LPS keep dying

[Pufferlover95]

I don’t understand why I am having trouble keeping LPS alive in my tank. The common theme I have is I purchase a new coral and it initially is fine, however, they typically slowly decline over a few weeks and I watch as more and more skeleton become exposed and their flesh starts retracting.

I don’t know what the issue is since so many things could be wrong.
————————————————————

Tank: IM 80 AIO

Lights: 3 AI Prime 16s (schedule below)

Skimmer: HOB Reef Octopus

CO2 scrubber: Icecap

Wave makers: 2 Nero 3s (opposite ends, random flow)


I use Instant Ocean salt, Apex and Trident for testing parameters, dose ~15mL of AFR daily, and dose 6mL of NOPOX daily. Here are parameters for today and this is typically how they look:

Last NO3 was 11.9ppm and PO4 was 0.03ppm via Hanna checkers.

With a steady Alk and Ca, I don’t understand why the coral not only doesn’t thrive, but instead dies.


As for lighting:

Too little?? Too much??

The last thing is, I’ve been fighting this what I think to be cyano bacteria for months, and I can’t make it go away, even after using Chemi-Clean. it covers the sand, rocks, coral, and walls. I don’t know what else it could be.

At this point, I’m looking for suggestions and I’m open to trying different things.

 

[jackson6745]

Raise your phosphate to .1 and higher. You will see immediate improvement

 

[Pufferlover95]

Raise your phosphate to .1 and higher. You will see immediate improvement

To be honest, usually my nutrients are higher than this. I tend to over feed all my tanks and struggle to keep them on the low need.

 

[Doctorgori]

I was going through this earlier…There is at least some anecdotal corollary between cyano and unhappy corals …

Just a observation without backing data..

…..At risk of damaging my already soiled reputation…try dosing cipro and see what gives with the disclaimer it’s a “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” suggestion

 

[Pufferlover95]

…..At risk of damaging my already soiled reputation…

try dosing cipro and see what give

In general, what is it even used for?

 

[Doctorgori]

Cipro supposedly cures brown jelly disease, and far from even suggesting that’s what’s up but in my case the tank was simply “funky”, I suspected “BJD” in some torches but also had cyano creeping up …

Honestly .I could never quite put my finger on it, so one day I went against my SOP’s at nuked some “Chemiclean” and my LPS perked up …
I hesitate to post what could be just coincidence and anecdotal causation …same with a thread I read where someone used cipro for mysterious LPS deaths…
I can’t list all the disclaimers here but take this post with a 60% confidence

 

[liddojunior]

Your CA is way too high when you have such low Mg

Your LPS corals aren’t going to like that, Mg is required for binding Ca to make it available

Dose Mg to 1350-1450 ppm

How’s the flow in the tank ? LPS need flow but not too little or too much

 

[Pufferlover95]

Your CA is way too high when you have such low Mg

Your LPS corals aren’t going to like that, Mg is required for binding Ca to make it available

Dose Mg to 1350-1450 ppm

How’s the flow in the tank ? LPS need flow but not too little or too much

Yeah, I could definitely increase my Mg.
For flow, I thought I am OK having 2 Nero 3s on opposites of the tank.

 

[Doctorgori]

How’s the flow in the tank ? LPS need flow but not too little or too much

heck going one step further, dare I suggest even shutting off all flow sans return pump just for a few hours? I’ve done this before just to see how the clam mantles, frogspawn and hammers respond… Usually you will get max expansion then

 

[liddojunior]

To add ,

It looks like the corals are really tight against skeleton. I don’t know what PAR they are sitting at, but it looks like they don’t like the light or flow being too high.

I honestly think that if you turn off one of the pumps and increase Mg. You might see improvement.

It does sound like your corals aren’t being hit by disease but are just in a state of constantly lacking something. They aren’t extending which is usually Mg, flow and light related

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I would suggest to maybe rent a par meter. You've got nano tank lights and they are at a pretty low setting. Slowly withering away slowly IMO is an indication of low nutrients and/or low lights, and since you have measurable nutrients to me it again points to low light.

 

[Lavey29]

If you have used chemiclean multiple times then you have killed off your biome and put your tank back at the beginning stage. Irregardless of current parameters that tank biome is not conducive to coral currently.

 

[darrick001]

check for stray voltage. LPS deteriorate pretty quickly if its present. Most likely culprits are heaters or wave pumps.
Next take one of your lps and give it a revive dip. If you see any worms come off treat every LPS coral 2x a week for 3-4 weeks 1 revive on day 1 and 1 iodine based on day 3.
Do an ICP test ASAP. This will tell you if there is a problem with your water.
Try dimming your lights most LPS coral do well at 100 to 150 par. They can take more but they need to build up to it.
If non of this solves the issue, I would lean towards a contaminant.

 

[Pufferlover95]

I would suggest to maybe rent a par meter. You've got nano tank lights and they are at a pretty low setting. Slowly withering away slowly IMO is an indication of low nutrients and/or low lights, and since you have measurable nutrients to me it again points to low light.

I own a par meter so testing is no problem. My issue is I really don’t know if the lights are just too high for LPS or too low. I’ve lowered everything down because I thought I was bleaching them by having the lights too high. They were nothing crazy high, but I just assumed too high for comfort.

What par would you recommend for an LPS dominant tank? My favorites I keep trying to keep are Euphilia, Acans, Lobos, and Scolies.

 

[Pufferlover95]

If you have used chemiclean multiple times then you have killed off your biome and put your tank back at the beginning stage. Irregardless of current parameters that tank biome is not conducive to coral currently.

Yeah, I’ve used it a few times since I never saw the results after the initial dose. That’s a good point though I never thought about.

Would you recommend just daily dosing of MB7 to try and help reestablish it?

 

[LPS Bum]

The only parameter that sticks out to me is Mag. LPS corals appreciate higher magnesium levels.

I run all my LPS corals through a pretty strong 15 min iodine dip before putting them in the tank. Many LPS come in with bacterial infections and the iodine helps to kill them off. In fact I have to dip some longtime LPS in iodine when they’re not looking great, and it usually does wonders.

Try iodine dips and see if it helps increase your success.

 

[Pufferlover95]

The only parameter that sticks out to me is Mag. LPS corals appreciate higher magnesium levels.

I run all my LPS corals through a pretty strong 15 min iodine dip before putting them in the tank. Many LPS come in with bacterial infections and the iodine helps to kill them off. In fact I have to dip some longtime LPS in iodine when they’re not looking great, and it usually does wonders.

Try iodine dips and see if it helps increase your success.

Yeah, I’m going to start raising it.

And I own an iodine dip so I can definitely try that.

 

[Wasabiroot]

The thing that stood out to me was the lighting graph. Is your schedule intensity @ full output and point intensity in the 40%s? You can probably get away with running the important channels at 100% (obviously not immediately, but could raise over, say, 8-12 weeks). But I run a 50g cube with a Radion xr15 blue, and I run that at 70% and arguably could go higher but I have a Quanta Pro as well that I run for 2 hrs. In other words, it could be your lighting being too low as part of it. But no point in changing lighting just yet until we can rule out other causes, as LPS can tolerate ~50 PUR/PAR (esp chalices, "favia" etc).

 

[Pufferlover95]

The thing that stood out to me was the lighting graph. Is your schedule intensity @ full output and point intensity in the 40%s? You can probably get away with running the important channels at 100% (obviously not immediately, but could raise over, say, 8-12 weeks). But I run a 50g cube with a Radion xr15 blue, and I run that at 70% and arguably could go higher but I have a Quanta Pro as well that I run for 2 hrs. In other words, it could be your lighting being too low as part of it. But no point in changing lighting just yet until we can rule out other causes, as LPS can tolerate ~50 PUR/PAR (esp chalices, "favia" etc).

What I showed was at peak intensity during the schedule. I didn’t know if my corals were needing more or less light, so I erred on the side of caution and kept them low so I didn’t bleach them. Sounds like maybe I need to actually run them higher.

 

[Spare time]

Stop the nopox if you want to get rid of the cyano.