In need of advice, reef tank "dying"

[Maho.B]

CHSUB thanks for the input, what would you consider "detectable" ranges of no3 and po4 using hobby grade test kits (Hanna)? Also interesting comment from Randy Holmes-Farley about undetectable amounts of nitrate and nausea any longer there are other adequate sources of N and P. Although not sure how that works/how to achieve that. Lots of fish/lots of food?

 

[Gribbles]

Interesting read, if you're curious:

Thread 'DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-ammonia-dosing-for-low-nitrate-systems.987087/

 

[CHSUB]

CHSUB thanks for the input, what would you consider "detectable" ranges of no3 and po4 using hobby grade test kits (Hanna)? Also interesting comment from Randy Holmes-Farley about undetectable amounts of nitrate and nausea any longer there are other adequate sources of N and P. Although not sure how that works/how to achieve that. Lots of fish/lots of food?

Personally I’m fine with clear or 0 on Salifert no3 test kit as N is readily available to corals in many forms. I use Hanna for po4 and Randy suggests .02. I spoke to Hanna and they stated .00 is readable for po4 and within the error range and if it is below that, the checker will give an error message. I directly feed corals every other day Red Sea +, mixed with Reef Jerky and Mysis Shrimp. Fish poop also provide coral food that can’t be measured with test kits. No reason to intentionally elevate inorganic nutrients, unless maybe a macro algae tank with few fish. Tank and corals can be fine with “high” inorganic nutrients but it is NOT because, it’s in spite of “high” inorganic nutrients.

 

[Maho.B]

This is really interesting, appreciate you sharing.

 

[Seansea]

You got a nice setup here. And your putting in effort so i think it will.workout.

Prob your alk bump. I had the same thing happen about a year ago and tank didn't like it.

Also just curious what do you measure salinity with? Most salinity devices are junk. I use 3 duffrent ones and they all give me diffrent readings.

If your nutrients were a problem your softies would suffer before your acros.

Dead rock always takes a bit longer to get rollin unfortunatly

 

[Seansea]

Also def start making your own water with rodi. No telling what store is giving you. If you icp with ati they do your rodi water as well.

 

[Dburr1014]

I'm sorry but I didn't go thru all 3 pages.
I went 3/4 of the 1st page and I'm going to go back and read after my post.

To me, IMO, this sounds like coral starvation.
Coral go in a low po4/no3 environment, alk climbs, they are more hungry. You dose but it's to little to late. You try again, now there's competition with the algae for nutrients.

Okay, I'm going back to read.

 

[Dburr1014]

I think I'll get some live rock, unfortunately the minimum order is way more than I can fit into my aquascape... Unfortunately it's glued together. But I can fit some pieces in here and there and I can probably find someone around here who could use some as well.

That's all you need, a piece or two will introduce that Bac. But coral do that too.

Another thing that sticks out also. Leathers, soft coral, sps. Do you run GAC at all? Toxins from the softies is real.

 

[Maho.B]

I use a refractometer to measure salinity and keep it at 1.026. I think it was likely letting the alk creep up so high as well. The reaction of raising nutrients after was probably not good either, I manually removed algae and did a water change last night, going to keep it up until algae is in check, keep water stable and start feeding corals more and not try to dose nutrients up on purpose. Such great suggestions here! Thanks

 

[Dburr1014]

The LFS rodi could also be a problem. To many stories here that people test it after the fact and it's not zero.

 

[Dburr1014]

Personally I’m fine with clear or 0 on Salifert no3 test kit as N is readily available to corals in many forms. I use Hanna for po4 and Randy suggests .02. I spoke to Hanna and they stated .00 is readable for po4 and within the error range and if it is below that, the checker will give an error message. I directly feed corals every other day Red Sea +, mixed with Reef Jerky and Mysis Shrimp. Fish poop also provide coral food that can’t be measured with test kits. No reason to intentionally elevate inorganic nutrients, unless maybe a macro algae tank with few fish. Tank and corals can be fine with “high” inorganic nutrients but it is NOT because, it’s in spite of “high” inorganic nutrients.

100% agree.

I read 0 on my hanna no3 tester.
Lots of fish, nothing dying.

I'm going to say it, don't hate me cuz I'm not hating, there a scientist here that always said dose nitrate for zero. Now I think he's going more towards dosing ammonium. We are learning more about coral nutrition and this is how it's done.

There's a thread going now to no cycle, just throw in fish and coral.

Feed the fish and let them feed the coral.

 

[Maho.B]

Agreed, I've already been convinced, I'll be making my own saltwater moving forward.

As for carbon, I have a reactor in run one week a month, I do have the one cabbage leather but didn't know if that would be an issue in a 110 gallon system.

 

[Dburr1014]

I use a refractometer to measure salinity and keep it at 1.026. I think it was likely letting the alk creep up so high

How do you calibrate it and do you do calibration every time you use it?

RHF has a DIY standard you can make with table salt.

 

[Maho.B]

I calibrate it with a few drops of refracto juice, once a month.

 

[Dburr1014]

I calibrate it with a few drops of refracto juice, once a month.

I assume that's 1.026 standard.
Excellent.
Is it ever off?

 

[Davileet]

My advice would be to run carbon for a bit to ensure its not a chemical thing. I would add some grazing fish or snails to eat that algae on the back wall. I would also physically scrape most of it off and pull it out of the tank actually. You are showing low nutrients because the algae is eating up what is available and outcompeting your coral. Flow could also be an issue, I prefer higher flow when and where possible. Do a large water change when you get your new RO/DI unit and stop dosing or messing with it from a chemical stand point.

 

[Maho.B]

Looking back it was a bad idea to let that back wall grow with algae like that, the fish just constantly hunted it for pods so I figured it was good and my court Chester Gobi literally grazes on it all day long and he couldn't be healthier. With that being said, after all of the advice from this forum yesterday, I manually scraped the majority of it off and did a water change to physically remove quite a bit of it.

I know there are quite a few people who run great healthy systems with high nutrients, but I'm guessing they got there naturally where I was trying to dose those numbers instead of letting it get there on its own, I'm going to back that off. I don't have my rodi unit yet, but I tested the saltwater from the LFS yesterday bed my water change and all seemed good. I'll get mine up and running for the next water change.

I may add one more wave pump in a lower corner to get flow along the back of the rock structure too. The top/middle gets great flow, probably need some more along the bottom back

 

[Dburr1014]

Water movement is just as important as lighting. It's for nutrition and waste management for coral. I mean, they can't move and hunt for the food.

 

[Davileet]

Looking back it was a bad idea to let that back wall grow with algae like that, the fish just constantly hunted it for pods so I figured it was good and my court Chester Gobi literally grazes on it all day long and he couldn't be healthier. With that being said, after all of the advice from this forum yesterday, I manually scraped the majority of it off and did a water change to physically remove quite a bit of it.

I know there are quite a few people who run great healthy systems with high nutrients, but I'm guessing they got there naturally where I was trying to dose those numbers instead of letting it get there on its own, I'm going to back that off. I don't have my rodi unit yet, but I tested the saltwater from the LFS yesterday bed my water change and all seemed good. I'll get mine up and running for the next water change.

I may add one more wave pump in a lower corner to get flow along the back of the rock structure too. The top/middle gets great flow, probably need some more along the bottom back

I would add to this that most who have high nutrients got there because of grazers and fending off algae which would consume it down to 0. Folks with a lot of algae in their display have excess nutrients and a tank that hasn't quite matured or can't stave off algae competition via physical, biological, or clean up crew removal. Also, high nutrients are not nearly as big of an issue as some will profess it to be and are probably more beneficial than non-beneficial. So, now that you removed that algae you will see nutrients go up, which is totally okay and a good thing for you. Increase the CUC and physical removal and let nutrients rise a bit.

Just to clarify, my tank currently has .66 PO4 and about 100ppm of NO3. This slows growth for sure, but since my tank is matured and have a large number of tangs, my coral are living just fine with no algae in the display.

 

[Maho.B]

Daveileet, you hit on what I'm thinking went wrong, chasing nutrient numbers up when all along my "grazing" wall of algae was consuming it. It will be interesting to see how params change now that a large amount has been scraped and siphoned out.