Need help from some experts!

[Manchild]

I am stuck at a roadblock, for the life of me I cannot figure out why I cannot keep euphyllia Corals and such alive? I have lost some acans, acros and now my candy cane is not looking good. They tend to deflate, shrivel down and eventually die, yet I have some Aussie lavender acan, Echinata, plenty of Zoas that are all doing fine??

Here are my params taken yesterday for my tank, I do weekly 5 gallon changes in a 33 tank and keep it at 78 temp

Phosphate - .16
Nitrate - .02
Nitrite - .0
Ammonia - 0.0
Mag - 1200
Salinity - 1.026
Calcium - 450 ppm
Alk - 11.5


I use all Red Sea/Salifert test kits and use Red Sea (blue bucket NOT the Coral) Salt and an RODI 5 stage which is brand new, first 10 gallons are tossed when making RODI and TDS coming out is 0.

I feed Reef Energy daily to my corals and feed reef roids 2-3 times a week, some of my LPS also receive reef frenzy pellets. As for livestock, I have 1 female emerald crab which was just added yesterday, 1 valentini puffer, 2 clowns, 1 dragon goby, 1 springeri damsel, 1 pom pom crab, 1 yellow watchman goby, 1 coral banded shrimp. I run an Eshopps HOB protein skimmer and an aquaclear 70 HOB filter with purigen, phosban, filter floss and MarinePure. 20-25lbs of liverock in the system with about 20lbs of sand.

 

[CodyRVA]

How old is the system? How often do you test? Can you provide previous test results? PO4 is on the high side. You don't need to feed your corals so much. If you are carbon dosing, your ALK is way too high.

 

[Manchild]

System is about a month old but was previously up and running in another location from someone else for about two years. I test obsessively, as in daily I test.

 

[Diesel]

Don't worry bro, we will get to bottom of this.
Looking at your numbers I must say your Po4 is a bit on the high side at 0.16.
Try to figure that out why!
Your No3 is really at 0.02?
Cause if it is its way to low, a good range is between 2 and 5 ppm in most cases.
That said if No3 is low your ALK is way to high on 11.5.
How are you dosing ALK?
Can you post some close up pics of your corals?
Having a HOB filter isn't the best but it ain't bad as you have a HOB skimmer, make sure it's skimming alright.

 

[Manchild]

 

[Tahoe61]

Please review the link below. You might consider bringing those values closer to NSW values. Bring mag up a little and let Alk drift down.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/

 

[Manchild]

I don't dose ALK, I have used NoPOX about 4 times in the amount of 2-3ML WITH the skimmer running "like when you see the phos at .3" to help decrease those. Otherwise I don't dose any products, just water changes

 

[CodyRVA]

Your parameters are not what i would call consistent. Also, stop testing after you do your water changes. If you want to test heavily, test before and after. Testing after isn't going to give you reliable results.

MG dropped from 1400 on Jan 2, - > to 1200 by the 14th

Clearly PO4 is on the rise:
26th = .08ppm, 2nd = .2ppm, 8th = .16ppm , 15th = .36ppm

 

[Diesel]

What I noticed is that your nutrient # are all over the place and not really consistent.
You might consider a different salt for your ALK to bring it down as what you using will keep your ALK high.
How often you clean your HOB?
Sometimes it's better to take all filters out and place a small bag of love rock rubble in there, your skimmer should handle the nutrient stability together with your bacteria load on the live rock in your tank.

 

[Manchild]

This was part of my concern, I rinse my chemical media once a week in same temp RODI water. I replace the "quilt batting" as it becomes gunked up to keep my Nitrate down. The MarinePure I simply pull out while cleaning and replace but do not rinse as I did not want to rinse off the beneficial bacteria. I'm hoping I can find my flaws or mistakes that I'm making here

 

[jsker]

Question, what salt are you using? Some brands run a high alk and that could be the cause of the high alk reading. In regards to the high PO4's are do to many factors, and to get them down there are a couple of product that one can use to bring them down. I used Phosphate RX and there is also ATM agent green. These products main ingredient is lanthanum chloride which the phosphate bind to and are filter out very quickly. Yes your nitrates are very low and most likely your corals are starving.

My suggestion would be to feed your corals a product to bring up you nitrates, and use one of the two products to bring down you phosphates. When you balance the nutrient out in the short term I would say that your coral will be happier. The entire system will take some time to balance out after the move in a month or so.

 

[Manchild]

I use Red Sea Salt, not the Coral Pro version. Here are the specs of the salt. I currently added I believe it's called phosroa? To help reduce phosphates.

 

[CodyRVA]

Keep in mind, it's not uncommon to see a PO4 spike when moving a system; all depends how long the system was down for and how well it was preserved during relocation. +1 on previous comments to reduce PO4, could also consider GFO.

 

[Manchild]

Did a 10 gallon water change on Wednesday evening and just now tested my levels, it looks like I was low in calcium and mag just prior to my change. I pulled my chemical media with the exception of pura phoslock to keep my phosphates down and everything has seemed to perk up, including my toadstool but my candy cane still is looking pretty sad

 

[Bunnee911]

If you can get your candycane to open, feed it hun.

Mine like to feed after lights out.

 

[Viracon13]

I think the system just needs some time to settle in. It's essentially brand new. I don't know what steps you took to relocate the tank, but there's bound to be some die off of the bacteria population.