Help and opinions please - ?crash in the making

[Alex7845]

Hi

I can feel things are not going in the right direction, a bit worse every day so asking for any help or ideas as i really dont know what is going on

I have a 260L tank with a ~ 100 L sump - 2* Red sea LED
Red sea skimmer
Running 3 part + Red sea colors (trace elements, iron, K, iodine etc ... 4 bottles, 2ml / day each from a pump, this has remained stable)

+ NoPox - had been running Vibrant and i stopped about 6-8 weeks ago and started a chaeto refugium in the sump about 2 weeks after the last Vibrant dose.

things had been running quite nicely in the last months
parameters stable around the following, and no recent major swings
Salinity 1026
Alk 9.6
Calcium 420
Mg 1350
K+ 420
Nitrate 0 (have never measured anything else than 0, LFS and others told me its because of turf algea - now i guessed it is the refugium, maybe)
PO4 0.07 - always hovering around 0.1 and below

I have 4 anemonefish, 1 blenny, 1 bangai, 1 australian strippie (newish, havent seen him bother the corals)
couple starfish, many snails

corals i have a few SPS - mostly montipora and birds nests - those look all happy
i have a nice collection of goniopora (my favorite corals) - and these are the first that started looking bad - some of them had been closing for a day or 2 then reopening ... but now it has been one of them closed for 2 weeks, and the others slowly following and closing to not reopen
i have many zoanthids - and some species, not all, have some of their buttons closed, this happened a bit later than the zoas
i have a large crispa anemone, that has always lived in the same spot in the middle for the last 3 years, and is now looking unhappy and today it is closed (used to close for a day or 2 about every few weeks, but i am worried because it follows the rest and the whole thing is looking bad)
a largeish clam, super happy
some zoas remain very nice
Torch semi closed
and the duncan looks happy as ever

So, what may have changed recently:
- added the chaeto 1 month ago- i have not found anywhere on the internet anything about chaeto releasing toxins, but i have been wondering if it could be that
i inspected it, and could not see any obvious pests
it has grown by about 50% in that time - initially it was lit 24/7 (because i didnt have a timer), now i freaked out and only light it 12/24 - thinking of just removing it, should i ?

I thought it may be outstripping nutrients, but some corals very sensitive to food such as the duncan are very happy

- the light for the chaeto, a small led panel i bought from the LFS has a brushed metal stick to hold it, about 4-5 cm of it were in the water, now removed - could it be due to rust ? but then should it be SPS suffering more than LPS ?

- feeding - 6 weeks ago we had covid (OMG, wasnt mild, the fatigue was so horrible - and i am vaccinated) and i changed from target feeding to broadcast feeding because i was so tired.
i thought it could be missing on food, but then why would the duncan still look so happy, and why would the anemone start to look bad ?

- water - i had always been running natural sea water that i buy from the LFS - we had major floods here in south east queensland, and they could not get water, so i am buying their pre made red sea blue since then (they sell to many people, so probably would know if any issues)

so, things getting worse, in the last week i changed 40L then 80L of water, cleaned all the dirt, the sump, the back, etc
put a new bag of activated charcoal when i saw the metal bit hanging in the water
restarted target feeding in case they just needed more

but things keep getting slowly worse

any ideas, please let me know

also should i bin the chaeto ?

thanks team

Alex





few pictures for context
see the zoas on the backwall, they were growing like a weed - half the polyps are closed now

there is usually an anemone coming off this rock - note the sps and duncan are happy

pink goni on the left - all closed

2 goni closed on the back left and right, one semi closed on the front

 

[Tankkeepers]

Looks like you bottomed out your nutrients

Yes It always tested at 0 before but there was still enoff to make everything happy then you added more nitrate remover that out competes coral easy and are now starving your tank

Remove cheto and go back to what was working before this happened

 

[Tankkeepers]

Also it looks like that one is melting if so remove immediately and add carbon or it'll take the rest of the tank

And melting is a sign of bottomed out nutrients

 

[Tankkeepers]

Coral neither like water to dirty or yo clean

It actually perfers almost pristine water with alot of non dissolved organics to feed to

 

[Tankkeepers]

Another sign of bottomed out nutrients is zoa or paly polyps will shrink in size

Shrooms and some other coral will melt before this happens

Also those numbers look like the back of the red sea container is that an actual test or a guess based on that chart

 

[Tankkeepers]

And your LFS is right about the turf is the reason you show 0

I assume you added the cheto to try and kill the turf

This was wrong

Add a aglgie turf scrubber and give the turf algie a better home out of sight and over time it will move to that location keeping the balance you had before but out of sight so not an eye sore

 

[Alex7845]

Hi and thanks for the reply

- numbers are tested, salifert tests apart from PO4 is hannah, and salinity is with a refractometer

- which one do you think is melting ? -

- OK will remove chaeto completely
> had some bubble algae, that got taken care by vibrant a couple years ago, and i kept using it, but i dont really want to use that anymore
> will need in the future to restart a way to compete with algae, that is not chemical like vibrant, but it does make sense that it bottomed out - a refugium sounded like a sexy idea ... but maybe not so much

anyway, for now lets try to save my beloved gonioporas and remove the chaeto

thanks for the advice, very appreciated

 

[Alex7845]

oh also, do you think this would affect the anemone ? this is one of the reasons i think it is weird - it eats food pelets and fronzen food that i give for the fish ....

 

[Tankkeepers]

These guys here or is that on the glass lol

 

[Alex7845]

haha - sorry i got so stressed cleaning the actual dirt that i half cleaned the glass
that green Goni still looks alive and salvageable

 

[Tankkeepers]

Those numbers look good then except for nitrate

Alot of coral is very sensitive to a real 0 nitrate in the tank

All I can think would be to spot feed them as the food will raise the nutrient levels in the tank and the ones that will eat give them a boost

Altho you didn't say anything about feeding the coral or what you feed

If your not feeding the coral anything but light and nutrients in the water this is also wrong they need to eat real food as they only get a max of 90 percent of their requirements threw light less in most cases

This may help

But your coral looks like mine did when I bottomed out my nitrates to an actual 0

 

[Tankkeepers]

OK if it's not melting then it looks like some heads are open your water par looks fine

so it looks to be starving

 

[Tankkeepers]

I'd feed it what exactly do you feed those guys and how?

All water flow off spot feeding and allowing to fully swallow is best most take a few minutes some take up to an hour

 

[Tankkeepers]

My stupid Duncan takes an hour freaking lazy

 

[Tankkeepers]

OK I missed the change in feeding ya broadcast feeding coral does very little

They have to be spot feed with flow off especially LPS

In reef yes water is moving all the time but there is a calm when the tide is neither comming in or out for about an hour every 12 and it'll start raining suspended partials I the water or the reef aka snow you have to simulate this

duncans are resilient and one of the last to go usually others are more sensitive so they are dying first

Most all coral dying will relese toxins

 

[Tankkeepers]

So what happened imo is you added cheto striped the water of nutrients faster then before then the coral also lost most of their actual food as you changed from spot to broadcast at the same time and are now starving to death

Nothing happens fast what you do now you won't see for a month or more

 

[Tankkeepers]

I always keep richordias for this exact reason as they are my canarie in a Cole mine so to speak if they are happy everything's good if not spmthing is wrong and they show it pretty fast

 

[Alex7845]

So feeding i do alternate between

- reef pulse (favourite)
- reef roids (2nd fav)
- goniopower sometimes
-barrier reef labs LPS (newish, they seem to like it)

my usual way of feeding was with julians tool, all flow everything off - target feed then restart 15-30 min later
used to do every 2-4 days - not reliably as i work shift and have 2 kids (hectic house)
then changed to broacast feeding every few days when i got sick

Removed the chaeto
ill start target feeding daily see if the goni come back, will deal with the expected algae bloom after

forgot to say i also dose acropower 10ml every 4 days
and NoPox 4 drops a day, that i decreased to 3 when i thought of over feeding - my plan was to stop that too and move to a refugium - but again lets try to save the corals, then ill have to dive deep

Re the Duncan - mine is one of the easiest, with target or broacast feeding the heads visibly baloon up in content after a few minutes


hope i can still save my gonis

 

[Tankkeepers]

So feeding i do alternate between

- reef pulse (favourite)
- reef roids (2nd fav)
- goniopower sometimes
-barrier reef labs LPS (newish, they seem to like it)

my usual way of feeding was with julians tool, all flow everything off - target feed then restart 15-30 min later
used to do every 2-4 days - not reliably as i work shift and have 2 kids (hectic house)
then changed to broacast feeding every few days when i got sick

Removed the chaeto
ill start target feeding daily see if the goni come back, will deal with the expected algae bloom after

forgot to say i also dose acropower 10ml every 4 days
and NoPox 4 drops a day, that i decreased to 3 when i thought of over feeding - my plan was to stop that too and move to a refugium - but again lets try to save the corals, then ill have to dive deep

Re the Duncan - mine is one of the easiest, with target or broacast feeding the heads visibly baloon up in content after a few minutes


hope i can still save my gonis

I hope so to but ya changing that much that fast is what did it

change alittle and wait and see what that does first

Never herd of reef pulse gumna check it out

I feed everything
Reef roids
Mysis
Spiralina brine
And krill

Fish get large partials

Lps gets minced stuff in a paste form

Sps get juices from a baster that I hold above the sps and let gravity draw out the food and rain down

Gorgonian eats everything lol

Reef roid mixed in with everything

And ime your better off to add real food for coral then an additive and then add a binder to bring your phosphates down rather then raising nitrates higher to try and get stuff to grow and lower phosphates

Then if there's a nuisance algie that won't go away give it a home under light spec it likes out of sight and it'll move there over time on its own without disturbing your balance so fuge is a good this but you went to fast

 

[Tankkeepers]

Also I o ly feed once a week and then I rotate tje

Mysis brine and krill brodcast every day so each day they get somthing new with the odd day being the coral feeding day they get everything

Enless somthing is healing then I feed it every day