My Tank is on a Downward Spiral and I Need Input Please

happyhourhero · Oct 11, 2017

The problem: Montis in particular look real bad. Bleaching of all but 1 cap to the point algae is growing on the exposed skeleton. Forest fire digis are stn mostly in the shaded spots but also in the open. Entire branches have died off. Acros are losing color, some have filaments out, spots of stn are showing up.

Relevant Back Story: I ran my tank for about a year dripping kalk once water changes couldnt keep up and I never tested Nitrates or phosphates and my tank was beautiful and grew very well. I sold my house and in preparing for the move, I sold some rock with palys on them and added a marine pure block (4x8) to my sump to make up for the rock i sold. I moved and it went ok. I lost a couple colonies due to ammonia spike because everything was in tubs for 3 days and I had all my fish and colonies in the same tub with almost no rock like an idiot. The tank went ok for a while once i set back up and i was getting good growth and color and then one single coral caused me to start messing with things. An acro started throwing out filaments and I took water to LFS to test because I didnt even have phosphate or nitrate test at the time. They found phosphates around 1.5 and nitrates around 50. I slowly started dosing DIY NoPox and running very small amounts of GFO. I got my nitrates down to around 5-10 and phosphates down to .03. I kept it like this for a maybe 2 months but my colors continued to fade and monti caps started looking worse and worse. I took GFO offline between 1-2 weeks ago. To make matters worse, I switched from dosing 2 part to dripping Kalk and I spiked my alk 2 days ago to 10.5.

I want my tank back like it was when it was simple and looked great which is why i recently switched back to kalk. I had been dosing 2 part at night and thought that maybe the kalk drip would keep alk a lot more stable and maybe the elevated PH would help.

Parameters as of last night:
SG 1.026 Calibrated Refractometer right before test
Alk 9 Salifert
Cal 440 Salifert
Mag 1440 Salifert
Phosphates .20 Hannah Phosphate not low range tester
Nitrate between 10-25 Salifert
Temp 78
Use RODI water at 000 TDS

Tank features
65 Gallon
20 Gal Sump
Coral Box Skimmer
Algae Scrubber
2 RW 8 plus return pump for flow

I just dont know what I should do. Ride this out and get it stabilized dripping the kalk or if I need to get my gfo back online and get the p04 down or up my carbon dosing. Could the marine pure block be causing this? So many variables and its getting so frustrating.

zachxlutz · Oct 11, 2017

Hmmm. I follow your build thread and I hate to hear this. To me, it sounds like your tank is still struggling to find it's equilibrium after your recent move. The move combined with the changes to your husbandry practices seem like the most probable cause.

You said you've been utilizing GFO/Carbon. Did your tank show "symptoms" of high nutrients? Algae growth, poor coloration? It sounds like your tank was at it's best when you weren't employing any chemical means of nutrient export. Shooting for those lower nutrient numbers may actually be causing more harm than good if they're changing too quickly. I'd slow down on dosing carbon and definitely hold off on the GFO for now while things stabilize. Does your algae scrubber not work sufficiently enough to keep nutrients under control? Can you tune that to work a little better?

The alk spike certainly didn't help either. I'd pick a means for alk/cal control and stick with it. 2 part will be great once you get your dosing dialed in. I've been dosing with 2 part and only have to make small 5% adjustments here and there as needed to keep things stable.

I'm just rambling. What do you think?

jda · Oct 11, 2017

How new is this current iteration of the tank after the move? Does it have sand at all or new sand? If the sand is new, then it still take times to be able to process/handle the nitrate even though it is helped along by some more established rock.

For me, .20 is too high for P, but I would not do much right now. I am usually OK with N at 10, but starting to worry at 25... but still no reason to panic yet. I would let everything get super stable for a month or two and then look to tackle a few things. Water changes are all that I would do. However, if you see N and P drifting up, then maybe a super small amount of GFO to keep the P near .2, for now?

I would not sweat an alk spike alone with N and P at those levels, but it was probably no good with everything else going on.

happyhourhero · Oct 11, 2017

zachxlutz said:
Hmmm. I follow your build thread and I hate to hear this. To me, it sounds like your tank is still struggling to find it's equilibrium after your recent move. The move combined with the changes to your husbandry practices seem like the most probable cause.

You said you've been utilizing GFO/Carbon. Did your tank show "symptoms" of high nutrients? Algae growth, poor coloration? It sounds like your tank was at it's best when you weren't employing any chemical means of nutrient export. Shooting for those lower nutrient numbers may actually be causing more harm than good if they're changing too quickly. I'd slow down on dosing carbon and definitely hold off on the GFO for now while things stabilize. Does your algae scrubber not work sufficiently enough to keep nutrients under control? Can you tune that to work a little better?

The alk spike certainly didn't help either. I'd pick a means for alk/cal control and stick with it. 2 part will be great once you get your dosing dialed in. I've been dosing with 2 part and only have to make small 5% adjustments here and there as needed to keep things stable.

I'm just rambling. What do you think?

Thank you for replying. There were no symptoms other than the once acro looking off. Until that point i had not had any corals act up ever and I likely over reacted. My algae scrubber produces well and I have very little algae in display but obviously not good enough if my p04 is still creeping up. Maybe I should feed a bit less.

As far as the 2 part goes, I switched back to kalk thinking it was more stable than my 30ml at night routine.

landlubber · Oct 11, 2017

your problem can probably be attributed to it lacking the most important thing you can give it... stability.
i lost my entire reef (over 25 sps) after using a bad alkalinity test for over a month. the coral took well to it raising from 8.32dkh up to just shy of 12dkh but it couldn't tolerate it slowly being brought back down unfortunately.
sorry to hear about it none the less.

happyhourhero · Oct 11, 2017

jda said:
How new is this current iteration of the tank after the move? Does it have sand at all or new sand? If the sand is new, then it still take times to be able to process/handle the nitrate even though it is helped along by some more established rock.

For me, .20 is too high for P, but I would not do much right now. I am usually OK with N at 10, but starting to worry at 25... but still no reason to panic yet. I would let everything get super stable for a month or two and then look to tackle a few things. Water changes are all that I would do. However, if you see N and P drifting up, then maybe a super small amount of GFO to keep the P near .2, for now?

I would not sweat an alk spike alone with N and P at those levels, but it was probably no good with everything else going on.

No sand. the tank is BB and always has been. I moved March 3rd. Thank you for replying.

nashorn · Oct 11, 2017

You most likely have to ride this till tank finds its balance.
(Yea you will lose most sps)
All the symptom of a crash I hate to say.
I believe add this or that is just going to make it worse and take longer to stabilize.
At this point there could be so many things wrong.
I wish I could say do this or add that but unless you get lucky nothing going to help except time.
My last crash was 3 years ago and after that it took a year before I felt I was able to grow sps again.
Good luck

Gweeds1980 · Oct 12, 2017

As others have said, likely a result of the move, exacerbated by changing things. Likely reason is that you removed mature rock, with established bacterial population and replaced with a marine pure block... this would have been all but sterile. The bacteria will colonize it, but will be 'new' so when it comes to dealing with nutrients, the bacteria has to multiply to process higher levels, which takes days not hours. In mature rock the bacteria just has to increase metabolic rate which takes hours not days and thus nutrient levels are far more stable...

It could take up to 12 months to get to a stage where the bacterial population in the block is mature enough to act in the same way. Until then it's vital that everything is kept as consistent as possible.

It's no coincidence that guys with tanks decades old can do virtually anything to their tanks without issue, but in a new tank folk are losing corals with what seem to be fairly mild changes.