Help with Bloom & Coral RTN

[troutbum17]

Hey All-

Looking for some advice here. Tank has been running for 5 months. Things were looking incredibly stable after about 4 months and decided to add corals. Since then i've been battling what i thought started as a GHA outbreak and has since moved into what i believe to be cyano. The past 48 hours have presented onset of RTN on several corals as well as many others starting to not look so good. Looking for a little guidance from more experienced reefers. Did i move too fast and just need to swallow the impending coral loss as a learning experience?

photos below - turned the whites way up to make photos a bit better.

A little background:
- Nitrates have remained below 5ppm since completing the cycle.
- Did not have a phosphate test kit until GHA arrived on the scene. Order the test kit & added GFO as precaution (assuming it was a phosphate issue)
- Phosphate arrived and tested at 0.05ppm. dosed 1mL of brightwell phophate-e. by my math applied to dosing instructions on bottle, that amount was sufficient to reduce phosphates to around 0.01-0.02. Nitrates were ~5 ppm when i tested phosphates here.
- Around the time of dosing phosphate-e, the gha turned into the red carpet-like look i associate with cyano.
- Phosphates continued to drop to 0.001 at which point i removed all GFO & carbon. Phosphates have bounced back recently to ~.02 - .03
- Though i'm trying to syphon the cyano from the sand bed every few days it's still seeming to accumulate and get caught on and covering corals. also growning over encrusting corals like leptastrea, leptoseris, zoas. trying to gently blow it off with a baster but feeel the jet of water is doing the coral more harm at this point.
- last night, after seeing some RTN set in on a birdsnest frag, i decided to push the nuclear button & dose chemiclean.
- woke up this morning to near 100% RTN progression on one birdneset frag and signs of it setting in on other birdsnest frag.
- realize it's only been 12 hours with chemi-clean in the system but it doesn't seem to be making a visibile impact yet
- lastly had a heater fail in off position last weekend which caused tank temp to drop to 74 degrees before i caught the issue & returned temp. have had to tinker with the new heater a bit and it's bounced ~76 - 79 a bit in the past week. have had it stable at 77 since Monday.

some details on tank parameters:
- tank 45g jbj
- stocking - 2 clowns, 1 6-line, 1 melanarus, 1 tail spot blenny. all fish healthy and well
- coral is mostly SPS with a couple LPS & zoas. feeding, lighting, and flow oriented towards SPS focus.
- lights - AI Hydra 32 running saxby's signature series schedule
- flow - max capacity ~80x tank volume / hr. flow schedule on AI nero having effictive flow ~35-40x. 500 GPH on return pumps, koralina 440, ai nero 3.
- maintenance - weekly 5g water changes, vaccum sand bed, change filter socks
- no proteins skimmer (Yet)
- ph - 7.9 - 8.15
- phosphate - fluctuations noted above - currently at .025 (hannah ulr)
- nitrate - <5ppm (nyos test kit)
- nitrite - 0 (api)
- ammonia - 0 (api)
- alk - 8.1 - 8.5 (hannah)
- ca - 420-440 (hannah)
- mg - 1350 (aquaforest)
- temp 77
- salinity - 1.025
- recently started dosing 2-part with target parameters of alk - 8.5, mg 1350, ca 440.

thanks in advance for some thoughts & experience with something like this.

 

[lapin]

I dont you have done nothing wrong. I dont see any red like you have said. If it is cyano you will have to keep at it. It took over a year before the cyano in my tank went down. It is only on the sand bed now. I have both red and green. At Xmas it looks seasonal. I did have 1 panel of my tank 3'x5' get covered in GHA. I got a sea hare from my local LFS and in a week it was gone. I returned it. They eat a lot and will starve in most tanks.

 

[troutbum17]

I dont you have done nothing wrong. I dont see any red like you have said. If it is cyano you will have to keep at it. It took over a year before the cyano in my tank went down. It is only on the sand bed now. I have both red and green. At Xmas it looks seasonal. I did have 1 panel of my tank 3'x5' get covered in GHA. I got a sea hare from my local LFS and in a week it was gone. I returned it. They eat a lot and will starve in most tanks.

thanks - what do you make of the RTN on the birdsnests then? Keep gently blowing cyano off of corals? looks redder under heavier blue lighting.

 

[troutbum17]

if whatever is blooming seems to be quickly killing most of the coral in the tank despite paramter normality that i've cited above is it possible this isn't cyano? do dinos kill coral when they cover them?

 

[troutbum17]

update. diagnosed as dinos with microscope.