SPS Healthy & Colorful but Not Growing, Zoas Partially Closed - Ca, Mg, Alk Barely Decline. Why?

[HuduVudu]

Corals probably take up bicarbonate itself, not carbonate,

I 100% disagree with this. My experience tells me that the exact opposite is actually the truth.

Bicarbonate is not fake alk.

When dealing with someone who does not understand the intricacies of the chemistry behind what is being conveyed sometimes the best way of conveying an idea is through and over-simplification, hence "fake" alk. I do not believe that corals use bicarbonate so instead of using more precise language over and over again sometimes the point is hit home more quickly through a relatable phrase.

I also find it to be incredibly frustrating, though easily relatable, that people will not read threads. I have stated earlier on in this thread the appropriate chemistry and my premise for what and why things are happening in this tank.

In any case, the response of corals to carbonate vs bicarbonate is a very advanced biochemistry discussion and is extremely hard to evaluate experimentally.

Hence empirical is the rule of the day in regard to all of this. Just because something possess a complicated explanation doesn't mean it should be disregarded as a tool for understanding the empirical phenomenon observed in our tanks.

It is not a simple explanation of anyone's reef problems.

So we are to blind people with the theoretical and leave them powerless when all of our theoretical fails to solve their base problems? I don't think that this is a useful model for conveying information. I find in all endeavors the person with the highest theoretical understanding is of no use unless he/she can convey their expertise to the layman.

Low pH in a reef aquarium can be a concern for a variety of reasons, but folks should use alkalinity as their guide to the availability of bicarbonate and carbonate. None of the other components (borate, phosphate, silicate, hydroxide, and a few even more minor contributors) are all so small in concentration that they are not significant to reefers unless borate is greatly overdosed.

My reference in asking for the full set of factors was to narrow down the discussion to the carbonate and bicarbonate. I am fully aware of the minor role the other elements play. If you read the post of the person discussing this it is very clear that they are unaware of the full import of the term alkalinity. I was leading the conversation to make this point clear.

Looking back over posts, I think a lot of angst is being spent on issue that may just be testing error.

I hardly find an alkalinity movement of 8.45 to 7.85 to be a testing error. Once again I full sympathize with not wanting to slog through the entire thread, but there is a lot of important context information here that many are not seeing.

 

[HuduVudu]

Thanks @HuduVudu - I gotta admit it is difficult to plug the scrubber back in after experiencing this. Do you have any more insight or more scientific-driven explanation of the cloudy water and snail spawning? Those are perplexing and worrying me the most. I'm not looking to whipsaw my levels I'm all for sticking with a plan, but I fear that mabye the oxygen levels are low (a risk you mentioned with CO2 scrubbers?) or something else detrimental is going on.

I have fan worms that spawn and it makes my tank cloudy. I also have a horny decorator urchin that will pull down his zoa cover and spawn. My wife has just informed he is done it twice this week. I think I might have to put a Bible next to the tank. The fan worms have decide they are wanted to do their thing two days in a row in the morning. The tank clears up and life on my little reef moves on.

One thing to note on oxygen levels, I didn't know that you had cheato until you posted pictures but that glob of cheato is helping convert CO2 to O2. Also every time you open the window you are refreshing the oxygen. I do hope that you are using a fan when you do this so that you can get the whole house re-oxygenated. This acts acts as storage for when the things start to consume oxygen.

Also I agree with @jccaclimber you probably need to break the cheato up a bit and thin it out some. Don't go crazy with it because your tank is in a vulnerable place and lots of changes will be detrimental.

 

[zbryant91]

I dont have a ton to add for the post-scrubber issues but I am following along. I have a 60 gallon and have seen very similar trends as you. I have about 30-40 different frags, maybe 10 of which are sps frags that are pretty stagnant and i have had no detectable mag, alk, and ca consumption for a few months now. Ph fluctuates between 7.9-8.1. Jumps to about 8.4 when the house is empty for a couple days.

Prior to the last 3 months, I tried running a brs co2 scrubber for about 6 months and my ph was consistently 8.1-8.35 ish. I was struggling to keep sps alive so I gave up chasing the ph. I found my phosphates were running .1- .12 so I got that down to about .03 and I've kept some sps frags alive and colorful for a few months now. So I think that's the main difference between our situations.

but my trident trends look the exact same as yours. Very little change and ill see alk rise until I do a water change to bring it back down, and I havent dosed anything in over 2 months. Keeps bouncing around 8.5-9dkh. Can't seem to get it any lower and I'm using tropic Marin pro reef salt. I've kind of just been in a holding pattern for these 3 months trying to keep things stable to see what happens. since I have more visible polyp extension compared to anything I've ever had, I've just been letting it go to see if the consumption starts up.

When I ran my scrubber I never encountered cloudy water except once when I had so much condensation build up that the skimmer was drawing the condensate water from the scrubber. Just changed our the media and did a small water change and it was fine. Im guessing its pretty unlikely that you have this issue on day 1 as it took me a weeks to build up that much. And my scrubber was setup to draw air from the skimmer lid rather than open air.

So, I'm following along to see if you find anything that helps since I feel I'm in a similar boat.

I also have some lps and softies that don't look great but I am also on the upside of an asterina outbreak which I believe is what's ticking off those guys.

 

[jccaclimber]

I dont have a ton to add for the post-scrubber issues but I am following along. I have a 60 gallon and have seen very similar trends as you. I have about 30-40 different frags, maybe 10 of which are sps frags that are pretty stagnant and i have had no detectable mag, alk, and ca consumption for a few months now. Ph fluctuates between 7.9-8.1. Jumps to about 8.4 when the house is empty for a couple days.

Prior to the last 3 months, I tried running a brs co2 scrubber for about 6 months and my ph was consistently 8.1-8.35 ish. I was struggling to keep sps alive so I gave up chasing the ph. I found my phosphates were running .1- .12 so I got that down to about .03 and I've kept some sps frags alive and colorful for a few months now. So I think that's the main difference between our situations.

but my trident trends look the exact same as yours. Very little change and ill see alk rise until I do a water change to bring it back down, and I havent dosed anything in over 2 months. Keeps bouncing around 8.5-9dkh. Can't seem to get it any lower and I'm using tropic Marin pro reef salt. I've kind of just been in a holding pattern for these 3 months trying to keep things stable to see what happens. since I have more visible polyp extension compared to anything I've ever had, I've just been letting it go to see if the consumption starts up.

When I ran my scrubber I never encountered cloudy water except once when I had so much condensation build up that the skimmer was drawing the condensate water from the scrubber. Just changed our the media and did a small water change and it was fine. Im guessing its pretty unlikely that you have this issue on day 1 as it took me a weeks to build up that much. And my scrubber was setup to draw air from the skimmer lid rather than open air.

So, I'm following along to see if you find anything that helps since I feel I'm in a similar boat.

I also have some lps and softies that don't look great but I am also on the upside of an asterina outbreak which I believe is what's ticking off those guys.

Not to aid the high jacking too much, and it may not hurt to start a different thread if this expands, but:
1) Do you have non zero nitrate levels?
2) Do you have clear growth edges like the OP’s frags, or is the SPS truly stagnant?

High phosphate slows calcification, but it doesn’t stop it in its tracks like zero phosphate does, so I don’t think that’s your primary issue.
Hopefully things are well at the OP’s end, and clear in the morning.

 

[zbryant91]

Not to aid the high jacking too much, and it may not hurt to start a different thread if this expands, but:
1) Do you have non zero nitrate levels?
2) Do you have clear growth edges like the OP’s frags, or is the SPS truly stagnant?

High phosphate slows calcification, but it doesn’t stop it in its tracks like zero phosphate does, so I don’t think that’s your primary issue.
Hopefully things are well at the OP’s end, and clear in the morning.

For sure not trying to high jack, i just have seen very similar trends on ph and trident and wanted to add some context for my situation.

Nitrates have been steady between 4-10 for over a year. Primairly closer to 4.

I'd say my last 3 months I have had some clear growth on several frags. Some decent entrusting. Not exactly expecting tremendous growth in this time but I did expect to start seeing some alk and ca usage on the trident.

 

[sgrosenb]

Hi all - good news here. Everything looks to be in good shape. Quite an odd scare last night; the only thing I can attribute the cloudiness to was the trochus snails spawning (Never seen that before in the 18+ months - I probably have at least 30 of them and they all seemed to be spawing together). There might be another chemical explanation for it, but that is the only visible thing I saw. I want to say I read a thread where @Randy Holmes-Farley said that an overdose of Kalk can cause cloudiness - not sure if that's because of pH and bacteria or just couldy kalk. Note that I could be wrong on this as well and misremembering). Whatever it was, all looks to be good fish- and coral-wise.

I think what I'll do is take some of the CO2 scrubber media out and run it for a few days a 1/2 or 1/3 capacity. Hopefully that will allow me to ease into the pH swings rather than go from 8.0-8.6 in a day. I'm back down to 8.04 this morning (if that's even accurate - @HuduVudu I too had the theory that maybe my Apex probe was not accurate, despite multiple calibrations. Your thought of taking the KH Director probe was a great one - I'm going to do that today). Anyone know if I'm thinking about that correctly? (i.e. a CO2 scrubber 1/3 full will pull out less CO2 and not be as aggressive?)

Thanks for the notes @zbryant91 - it sounds like you used a CO2 scrubber for a few months and it didn't do the trick? I feel your pain on the lack of uptake of alk and calcium, and even weirder is the apparent rise (on it's own - no dosing) of alkalinity. I have a thread on here somewhere where I detail my alkalinity rising. I started my tank with all dead rock and dead sand and for the first few months I dosed Soda Ash to keep up with alk depletion. Then all of the sudden it stopped dropping, I stopped dosing, and it started to increase on it's own. I too use Topric Marin Pro Reef (mixes to roughly 7.5 dKH) and I was having trouble keeping alk below 10.0 dKH even with consistent water changes and no dosing. It wasn't until I ditched my dead rock (over 1 year in to having the tank) and got 100% live rock (from KP Aquatics and Tampa Bay Saltwater) that I actually saw a reasonable, albeit slow, drop in alkalinity. That was about 3 months ago; I dosed Soda Ash a few more times through the past 3 months, but then recently alk stopped dropping again. Fast forward to today, and I'm back at the spot where alk is not really dropping (well, that is - until I started opening my windows and turned on the CO2 scrubber).

Not sure if the above adds any more clues to the mystery, but I can say that the CO2 scrubber is indeed having an impact on alk. So I'm going to keep at it and see where it goes.

I'll keep report back as things progress. Thanks to all for the continued help and support.

 

[Perry]

Hey there,
Snail spawns are natural, and that's a lot of trochus, lol. Cheers on stability! Tread carefully my friend, let things run, do not react to every little thing in haste of perfection. 15 years at sps, and only thing I can say is patience my friend. I have made many knee jerk decisions in my history, and would advise to make one change at a time, that way you can observe... Observe being key, not monitoring, or testing, but taking the time to study your tank, with YOUR eyes, and allowing your ecosystem to work with as little intervention as possible. My 2 cents, I love your passion, but warn in advance of being too driven by your quest for perfection. Cheers!!!

 

[sgrosenb]

Hey there,
Snail spawns are natural, and that's a lot of trochus, lol. Cheers on stability! Tread carefully my friend, let things run, do not react to every little thing in haste of perfection. 15 years at sps, and only thing I can say is patience my friend. I have made many knee jerk decisions in my history, and would advise to make one change at a time, that way you can observe... Observe being key, not monitoring, or testing, but taking the time to study your tank, with YOUR eyes, and allowing your ecosystem to work with as little intervention as possible. My 2 cents, I love your passion, but warn in advance of being too driven by your quest for perfection. Cheers!!!

Great advice @Perry - thanks for the good words! I'm trying to do my best to just let it all play out but it's tough haha! Also I may be mistaken and they are astraea snails; I've seen some videos that show cloudy water when they spawn, so I have to believe it is due to that. It was just really, really weird to see cloudy water on day 1 of a CO2 scrub so it threw me off a bit. Likely me being overly sensitive as things are changing. Onward we go!

 

[Cory]

A lot of inverts will spawn durring perceived stress ime. And also naturally.

How many days does it take for your glass to get an algae film?

 

[Cory]

Between your chaeto and your skimmer your arnt leaving much for the corals imo.

 

[proxy001]

Great advice @Perry - thanks for the good words! I'm trying to do my best to just let it all play out but it's tough haha! Also I may be mistaken and they are astraea snails; I've seen some videos that show cloudy water when they spawn, so I have to believe it is due to that. It was just really, really weird to see cloudy water on day 1 of a CO2 scrub so it threw me off a bit. Likely me being overly sensitive as things are changing. Onward we go!

As you may recall, dealing with similar issues.
Recalibrate your Ph probe. I had done it only a month ago, and it was off by 0.2... apex.
I dont recall if you did that but get a GOOD par meter and double check your readings.
I am wondering if I have too much filtration too... (my readings are far from zero)

 

[sgrosenb]

How many days does it take for your glass to get an algae film?

I would say it takes about 3-5 days to get film on my glass that I clean, give or take

 

[sgrosenb]

I dont recall if you did that but get a GOOD par meter and double check your readings.

Yep I have an apogee PAR meter - everything is in 200-350 PAR

 

[Cory]

I would say it takes about 3-5 days to get film on my glass that I clean, give or take

If it were me id put your skimmer on a timer, on for 12 hours off for 12. And id reduce your chaeto lighting by half as well. Your pulling a lot of nutrients out with the chaeto and that kessil grow light. Many trace elements that corals would use too. You ph isn't a concern here. Above 8 is acceptable for coral growth. The ocean is around 8.1-8.2 anyway.

 

[Cory]

Fwiw your crabs probably died of starvation or if you started iodine and they all happened to molt from it at the same time.

 

[sgrosenb]

If it were me id put your skimmer on a timer, on for 12 hours off for 12. And id reduce your chaeto lighting by half as well. Your pulling a lot of nutrients out with the chaeto and that kessil grow light. Many trace elements that corals would use too. You ph isn't a concern here. Above 8 is acceptable for coral growth. The ocean is around 8.1-8.2 anyway.

Thanks @Cory - I can try that. I had always thought that my nutrients were OK given that NO3 tests out at 5-10 and PO4 tests at 0.05-.10 like clockwork. In terms of trace elements, my ICP tests consistently show trace elements as being in line, which I attributed to my 10-15% weekly water changes. You think that despite those readings, there might not be enough for the corals?

 

[jccaclimber]

1) I didn't realize you had 30 trochus snails, I was thinking 5 or 6. Yes, that's probably the issue. I am a bit surprised the skimmer didn't run a bit wet given that organic load.
2) Given this bringing the scrubber back online (maybe slowly to be sure) seems reasonable.
3) I'd feed more before I cut the skimmer back, but that's because I like the aeration they provide. Are the softies always happy, or just usually happy? Picture of one as an example of their current state?
4) NOT part of the problem, but either you suddenly developed the world's most stable salinity probe yesterday, or something is up with the probe or its calibration. I've seen them that stable, but not often. This is not your problem and does not need an immediate fix, I just noticed it and it seemed odd, particularly given how it looked the prior 24 hours.

 

[Cory]

Thanks @Cory - I can try that. I had always thought that my nutrients were OK given that NO3 tests out at 5-10 and PO4 tests at 0.05-.10 like clockwork. In terms of trace elements, my ICP tests consistently show trace elements as being in line, which I attributed to my 10-15% weekly water changes. You think that despite those readings, there might not be enough for the corals?

Yes I think that algae under 2000 par would outcompete corals for nutrients. Icp isnt as accurate as we believe, especially icp.com has been given negative reviews. However, if you take a sample and sent it off after your water change, well its not showing how much it depleted for example.

 

[EMeyer]

Maybe you should re-read Randy's article it seems you skipped a lot of information, also his several complaints about current Alk testing.

It seems that you should be able easily provide all of the elements tested because your knowledge of Randy's article. It therefore should also be easy for you to list them so that we may talk about them.

Alkalinity is about buffering acid in any aqueous solution and there is nothing more or less about it. There are many many buffering substances that fall under the umbrella of Alkalinity I am asking you to name only the ones that are tested for using salt water alkalinity tests.

You have simplified something that you don't truly understand. I am suggesting that you check your premise. Hint: read the entire thread the answers lie there.

You are attempting to redefine alkalinity as something it is not. This leads to an enormous amount of confusion.

Alkalinity is buffering capacity, nothing more, nothing less. You could produce two different solutions with completely different bicarbonate or carbonate concentrations, but with equal alkalinity.

If your arguments are about bicarbonate or carbonate concentrations you'd be able to make those points more clearly by using the established terms.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I do not believe that corals use bicarbonate so instead of using more precise language over and over again sometimes the point is hit home more quickly through a relatable phrase.

Really? You believe they take up carbonate? What is your evidence?

There's no point in addressing any of your other points if we cannot even agree on that.

i discuss the evidence of using bicarbonate here:

Alkalinity stability? pH stability? Are they even different?

It is currently the dogma of the reef aquarium hobby to say that alkalinity stability is very important for SPS corals, and that pH is not. Often, the very idea of someone trying to optimize pH is called “chasing numbers” as if that statement by itself shows it to be foolish. Since I have...

www.reef2reef.com

from it:
Let’s start this discussion with some background on total alkalinity, and why we use such a weird, theoretical measurement. It is certainly not because it is the exact thing corals “care” about. Total alkalinity is the sum of a bunch of different things in the water, some of which are counted once (bicarbonate, silicate, hydrogen phosphate, borate, magnesium monohydroxide, hydroxide), some twice (phosphate and carbonate) and one (hydrogen ion) is subtracted back out to get the final answer. Certainly, it is mostly bicarbonate, and it is far easier to measure than is bicarbonate alone. So if we care about bicarbonate and cannot readily measure it, total alkalinity is a fall back measurement that may have value.

In fact, the reason we measure total alkalinity is because corals use bicarbonate (at least that is the current consensus in the scientific community) to gain the carbonate they need for formation of calcium carbonate skeletons (and potentially for the CO2 they need for photosynthesis as well). Let me just back up that assertion with a recent reference to justify the importance of bicarbonate. Using “current” references is important, as this very complex field has evolved a lot in the past 20 years (and still has a lot to learn).

Figure 1 in this paper from 2019 shows bicarbonate as the ion taken up from the bulk water:

Electrophysiological evidence for light-activated cation transport in calcifying corals
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2018.2444