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I used to be pretty active on here, years ago. Excited to see if some of the OG's are still around. Firstly, thank you for your help in figuring this out!
My Tank is a 29 Gal JBJ Cube with Eshopps Nano Cube Refugium Sump Roughly 33-35 gallons overall.
Parameters are pretty stable (I will provide an apex picture)
Salinity 35ppt
Temp 78
Alk-8.3
Cal-420 range
Mag-1300 ranger
No3- between 5-10ppm it usually hovers around 7ppm Id say.
Po4- usually bounces around between .02-.05
Salt- Fritz RPM
Lighting- Radion xr15 G4 Blue
I took a pretty significant break from reefing, but years ago I was pretty successful growing SPS in a smaller nano tank and several farm style raceway tanks.
However with this tank, I have had issues growing SPS for as long as I have had it. The tank was a running used tank when I bought it and it was packed to the brim with corals, mostly lps and zoas and whatnot, nothing real special but the guy kept it simple for many years and it became very stable and established. I purchased the tank and successfully moved it to my house and ran the tank for several months with no changes and no new corals.
Within the last 8 months I made several modifications over time and added new corals and removed rock etc. Changes are as follows over the course of many months.
Added Neptune Apex and DOS and Trident
Removed Hood and added radion
Added a bunch of sps, occasionally one wouldn't make it, not unusual.
There was some invasive corals that I needed to get rid of because they were spreading and didn't play well with others. Clove polyps and some purple carpeting style coral I forgot the name of was attached to most of the rock.
In preparation I would remove some of the rock a little at a time as well as some of the sandbed. Just a little bit at a time through water changes. I knew I would need to replace the live rock and I had my eyes on some of that reef rock that WWC sells that is man made and stackable with the rod down the middle, so I would take live rock and sand out of the tank and place it into a container I had running with the new rock for probably 3 months before I moved.
Moving day was December last year, The move went great and shortly after I moved everything over to the new place, I took out the rest of the rock that I wanted to and replaced it with the man made reef rock I got from WWC which I was told would not leach anything.
I love the look of the tank and everything appears to thrive in its new home EXCEPT for SPS, I lost most of it, which I contributed to the move and the placement of new rock, I know sps is finicky and the smallest changes can have a bad outcome for them. The only piece I have maintained was a giant WD colony I purchased and colored up. Somehow it has weathered the storm but NOW seems to be declining with other pieces.
I recently did an ICP test and I will post those results, but I don't see anything wrong with the Tank analysis or the RO water analysis.
I do weekly 5 gallon water changes and I feed the 3 fish I have once a day with frozen Mysis. Occasionally I will feed reef roids also.
I am dosing Reef Code A and B for ALK and Cal
I'd like to think my husbandry is pretty good as I work from home about 5 feet away from my tank.
My No3 was pretty high (maybe 12-15ppm) which I thought maybe the rock could be causing somehow, but I did several water changes back to back and was able to get that under control, since then it stays around 5-10ppm and one time I even had to dose KnO3 to bring it back up.
It does not appear to be pests but hell, I have no idea at this point.
MY QUESTION IS
Why are my sps failing? Obviously that is a hard question to answer, but after contacting some friends at Top Shelf Aquatics and asking for help and they really had none to offer, I knew my best chance at figuring this out would be to bring it here.
Hopefully I am not leaving anything out, feel free to ask any question you have!
I will also be posting pics of the corals and tank later, feel free to ask for me to include anything you may be wondering.
My Tank is a 29 Gal JBJ Cube with Eshopps Nano Cube Refugium Sump Roughly 33-35 gallons overall.
Parameters are pretty stable (I will provide an apex picture)
Salinity 35ppt
Temp 78
Alk-8.3
Cal-420 range
Mag-1300 ranger
No3- between 5-10ppm it usually hovers around 7ppm Id say.
Po4- usually bounces around between .02-.05
Salt- Fritz RPM
Lighting- Radion xr15 G4 Blue
I took a pretty significant break from reefing, but years ago I was pretty successful growing SPS in a smaller nano tank and several farm style raceway tanks.
However with this tank, I have had issues growing SPS for as long as I have had it. The tank was a running used tank when I bought it and it was packed to the brim with corals, mostly lps and zoas and whatnot, nothing real special but the guy kept it simple for many years and it became very stable and established. I purchased the tank and successfully moved it to my house and ran the tank for several months with no changes and no new corals.
Within the last 8 months I made several modifications over time and added new corals and removed rock etc. Changes are as follows over the course of many months.
Added Neptune Apex and DOS and Trident
Removed Hood and added radion
Added a bunch of sps, occasionally one wouldn't make it, not unusual.
There was some invasive corals that I needed to get rid of because they were spreading and didn't play well with others. Clove polyps and some purple carpeting style coral I forgot the name of was attached to most of the rock.
In preparation I would remove some of the rock a little at a time as well as some of the sandbed. Just a little bit at a time through water changes. I knew I would need to replace the live rock and I had my eyes on some of that reef rock that WWC sells that is man made and stackable with the rod down the middle, so I would take live rock and sand out of the tank and place it into a container I had running with the new rock for probably 3 months before I moved.
Moving day was December last year, The move went great and shortly after I moved everything over to the new place, I took out the rest of the rock that I wanted to and replaced it with the man made reef rock I got from WWC which I was told would not leach anything.
I love the look of the tank and everything appears to thrive in its new home EXCEPT for SPS, I lost most of it, which I contributed to the move and the placement of new rock, I know sps is finicky and the smallest changes can have a bad outcome for them. The only piece I have maintained was a giant WD colony I purchased and colored up. Somehow it has weathered the storm but NOW seems to be declining with other pieces.
I recently did an ICP test and I will post those results, but I don't see anything wrong with the Tank analysis or the RO water analysis.
I do weekly 5 gallon water changes and I feed the 3 fish I have once a day with frozen Mysis. Occasionally I will feed reef roids also.
I am dosing Reef Code A and B for ALK and Cal
I'd like to think my husbandry is pretty good as I work from home about 5 feet away from my tank.
My No3 was pretty high (maybe 12-15ppm) which I thought maybe the rock could be causing somehow, but I did several water changes back to back and was able to get that under control, since then it stays around 5-10ppm and one time I even had to dose KnO3 to bring it back up.
It does not appear to be pests but hell, I have no idea at this point.
MY QUESTION IS
Why are my sps failing? Obviously that is a hard question to answer, but after contacting some friends at Top Shelf Aquatics and asking for help and they really had none to offer, I knew my best chance at figuring this out would be to bring it here.
Hopefully I am not leaving anything out, feel free to ask any question you have!
I will also be posting pics of the corals and tank later, feel free to ask for me to include anything you may be wondering.