Maho.B
Community Member
Ok everyone, I will apologize in advance, this will be a fairly long post as I am looking for any possible advice and figured it would help to give you enough info. My reef tank is just coming up on being 1 year old and I set it up with the intention of it being a "mixed" reef.
System:
Tank: Red Sea Max S 400. Total water volume with sump is 110 gallons
Rock/Sand: Set up with Reef grade Caribsea sand and a mix of dry rock (arches, branches, foundation rock) can't remember the brand but it has the "fake" coraline type color to it
Filtration:
- Reef Octopus Regal 200 Protein skimmer
- ReefMat 500
- Several Biofilter Marine Pure blocks
Flow:
- 2 Red Sea Reef Waves 25's (one on each end of the aquarium)
- Two powerheads on back wall of tank (these come with the Red Sea Max 400)
- Ecotech M2 return pump
Lighting:
- 2 Red Sea Reef LED 90's
Current Fish:
- 2 Clownish
- 1 Royal Gramma
- 1 Tailspot Blenny
- 1 Randall's Goby
- 1 Geometric Pygmy Hawkfish
- 1 Court Jester Goby
- 1 Pink Streaked Wrasse (also called Cryptic)
- 1 Matted File Fish (was added a few weeks ago to try and help with some aptasia)
Here is a quick history. Once the through cycling and slowly added corals everything was doing well for about 6 months. Great polyp extension on the LPS and at the 5 month old stage I added 3 Acropora frags and for awhile they did great too, new growth tips, encrusting at the base, good PE. Around that 6-7 month range I noticed some of the corals were stressed. Within a few days most of the Acropora had tissue recession, a week later some of the LPS were dying as well. I consulted my LFS and did what they recommended to no avail. I bought a small carbon reactor (thinking there was a pollutant of some kind) and that didn't change anything, even the ICP test came back as all good. After a couple of weeks half of the corals had died, others survived. I didn't add anything for awhile and really focused on keeping everything steady and just "waiting" whatever it was out. Fast forward a few months, I felt all was stable, the corals that survived were doing well so I slowly started adding new corals. All was good until about 3 weeks ago...AGAIN started noticing stressed looking corals. This time was worse and within a couple of weeks 80% of the corals were either dead, dying or showing very poor PE. Even things like Favia/Favites and several Cyphastrea that were all encrusting/growing like crazy were completely dead within a week! At a loss I chose to wait it out again and keep things as stable as I can. As of a week ago with most coral gone, I decided to go after some Briopsis patches that were starting to grow quickly, after tons of reading about Briopsis I decided to dose Fluconazole (I am happy to report that it is absolutely working by the way) and that brings me to today and why I am telling you this. I would like to start adding corals again after the flux treatment but I have no idea why the past events happened and I do not want to go through it again.
I am diligent with testing and throughout the entire time period of the story above I kept all parameters stable, the only thing I had issues with were keeping Nitrate and Phosphate up (they were consistently hovering around 1.5sih and .01) so per this forums advice I started dosing with NeoNitro and NeoPhos to get those levels up into a better range, which it did.
Current Parameters (and these are pretty consistent day to day)
Alk: 7.8
Nitrate: 3.3
Phosphate: .04
Calcium: 410
Mag: 1340
Salinity: 1.026
Temp: 77.9
- Note: I stopped dosing nitrate/phos when I started the Fluconazole last week, so those are a little bit lower than usual right now.
Corals that dyed or are almost dead during the last issue: Various Acropora, Montipora (various types), Stylopora, Seriatopora, Anacropora, Favia, Cyphastrea, Leptoseris, Porites, and some Pavona.
Corals that did not die: Zoanthids, palythoas, a cabbage leather coral (the only leather in the tank), Psammocora, 1 Pavona, Lithophylon plate chalice, and Green star polyps.
The ONLY things I can think of that caused the massive die off:
1) Alkalinty slowly crept up to the 10 range (I found out that dosing NeoNitro increases Alk) so I took the doser offline and let it naturally fall back to the high 7's and now test daily and dose accordingly. Now it doesn't sway more than .2/3 in a 24hr period
2) I noticed my temp goes from 78 in the morning to 79 / 79.5 late in the day
Not sure if one of those things would cause all of this? I am asking for any advice as to what next steps should be before starting to add coral again. Watching a healthy coral die is no fun and I want to avoid it as much as possible again. Is there anything I am missing or could do differently to avoid this happening again? I will take any feedback at all, thanks!
By the way, throughout both coral dying events, all fish are completely happy and healthy.
System:
Tank: Red Sea Max S 400. Total water volume with sump is 110 gallons
Rock/Sand: Set up with Reef grade Caribsea sand and a mix of dry rock (arches, branches, foundation rock) can't remember the brand but it has the "fake" coraline type color to it
Filtration:
- Reef Octopus Regal 200 Protein skimmer
- ReefMat 500
- Several Biofilter Marine Pure blocks
Flow:
- 2 Red Sea Reef Waves 25's (one on each end of the aquarium)
- Two powerheads on back wall of tank (these come with the Red Sea Max 400)
- Ecotech M2 return pump
Lighting:
- 2 Red Sea Reef LED 90's
Current Fish:
- 2 Clownish
- 1 Royal Gramma
- 1 Tailspot Blenny
- 1 Randall's Goby
- 1 Geometric Pygmy Hawkfish
- 1 Court Jester Goby
- 1 Pink Streaked Wrasse (also called Cryptic)
- 1 Matted File Fish (was added a few weeks ago to try and help with some aptasia)
Here is a quick history. Once the through cycling and slowly added corals everything was doing well for about 6 months. Great polyp extension on the LPS and at the 5 month old stage I added 3 Acropora frags and for awhile they did great too, new growth tips, encrusting at the base, good PE. Around that 6-7 month range I noticed some of the corals were stressed. Within a few days most of the Acropora had tissue recession, a week later some of the LPS were dying as well. I consulted my LFS and did what they recommended to no avail. I bought a small carbon reactor (thinking there was a pollutant of some kind) and that didn't change anything, even the ICP test came back as all good. After a couple of weeks half of the corals had died, others survived. I didn't add anything for awhile and really focused on keeping everything steady and just "waiting" whatever it was out. Fast forward a few months, I felt all was stable, the corals that survived were doing well so I slowly started adding new corals. All was good until about 3 weeks ago...AGAIN started noticing stressed looking corals. This time was worse and within a couple of weeks 80% of the corals were either dead, dying or showing very poor PE. Even things like Favia/Favites and several Cyphastrea that were all encrusting/growing like crazy were completely dead within a week! At a loss I chose to wait it out again and keep things as stable as I can. As of a week ago with most coral gone, I decided to go after some Briopsis patches that were starting to grow quickly, after tons of reading about Briopsis I decided to dose Fluconazole (I am happy to report that it is absolutely working by the way) and that brings me to today and why I am telling you this. I would like to start adding corals again after the flux treatment but I have no idea why the past events happened and I do not want to go through it again.
I am diligent with testing and throughout the entire time period of the story above I kept all parameters stable, the only thing I had issues with were keeping Nitrate and Phosphate up (they were consistently hovering around 1.5sih and .01) so per this forums advice I started dosing with NeoNitro and NeoPhos to get those levels up into a better range, which it did.
Current Parameters (and these are pretty consistent day to day)
Alk: 7.8
Nitrate: 3.3
Phosphate: .04
Calcium: 410
Mag: 1340
Salinity: 1.026
Temp: 77.9
- Note: I stopped dosing nitrate/phos when I started the Fluconazole last week, so those are a little bit lower than usual right now.
Corals that dyed or are almost dead during the last issue: Various Acropora, Montipora (various types), Stylopora, Seriatopora, Anacropora, Favia, Cyphastrea, Leptoseris, Porites, and some Pavona.
Corals that did not die: Zoanthids, palythoas, a cabbage leather coral (the only leather in the tank), Psammocora, 1 Pavona, Lithophylon plate chalice, and Green star polyps.
The ONLY things I can think of that caused the massive die off:
1) Alkalinty slowly crept up to the 10 range (I found out that dosing NeoNitro increases Alk) so I took the doser offline and let it naturally fall back to the high 7's and now test daily and dose accordingly. Now it doesn't sway more than .2/3 in a 24hr period
2) I noticed my temp goes from 78 in the morning to 79 / 79.5 late in the day
Not sure if one of those things would cause all of this? I am asking for any advice as to what next steps should be before starting to add coral again. Watching a healthy coral die is no fun and I want to avoid it as much as possible again. Is there anything I am missing or could do differently to avoid this happening again? I will take any feedback at all, thanks!
By the way, throughout both coral dying events, all fish are completely happy and healthy.
