Help - Seeing coral decline and not really sure why

ldreefer

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I've had my tank up for about 3 months or so now - before that my dad had it up for years and everything was transferred over. I say that just to make it known that it's not really only 3 months old. It's a Red Sea Reefer 350 with 2 MaxSpect Jump 165 led's and it has a refugium and a Reefer skimmer. Stock list is 2 clowns, a matted filefish and a leopard wrasse.

Anyways, I have a bunch of zoas, a couple of acans, a chalice and a montipora in the tank as my first few pieces of coral. The zoas are all ok, but aren't showing the best colors. The Acans and Montipora are declining - the Acans are all receded into their skeleton and don't extend. The chalice has completely died at this point.

I have been pretty religious about testing and have posted my results from Apex below over the past month or so - all my testing has been with Hannah checkers and a refractometer for salinity. My pH hovers in the 7.95 to 8.10 range, but not sure how accurate my probe is. Salinity has stayed at 1.029, which I intend on lowering over the course of the next few weeks - I didn't realize I forgot to calibrate my refractometer, so it was reading lower than actual.

My levels have all been good, the only thing I noticed was that my nitrates have stayed pretty low, basically 0 at some points, while my phosphates were in the .08ppm range at one point. I add a bag of rowaphos once I saw the high phosphates and have done a 10% water change since then, but I still haven't seen any improvement in the corals yet.

I could use some help figuring out the cause.

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ldreefer

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kind of looks like it would be a nutrients issue. As you said, your nitrates are 0, and .08 phosphate is not high at all. Adding rowa phos would have brought that down probably close to 0.
I have chaeto in my refugium and run the refugium light cycle on when the main lights are off.

Could the chaeto be the issue and soaking up all the nutrients? I feed a chunk of frozen reef frenzy every night.
 
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ldreefer

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Zero nitrate is a bad number.
Corals starving.
Bump that up and maintain that phosphate at 0.08ppm.
Any easy implementations of raising nitrates? I feed frozen every night and leave a sheet of nori everyday.

Would cutting down my chaeto light time help?
 

Uncle99

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Any easy implementations of raising nitrates? I feed frozen every night and leave a sheet of nori everyday.

Would cutting down my chaeto light time help?
I’d just bump up the nitrate quickly with neo-nitro or similar.
But go slow, bring the zero to 3-5ppm and hold for a month.
You seem to be exporting more than is being added.

I need to dose both, from time to time.

I’d not make any other adjustment until nitrate stable.
 
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I've had my tank up for about 3 months or so now - before that my dad had it up for years and everything was transferred over. I say that just to make it known that it's not really only 3 months old. It's a Red Sea Reefer 350 with 2 MaxSpect Jump 165 led's and it has a refugium and a Reefer skimmer. Stock list is 2 clowns, a matted filefish and a leopard wrasse.

Anyways, I have a bunch of zoas, a couple of acans, a chalice and a montipora in the tank as my first few pieces of coral. The zoas are all ok, but aren't showing the best colors. The Acans and Montipora are declining - the Acans are all receded into their skeleton and don't extend. The chalice has completely died at this point.

I have been pretty religious about testing and have posted my results from Apex below over the past month or so - all my testing has been with Hannah checkers and a refractometer for salinity. My pH hovers in the 7.95 to 8.10 range, but not sure how accurate my probe is. Salinity has stayed at 1.029, which I intend on lowering over the course of the next few weeks - I didn't realize I forgot to calibrate my refractometer, so it was reading lower than actual.

My levels have all been good, the only thing I noticed was that my nitrates have stayed pretty low, basically 0 at some points, while my phosphates were in the .08ppm range at one point. I add a bag of rowaphos once I saw the high phosphates and have done a 10% water change since then, but I still haven't seen any improvement in the corals yet.

I could use some help figuring out the cause.

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I had a chalice death along with a frogspawn, How old is the water? The issue i had with my red montipora and golden chalice was water quality. I still haven’t left my nitrate cycle but ammonia and nitrite is spot on. Tank is 4-5 months old.
 

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Randy Holmes-Farley

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I agree that the specific gravity is quite high at 1.029 (if accurate) and I'd lower the salinity to about 35 ppt (sg = 1.0264)
 
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