and Phosphates where they are and dosing aminos you should be good. Are you running a refugium?, do you have any soft corals in your tank and how closely packed are your acros? When was the last time you changed out your carbon and GFO?

I am not running a fuge. I do have some softies. They are spread out around the tank and nowhere near any of the sticks. Acros are all frags and are spread out too.

I change my carbon out weekly and GFO every other week.

fragit · Aug 25, 2016

BlueDevil said:
I am not running a fuge. I do have some softies. They are spread out around the tank and nowhere near any of the sticks. Acros are all frags and are spread out too.

I change my carbon out weekly and GFO every other week.

You said your water is coming from the LFS right? Are they having any issues like that?