Hey everyone, I have a 5.5 yr old system. The system has been on auto pilot for well over a couple years now, in terms of precise stability, steady and equal growth throughout the entire tank. In the month of December I started to notice some alkalinity swings from the trident. The month prior I ran out of GFO and procrastinated on buying more. This led my phosphates to go from 0.1 -.16 to maxing out the ULR ppb reader flashing 200+ ppb which is .6+.
After digging into the alkalinity issue it turns out something was up with my trident. My trident was reading anywhere from 7.5 to 8.8 throughout two or three days. It would constantly bounce around from different numbers within that range. Unfortunately I stopped my backup testing because I got two complacent. When I took out the Hannah the Hannah would read approximately .5 to 1 PPM higher than the Trident was. So I'm going to say that I've had some big alkalinity swings. My set target is 8.3 alk. Historically the tank would consume 110-120ml of alk per 24 hrs. During the "swings" those dos was reading 120-150ml per 24 hrs. My trident controls the dosing.
I first noticed some burnt tips on a couple of colonies. Then I started to notice fading on others. Big patches of flesh missing from underneath colonies, or around the bases of their trunks. Then it just started to get worse from there over the past 2 weeks I went from seeing one or two to almost the entire tank now. Each morning there's more and more damage that you'll see. Flesh is just peeling off of the acros from the tips, from the base of the encrusting, and the underside of the acros.
I added some GFO and working to get the number down currently sitting at 125 ppb. Nitrates are around 40 to 45 which is pretty normal.
The LPS show no signs outside of a jawbreaker colony, where one mushroom is bright orange almost as if it had light burn.
The only other thing that I noticed over the past month was a massive jump in ORP. Normally my ORP is around 325 to 350. It jumped to an average of 450 to 475.
Ironically even with the extremely high phosphate I have almost no algea growth outside of some bubble algae, and a few small patches of green hair which is also pretty normal for me. So basically we even with this massive jump I see no additional algea growth.
Colors on the acros have also declined, with many losing multicolor and just going to a solid color. This is normal for instability issues I believe. The hard part to digest here is how much of a decline is acros are taking. At this point I've lost three colonies, and with the rate of new damage I'm seeing every morning I think there are going to be more coming.
I have some pictures attached, curious to see if there's a such thing as phosphate poisoning. In addition curious to hear thoughts on how quickly I should try to get those phosphates down and why with such a large jump there's not much alge growth.
Reagents for all checkers are new, I've also opened up multiple boxes in case one batch was bad. And I've also calibrated as to verify a checker was not off on calibration.
Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and advice on the steps to take.
After digging into the alkalinity issue it turns out something was up with my trident. My trident was reading anywhere from 7.5 to 8.8 throughout two or three days. It would constantly bounce around from different numbers within that range. Unfortunately I stopped my backup testing because I got two complacent. When I took out the Hannah the Hannah would read approximately .5 to 1 PPM higher than the Trident was. So I'm going to say that I've had some big alkalinity swings. My set target is 8.3 alk. Historically the tank would consume 110-120ml of alk per 24 hrs. During the "swings" those dos was reading 120-150ml per 24 hrs. My trident controls the dosing.
I first noticed some burnt tips on a couple of colonies. Then I started to notice fading on others. Big patches of flesh missing from underneath colonies, or around the bases of their trunks. Then it just started to get worse from there over the past 2 weeks I went from seeing one or two to almost the entire tank now. Each morning there's more and more damage that you'll see. Flesh is just peeling off of the acros from the tips, from the base of the encrusting, and the underside of the acros.
I added some GFO and working to get the number down currently sitting at 125 ppb. Nitrates are around 40 to 45 which is pretty normal.
The LPS show no signs outside of a jawbreaker colony, where one mushroom is bright orange almost as if it had light burn.
The only other thing that I noticed over the past month was a massive jump in ORP. Normally my ORP is around 325 to 350. It jumped to an average of 450 to 475.
Ironically even with the extremely high phosphate I have almost no algea growth outside of some bubble algae, and a few small patches of green hair which is also pretty normal for me. So basically we even with this massive jump I see no additional algea growth.
Colors on the acros have also declined, with many losing multicolor and just going to a solid color. This is normal for instability issues I believe. The hard part to digest here is how much of a decline is acros are taking. At this point I've lost three colonies, and with the rate of new damage I'm seeing every morning I think there are going to be more coming.
I have some pictures attached, curious to see if there's a such thing as phosphate poisoning. In addition curious to hear thoughts on how quickly I should try to get those phosphates down and why with such a large jump there's not much alge growth.
Reagents for all checkers are new, I've also opened up multiple boxes in case one batch was bad. And I've also calibrated as to verify a checker was not off on calibration.
Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and advice on the steps to take.
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