swilliams2207
Active Member
I'm hoping I'm at the tail end of what I'd describe as a long slow degrade of most of the SPS in my tank, starting in September.
I had a 1 yr old thriving shallow mixed reef tank with a mix of softies, SPS (acros, montis), and LPS. Everything was doing really well and growing really nicely for the past 6-8 months or so. My philosophy has always been really simple. I don't run a skimmer because I've had issues with low nutrients in the past and also do infrequent water changes. I have an apex that doses calc/alk. Overall, things have been really stable with no significant changes. I use my own RO/DI water for ATO and filtered/boxed NSW for monthly water changes.
As of today, I've lost a lot of my SPS and what's left is in pure survival mode. The degradation happened really slowly and in waves. Some corals would RTN quickly while others got pale/lost PE, and slowly degraded. Most acro damage looked like burnt tips at first or dying from the top down. I have 1-2 acros that have actually held on and look OK. 1-2 others have dead spots but have not progressed further in the past week or so. All my branching montis died or bleached. The last thing to go was my German blue digi that was rounding out into a nice colony from just a tiny frag from over a year ago.
My parameters are typically:
35ppt salinity
440 calcium
1250-1300 mg
7.8-8.1 dkh
10-25ppm nitrates
0.05-0.10 ppm po4
7.5-7.9 ph (have always struggled to keep this up but it's been this way since the very beginning).
78-80°F
Note, I've had struggles with keeping nutrients up since the tank went up. I will dose nitrates/phosphates occasionally and feed reef roids weekly to try to stay ahead of it. It's probably been my biggest challenge. I test nutrients periodically and didn't see any massive swings over the course of the summer. everything else is managed via controlled dosing with apex/trident.
Please see my timeline below.
1. In early July, I changed my lights from 3 AI primes + 2 Orphek OR3 Blue Plus led bars to 4 Orphek OR3 led bars (no more AI primes). Before the switch, the measured par at the very top of my tank was around 300-350. I did not take a par reading when I switched to the all Orpheck lighting setup however after some research, my lighting likely spiked to 500-600 at the top of my tank. I had the orpheck bars at 90-100% intensity. Dumb on my part but everything seemed to be doing well 2-3 weeks after the switch. Colors were popping and no issues that I could see.
2. I had two larger alk spikes over the course of 2-3 months (May-July) due to accidental alk overdose. My alk consumption in general at times was so rapid and in random spurts that keeping up was a challenge. Sometimes it would drop from 8 to 6 in the course of a day or so because my dosing schedule could not keep up with increasing demand. I did some manual dosing and added WAYYY too much alk that caused some instant spikes from 8-12. In these two cases, I let the alk fall naturally. I would say they corrected on their own in the next 24-36 hours.
3. I went on vacation in late July for 10 days. When I came home (Aug 1), things looked a little "off" but still OK, and no deaths. The only noticeable change was a spike in hair algae throughout my tank. I used an auto feeder while on vacation and my nutrients may have spiked a bit. The hair algae also seemed to have come out of nowhere.
4. The last thriving picture of my tank on my phone was August 19. Everything looked good with the exception of the hair algae. My nutrients read zero via Hanna checkers but not sure if this was a false reading from hair algae. At this time I added additional CUC to help with the hair algae and increased feeding. My shipment from Reef Cleaners was delayed in shipping but I added them anyway in hopes they would make it. Most died or were DOA. In hindsight... prob dumb on my part and maybe spiked nutrients.
5. In September, I started to notice my bubblegum digi getting a little pale and losing PE. I turned my lights down a little in response but over the course of September, everything started to go downhill one by one. I sent away for an ICP test and everything looked OK with the exception of raised Tin (11.00 µg/l) and Lithium (337.00 µg/l). My only other ICP test was from this past April, which more or less was exactly the same minus the Tin reading and a Lithium reading of 174.00 µg/l.
6. I did some water changes and added Cuprisorb to combat any heavy metals. No other changes made and no livestock additions other than CUC since April. My calcium spiked to 500 due to decreased demand but by then everything was already spiraling. I stopped dosing altogether for weeks because there was no consumption.
Things have stabilized a bit as of today. I cleaned out the last of the dead SPS yesterday. My softies, pocillopora, hammers, torches, clam, leathers, mushrooms, and ricordias all look fine. No fish or invert losses. My Hawkins acro has some brownish tips but more or less looks OK. I'm having a hard time understanding how my oldest birdnest and forest fire digi died when they were some of the first corals I got for my nano reef 2 years ago (I put them through hell and they carried on!) below is today... you can see the dead tips on my brown PC rainbow in the top left. My garf bonsai and a random blue acro (forget name) are the only acros that are truly untouched from the event.
The worst part of this whole thing is I'm not 100% sure where I went wrong or if it was a combination of unfavorable changes that really did me in. From my perspective, nothing was overly dramatic with the exception of the 2 alk swings, but even so, the delay from an overdose to the start of demise was 4-5 weeks at a minimum. Is a delayed dying response of that long even possible? Is the described above enough to crash a tank or is it something else I can't see?
Any help is greatly appreciated. I just want to ensure I never do anything like this again. Writing this all out was certainly helpful for my own knowledge/experience.
I had a 1 yr old thriving shallow mixed reef tank with a mix of softies, SPS (acros, montis), and LPS. Everything was doing really well and growing really nicely for the past 6-8 months or so. My philosophy has always been really simple. I don't run a skimmer because I've had issues with low nutrients in the past and also do infrequent water changes. I have an apex that doses calc/alk. Overall, things have been really stable with no significant changes. I use my own RO/DI water for ATO and filtered/boxed NSW for monthly water changes.
As of today, I've lost a lot of my SPS and what's left is in pure survival mode. The degradation happened really slowly and in waves. Some corals would RTN quickly while others got pale/lost PE, and slowly degraded. Most acro damage looked like burnt tips at first or dying from the top down. I have 1-2 acros that have actually held on and look OK. 1-2 others have dead spots but have not progressed further in the past week or so. All my branching montis died or bleached. The last thing to go was my German blue digi that was rounding out into a nice colony from just a tiny frag from over a year ago.
My parameters are typically:
35ppt salinity
440 calcium
1250-1300 mg
7.8-8.1 dkh
10-25ppm nitrates
0.05-0.10 ppm po4
7.5-7.9 ph (have always struggled to keep this up but it's been this way since the very beginning).
78-80°F
Note, I've had struggles with keeping nutrients up since the tank went up. I will dose nitrates/phosphates occasionally and feed reef roids weekly to try to stay ahead of it. It's probably been my biggest challenge. I test nutrients periodically and didn't see any massive swings over the course of the summer. everything else is managed via controlled dosing with apex/trident.
Please see my timeline below.
1. In early July, I changed my lights from 3 AI primes + 2 Orphek OR3 Blue Plus led bars to 4 Orphek OR3 led bars (no more AI primes). Before the switch, the measured par at the very top of my tank was around 300-350. I did not take a par reading when I switched to the all Orpheck lighting setup however after some research, my lighting likely spiked to 500-600 at the top of my tank. I had the orpheck bars at 90-100% intensity. Dumb on my part but everything seemed to be doing well 2-3 weeks after the switch. Colors were popping and no issues that I could see.
2. I had two larger alk spikes over the course of 2-3 months (May-July) due to accidental alk overdose. My alk consumption in general at times was so rapid and in random spurts that keeping up was a challenge. Sometimes it would drop from 8 to 6 in the course of a day or so because my dosing schedule could not keep up with increasing demand. I did some manual dosing and added WAYYY too much alk that caused some instant spikes from 8-12. In these two cases, I let the alk fall naturally. I would say they corrected on their own in the next 24-36 hours.
3. I went on vacation in late July for 10 days. When I came home (Aug 1), things looked a little "off" but still OK, and no deaths. The only noticeable change was a spike in hair algae throughout my tank. I used an auto feeder while on vacation and my nutrients may have spiked a bit. The hair algae also seemed to have come out of nowhere.
4. The last thriving picture of my tank on my phone was August 19. Everything looked good with the exception of the hair algae. My nutrients read zero via Hanna checkers but not sure if this was a false reading from hair algae. At this time I added additional CUC to help with the hair algae and increased feeding. My shipment from Reef Cleaners was delayed in shipping but I added them anyway in hopes they would make it. Most died or were DOA. In hindsight... prob dumb on my part and maybe spiked nutrients.
5. In September, I started to notice my bubblegum digi getting a little pale and losing PE. I turned my lights down a little in response but over the course of September, everything started to go downhill one by one. I sent away for an ICP test and everything looked OK with the exception of raised Tin (11.00 µg/l) and Lithium (337.00 µg/l). My only other ICP test was from this past April, which more or less was exactly the same minus the Tin reading and a Lithium reading of 174.00 µg/l.
6. I did some water changes and added Cuprisorb to combat any heavy metals. No other changes made and no livestock additions other than CUC since April. My calcium spiked to 500 due to decreased demand but by then everything was already spiraling. I stopped dosing altogether for weeks because there was no consumption.
Things have stabilized a bit as of today. I cleaned out the last of the dead SPS yesterday. My softies, pocillopora, hammers, torches, clam, leathers, mushrooms, and ricordias all look fine. No fish or invert losses. My Hawkins acro has some brownish tips but more or less looks OK. I'm having a hard time understanding how my oldest birdnest and forest fire digi died when they were some of the first corals I got for my nano reef 2 years ago (I put them through hell and they carried on!) below is today... you can see the dead tips on my brown PC rainbow in the top left. My garf bonsai and a random blue acro (forget name) are the only acros that are truly untouched from the event.
The worst part of this whole thing is I'm not 100% sure where I went wrong or if it was a combination of unfavorable changes that really did me in. From my perspective, nothing was overly dramatic with the exception of the 2 alk swings, but even so, the delay from an overdose to the start of demise was 4-5 weeks at a minimum. Is a delayed dying response of that long even possible? Is the described above enough to crash a tank or is it something else I can't see?
Any help is greatly appreciated. I just want to ensure I never do anything like this again. Writing this all out was certainly helpful for my own knowledge/experience.
