Watch me kill SPS...

odotron

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I've gone back and forth debating whether to make this thread... I think I know the responses I'm going to get. There seems to be many ways to success and much of the feedback and/or research I've seen in the past seems to have just as many testimonies which show direct conflict to the claims. (I.e. LED's don't grow SPS, dead rock won't grow SPS, etc.) That said, with the money I've spent on frags that end up in the sump rock rubble is enough to have made a second tank setup... Which is to say whatever it is I am doing isn't work AT ALL so here I am again looking to see if anyone has something insightful to perhaps help my situation.

As some background, my 210gal tank has been up for almost 2 years. Since day 1, I have heeded the advice of some on this forum and @BRS videos and have quarantined nearly everything wet that goes into my tank. The only exception being some SPS frags which, according to R2R info, cannot harbor encysted parasites on healthy coral fleshy tissue. By QT I mean all fish have been treated with PraziPro and copper in a QT tank for at least 30 if not 45 days. All corals are dipped in Bayer. All corals are either moved on a fresh plug or have their existing plug exposed surfaces completely covered in super glue. My tank was started with Marco Rock bought directly from Marco. As such, I have never seen symptoms of any parasite or disease in my tank. (Exhibit 1 which will draw contraversy)

As far as equipment goes, my lighting is Reef Breeders Photo V2+ LED's with 2/ea T5 Blue+ bulbs to supplement. Settings are ~4hr of full light where PAR levels are ~400 at the highest rock and ~120 at the sand bed. I run a RO skimmer. I generally run BRS ROX carbon at amounts slightly less than instructions recommend. I have 2/ea Maxspect Gyre XF280's and 2/ea Neptune WAV pumps for in tank flow. Not sure what else to mention but I feel my equipment is pretty standard or at least not crazy far away from what maybe considered "common".

For maintenance, I usually do water changes once a month with ~40gal. I used to use Red Sea Blue Bucket but switched to Tropic Marin Pro Reef Salt. I have a BRS 6 stage RODI unit. My parameters are generally as follows:

salinity - 35ppt*
temp - 77.6 - 78.4*F
Alk - 8.0 dKH
Calcium - 440ppm
Magnesium - 1300ppm
Nitrates - 5ppm**
Phosphates - 0.02ppm*

*Salinity recently trended down to 33ppt. Been bringing it back up slowly. Currently at 34ppt.
**For a long time, after I gave up on coral, my nutrients dropped to ~0 despite heavy feeding. Dunno why. Had to dose to get them back up. After dosing to get them up, they have stayed steady. Somewhat suggests nothing is consuming them anyways?

I have run an ICP test maybe a year ago when I tried to grow SPS last time. Test results didn't reveal anything revolutionary.

Here is what I experience with my SPS corals. Frags come in looking great. After my receiving practices, I put them on a frag rack near the sand bed. I've tried leaving them there any I've tried raising them slowly. It doesn't seem to change the end result. Generally, about a week into their receipt, the bases start to look what I describe as "crunchy" or "crusty". Oddly I have been unable to find posts that use descriptors such as this. Generally, it looks as if the skin of the base is slowly receeding to expose the pointy skeleton bits at the base. From there, tissue at the tips starts to look beaten and worn. Corallites start to look "burned" exposing skeleton. Over the coming weeks, this ultimately leads to what I assume is STN and rarely over night RTN.

In my most recent endeavor, I reached out to Adam @Battlecorals who was nice enough to let me buy a "tester SPS box" which included a monti, a stylo, a milli and an acro. Its been 15 days since receipt and they are seemingly heading down the same path as I've experienced in the past. Here are some photos to illustrate:

Day 1
20200414_103231.jpg


Day 15
20200428_120344.jpg


As you can see, I think its safe to say none of them look as good as they did when they came in. According to what I see on here, the majority of people experience that new frags generally do not look worse before they start looking better. The general consensus is they should look good the whole time. As I have never successfully kept an SPS alive, I am unclear as to what success looks like to be honest. I have no idea if any of this is normal or not.

In full disclosure, as mentioned some above, I have experienced some less than stable parameters as of my most recent attempt at SPS. I don't know if any of them are extreme enough to cause the dramatic changes in the frags as I am seeing.

Also as note, in the past I have kept zoas alive and growing. At some point, something I did seems to have negatively effected the zoas. I lost most of them but have three different zoa "colonies" left. Two of them are stagnant, going in and out of being fully open for days or being bothered and being mixed of closed and open. One colony continues to grow and multiply though.

In an effort to try and document my experiences, I have written the following email to Adam at Battle Corals as a "hail mary" to get some help. However, I think its unreasonable for me to expect a vendor to evaluate my situation as I'm sure they get these all the time. I'm also sure its hard to really get a picture of a tank from just an email, video or pictures. The system is dynamic and complex and I'm not even sure anything short of letting a "professional" take over my tank maintenance would even stand a chance. Nonetheless, the following is my most recent email to Adam to share some of my information:

Adam,

Just an update, unfortunately I think things are headed the direction I expected. Admittedly, some of it is likely my fault. My lack of trying to add stony coral for many months has let me lapse on my water testing. As such, some of my parameters had swung out of "ideal" ranges. I have begun to slowly correct them but I'm not sure which, if any, could contribute to this. Also, there's one big mistake I think I made. In thinking maybe they weren't getting sufficient lighting on a magnetic frag rack at the bottom corner of my tank, this past Thursday (Day 10) I moved the frag rack to maybe the top 1/3 of my tank, still in the corner. It's hard to tell if its coincidence in timing or contributing, but this seems to have made the most dramatic difference on the couple frags that were still doing OK. I moved it in the PM so they only spent one photo period in high light.

As far as the coral go, I've taken daily photos of each frag to be able to look back at the progress. I'd describe them as follows:

- Montipora went down hill pretty quickly. I'm not very familiar with monti's. Their growing edges look kinda white to me anyways so I wasn't sure when that one started showing skeleton. I'd say on Friday (Day 5) I could positively say polyps weren't showing as much and edges were getting "crusty". By this past Wednesday (Day 9) there was some flesh still but there was more skeleton than flesh. As of today, I see some yellow polyps in the "corallites" (or whatever they are on monti's) but I suspect its just the receded tissue showing them. I'll leave it on the rack but I suspect its gone.

Day 10, prior to frag rack move:

monti 1.png

Today, after being move to high light:
monti 2.png


- The stylo showed good polyps until maybe Day 8. They came and went a couple days before that but I figured that was maybe normal. The flesh between the polyps did look different at Day 2 or 3, losing some of its "white color" but I figured showing polyps was still good. Following the move higher in the tank, the polyps continued to come and go as they did lower in the tank but maybe were less pronounced overall. As of today, I'm seeing even more white between the polyps. Thinking maybe its on its way out as well but not very definitive as of yet. (Notable, the coralline on the plug I left exposed is definitely growing.)

Day 10, prior to frag rack move:
stylo 1.png

Today, after being move to high light for 2 days, only one photo period:
stylo 2.png


- The millipora I though was doing pretty well through Day 9 or so. Polyps appeared out. Maybe not as pronounced as they were when they just came in but still out. On around Day 7, I believe the base was even starting to encrust over the glue on the plug. Overall, it has been pretty good. However, following the raising to higher light, I noticed today the top middle tip is looking "crusty" almost as if the light burned back the skin there. I think this one is not necessarily gone, but hate to see this recent change.

Day 10, prior to frag rack move:
milli 1.png

Today, after being move to high light for 2 days, only one photo period:
milli 2.png


- The acropora has probably done the best of them all. Like the milli, I think around Day 7 I started to see the base encrust over the glue. There was a bleached portion that was there when it came in (a very small spot) that maybe got a little bigger, but no skin loss there. As my previous email stated, the encrusted base did get a little crusty in the initial days but with the encrusting, I figured that was maybe just an adjusting period or, as you said, reacting to glue. I'd say the frag itself, not the base, looked about 90% as good as it did when it came in as of Day 9 prior to the move. However, as of the moving of the frag rack, it has started to pale out a bit. Polyps seemed quite happy in the higher flow area in the higher part of the tank though. Overall, I have hopes for this one but we'll have to wait and see.

Day 10, prior to frag rack move:
acro 1.png

Today, after being move to high light for 2 days, only one photo period:
acro 2.png


As an aside, I have gotten some frags from a couple of locals as of Monday this week. I also got a maricultured piece from Live Aquaria in an attempt to "seed" that tank with ocean rock and test the "SPS need ocean-seeded live rock to survive, dead/dry rock tanks always stuggle" theory I hear all to often on R2R. They are in my QT system. The SPS are a red plating monti, a spongode and a green slimer. The maricultured piece is a big secale with loads of plating/encrusting coralline on the rock. They are much newer to my possession so comparing them isn't entire accurate but they look almost identical as to when they came in. Maricultured piece is maybe lightening on the tips a very small amount, so small I hesitate to note it, but that's it. The 5 SPS in my QT look great.

In case its of interest, the following are the tank changes alluded to above:

- Salinity crept down to 33ppt. I've began raising it on Day 7 by adding salt water a little but every day instead of letting my ATO top off with RODI. As of today, its probably 34ppt.
- My calcium was low at 390ppm as of Day 1. Suspect its related to my low salinity. I've been dosing on my DOS to raise it to steadily. As of today, it read 450ppm.
- Alkalinity was lower at 7dKH. Like calcium, I think it had some to do with my salinity. I have not dosed it up. Increasing salinity has brought it up to 8.1dKH as of today.
- I've always struggled with readings of zero nitrates and phosphates. I've added sodium nitrate to my ATO as of Day 3. Its come up to 5ppm over the period.
- I added trisodium phosphate initially to my ATO but noticed it fueled algae growth pretty rapidly. It came up to 0.02ppm from dosing then went back to zero the next day. Interestingly, having not dosed for a week now, its reading 0.07ppm as of last night. It could be a bad Hanna packet but I thought it was positive to show some phosphates "naturally".

Finally, should it help share, here is a link to a short video I took of my tank. This maybe help communicate my setup details.

YouTube Video:

I'm partially writing this to get it all out and to organize my thoughts and document my experience. Should you find the time/interest in looking it over, I would be grateful. Of course, if you have ideas, I'm nearing desperate and very disheartened by all this. I firmly believe my "LARS" contributed to all this. I am looking into adding some more flow to my tank

cleardot.gif

If you're still reading at this point, thank you. I am doing this in hopes someone maybe able to help. Any and all feedback will be appreciated. As outlined above, I am going to try and change a couple things then throw away another $200 on a battle box I guess...

Thanks again for your time.


I feel like I was experiencing, and to some degree still am experiencing much of what you have so eloquently expressed above. My primary reef tank is 150 gallons with an assortment of high-end equipment including: 4 radion lights, neptune dosing pump, trident (calc, alk, and mag monitoring), ato, etc.

LPS coral, for the most part have done ok over the past 2 years, with some mysteriously fading into oblivion and some merely existing. I have more time to spend with the tank due to this pandemic and have found that patience, coupled with basic equipment monitoring (hoses, lines, connections, salt creep, etc.) are leading to success. Just last night, after seeing a steady decline in my ALK levels despite dosing increases, I discovered my Neptune Dos had become unplugged (even though the light still comes on) and my line to the dual reactors were clogged. These are things that I just assumed worked and had neglected. I fixed them and am moving on.

Just 2 weeks ago my monti, a red digi, and a couple of other SPS took a turn for the worse. I watched parameters made some small adjustments and am seeing some veritable improvement in the montis and digi - even some of my long forgotten zoas/palys have started to resurface. Like you, I grabbed a couple more sps and watching nervously.

You have a nice setup and are seemingly knowledgable. Take your time and make sure those key parameters are where you want them to be before grabbing too many more coral. I don't know if you want to take the plunge, but it might be worth grabbing a trident if you can - I am finally enjoying my own.

Happy reefing and thank you for this post!!
 

Bernie King

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From what I've read on here of people going through similar situations where parameters, age of system and stability were not the issue, bacterial biodiversity was called in to question. It could be something to look into.
I have a old 100 litre Kent marine tank that I let go wild! It is where I leave my corals for quarantine. If I have a coral not looking too good in the man DT I put them back in the hospital tank to recover/get better!
This seems to work well for me and it has halted nearly all my coral deaths and saved me a fortune! Hope this info is helpful :)
 

ScottB

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You have done a great job documenting everything, and that effort has brought you a great number of inputs / ideas.

I am going to second the ideas of @JCOLE and @ADAM that a few of your close up pictures appear to show some dino snot. (Of course having lived through dinos more times than I can count, I see dinos everywhere. On street signs, on empty grocery store shelves, between my toes...)

Like pneumonia, once you have had dinos you are more susceptible to them returning IME. If my PO4 drops below .07 they will return to my frag system and the corals will suffer.

Let your glass dirty up a bit. Take a scraping and look at it under a microscope (if you have one) so you can to rule them out. If you don't have a microscope, take a large scraping along with some tank water and put it in a jar. Shake vigorously. Pour through a coffee filter into another clear glass and leave under a light for an hour. If the stuff clumps back together: dinos.
 

AGBReef

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FWIW, my 500g tank has been running for almost 7 years. Last two years acropora was growing gangbusters, and I thought this was so simple. Then suddenly acropora started dying. For several months, I kept checking my parameters, everything was as before. I couldn't figure out what could have changed. I was crying. Everything in the past had always been linked to swings in alkalinity. My alk kept dropping so I figured this needed to be addressed. I couldn't keep it higher even though I had always dosed kalkwasser and run a calcium reactor. Finally I checked the calibration on my digital refractometer and it was .004 points off! I usually keep my salinity at 1.026 and it was only 1.022. Over the next week I raised the salinity back to 1.025 and the die off stopped. I think the lower salinity was unable to hold the alkalinity stable. I was shocked that something so simple could effect so much. Needless to say that was a lesson I could never imagine. It's been a month now and back to my normal 1.026 salinity. Stability has returned and corals have healed up and started to grow again. I had no idea salinity levels were so crucial to growing acropora. Buttons, clams, fish and soft corals were not affected.



1588173012903.png
 

MikeYasin

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You look like you have a fabulous setup! Congrats!

Lots of good advice from others here, and I'll just throw in what I have seen through a few tank builds, including one started with dry rock.... but I'll make it pretty short. You need to be at a place where you're growing coraline algae like a champ before you can expect SPS to flourish in your tank. I didn't see much (in any?) coraline growth, which since you started with dry rock, isn't that surprising.

I'd focus on the biodiversity challenge you're wrestling with first and get some coraline in there to out compete the bad stuff. I think that once your coraline growth begins to take hold and spread to your rocks, you will start to celebrate success with stony corals.

My dry build took roughly six months to effectively grow coraline on rock work after I introduced a coraline covered rock from another system.

Have patience and you'll get to the solution!
 

Cherie cook

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Not a bad idea. The QT was setup with just Tropic Marin Pro salt and cycled with BioSpira. Maybe useful to send in the DT and QT and compare though. (My old ICP of my DT is probably too old to be relevant anymore)

That said, while the frags in the QT are still looking good, I was dispoointed to see the coralline on the Divers Den frag is starting to bleach out... Sucks cuz that was part of the reason I bought the thing. Perhaps its "magic ocean bacteria" can still seed the QT though. Lol, forgive my cynicism.

Thank you for the idea!
Not sure if this would help you with your biodiversity or not....but I have moved my whole 90 gallon setup twice in the last year and each time I get a “cleanup” crew from these guys with great success. I get amphipods, mini brittle stars, worms, mud and other good stuff.
1588192266277.gif
 

Cherie cook

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Not sure if this would help you with your biodiversity or not....but I have moved my whole 90 gallon setup twice in the last year and each time I get a “cleanup” crew from these guys with great success. I get amphipods, mini brittle stars, worms, mud and other good stuff.
1588192266277.gif
Lol....my recent history is checkered though. My nitrates/ phosphate also hit zero and I lost all my chalices. I also have no idea why my nutrients are low. But all my SPS survived!
 

Potatohead

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I am sorry, I have not read the complete thread, only the opening.
For me this are clear signs for phosphate deficiency. Also trace element deficiency could be a factor that will not show up clearly in any analysis.

Please listen to this man. I agree with this 100%. I have been there. Get your phosphate to 0.08.

 

Tamberav

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I've gone back and forth debating whether to make this thread... I think I know the responses I'm going to get. There seems to be many ways to success and much of the feedback and/or research I've seen in the past seems to have just as many testimonies which show direct conflict to the claims. (I.e. LED's don't grow SPS, dead rock won't grow SPS, etc.) That said, with the money I've spent on frags that end up in the sump rock rubble is enough to have made a second tank setup... Which is to say whatever it is I am doing isn't work AT ALL so here I am again looking to see if anyone has something insightful to perhaps help my situation.

As some background, my 210gal tank has been up for almost 2 years. Since day 1, I have heeded the advice of some on this forum and @BRS videos and have quarantined nearly everything wet that goes into my tank. The only exception being some SPS frags which, according to R2R info, cannot harbor encysted parasites on healthy coral fleshy tissue. By QT I mean all fish have been treated with PraziPro and copper in a QT tank for at least 30 if not 45 days. All corals are dipped in Bayer. All corals are either moved on a fresh plug or have their existing plug exposed surfaces completely covered in super glue. My tank was started with Marco Rock bought directly from Marco. As such, I have never seen symptoms of any parasite or disease in my tank. (Exhibit 1 which will draw contraversy)

As far as equipment goes, my lighting is Reef Breeders Photo V2+ LED's with 2/ea T5 Blue+ bulbs to supplement. Settings are ~4hr of full light where PAR levels are ~400 at the highest rock and ~120 at the sand bed. I run a RO skimmer. I generally run BRS ROX carbon at amounts slightly less than instructions recommend. I have 2/ea Maxspect Gyre XF280's and 2/ea Neptune WAV pumps for in tank flow. Not sure what else to mention but I feel my equipment is pretty standard or at least not crazy far away from what maybe considered "common".

For maintenance, I usually do water changes once a month with ~40gal. I used to use Red Sea Blue Bucket but switched to Tropic Marin Pro Reef Salt. I have a BRS 6 stage RODI unit. My parameters are generally as follows:

salinity - 35ppt*
temp - 77.6 - 78.4*F
Alk - 8.0 dKH
Calcium - 440ppm
Magnesium - 1300ppm
Nitrates - 5ppm**
Phosphates - 0.02ppm*

*Salinity recently trended down to 33ppt. Been bringing it back up slowly. Currently at 34ppt.
**For a long time, after I gave up on coral, my nutrients dropped to ~0 despite heavy feeding. Dunno why. Had to dose to get them back up. After dosing to get them up, they have stayed steady. Somewhat suggests nothing is consuming them anyways?

I have run an ICP test maybe a year ago when I tried to grow SPS last time. Test results didn't reveal anything revolutionary.

Here is what I experience with my SPS corals. Frags come in looking great. After my receiving practices, I put them on a frag rack near the sand bed. I've tried leaving them there any I've tried raising them slowly. It doesn't seem to change the end result. Generally, about a week into their receipt, the bases start to look what I describe as "crunchy" or "crusty". Oddly I have been unable to find posts that use descriptors such as this. Generally, it looks as if the skin of the base is slowly receeding to expose the pointy skeleton bits at the base. From there, tissue at the tips starts to look beaten and worn. Corallites start to look "burned" exposing skeleton. Over the coming weeks, this ultimately leads to what I assume is STN and rarely over night RTN.

In my most recent endeavor, I reached out to Adam @Battlecorals who was nice enough to let me buy a "tester SPS box" which included a monti, a stylo, a milli and an acro. Its been 15 days since receipt and they are seemingly heading down the same path as I've experienced in the past. Here are some photos to illustrate:

Day 1
20200414_103231.jpg


Day 15
20200428_120344.jpg


As you can see, I think its safe to say none of them look as good as they did when they came in. According to what I see on here, the majority of people experience that new frags generally do not look worse before they start looking better. The general consensus is they should look good the whole time. As I have never successfully kept an SPS alive, I am unclear as to what success looks like to be honest. I have no idea if any of this is normal or not.

In full disclosure, as mentioned some above, I have experienced some less than stable parameters as of my most recent attempt at SPS. I don't know if any of them are extreme enough to cause the dramatic changes in the frags as I am seeing.

Also as note, in the past I have kept zoas alive and growing. At some point, something I did seems to have negatively effected the zoas. I lost most of them but have three different zoa "colonies" left. Two of them are stagnant, going in and out of being fully open for days or being bothered and being mixed of closed and open. One colony continues to grow and multiply though.

In an effort to try and document my experiences, I have written the following email to Adam at Battle Corals as a "hail mary" to get some help. However, I think its unreasonable for me to expect a vendor to evaluate my situation as I'm sure they get these all the time. I'm also sure its hard to really get a picture of a tank from just an email, video or pictures. The system is dynamic and complex and I'm not even sure anything short of letting a "professional" take over my tank maintenance would even stand a chance. Nonetheless, the following is my most recent email to Adam to share some of my information:

Adam,

Just an update, unfortunately I think things are headed the direction I expected. Admittedly, some of it is likely my fault. My lack of trying to add stony coral for many months has let me lapse on my water testing. As such, some of my parameters had swung out of "ideal" ranges. I have begun to slowly correct them but I'm not sure which, if any, could contribute to this. Also, there's one big mistake I think I made. In thinking maybe they weren't getting sufficient lighting on a magnetic frag rack at the bottom corner of my tank, this past Thursday (Day 10) I moved the frag rack to maybe the top 1/3 of my tank, still in the corner. It's hard to tell if its coincidence in timing or contributing, but this seems to have made the most dramatic difference on the couple frags that were still doing OK. I moved it in the PM so they only spent one photo period in high light.

As far as the coral go, I've taken daily photos of each frag to be able to look back at the progress. I'd describe them as follows:

- Montipora went down hill pretty quickly. I'm not very familiar with monti's. Their growing edges look kinda white to me anyways so I wasn't sure when that one started showing skeleton. I'd say on Friday (Day 5) I could positively say polyps weren't showing as much and edges were getting "crusty". By this past Wednesday (Day 9) there was some flesh still but there was more skeleton than flesh. As of today, I see some yellow polyps in the "corallites" (or whatever they are on monti's) but I suspect its just the receded tissue showing them. I'll leave it on the rack but I suspect its gone.

Day 10, prior to frag rack move:

monti 1.png

Today, after being move to high light:
monti 2.png


- The stylo showed good polyps until maybe Day 8. They came and went a couple days before that but I figured that was maybe normal. The flesh between the polyps did look different at Day 2 or 3, losing some of its "white color" but I figured showing polyps was still good. Following the move higher in the tank, the polyps continued to come and go as they did lower in the tank but maybe were less pronounced overall. As of today, I'm seeing even more white between the polyps. Thinking maybe its on its way out as well but not very definitive as of yet. (Notable, the coralline on the plug I left exposed is definitely growing.)

Day 10, prior to frag rack move:
stylo 1.png

Today, after being move to high light for 2 days, only one photo period:
stylo 2.png


- The millipora I though was doing pretty well through Day 9 or so. Polyps appeared out. Maybe not as pronounced as they were when they just came in but still out. On around Day 7, I believe the base was even starting to encrust over the glue on the plug. Overall, it has been pretty good. However, following the raising to higher light, I noticed today the top middle tip is looking "crusty" almost as if the light burned back the skin there. I think this one is not necessarily gone, but hate to see this recent change.

Day 10, prior to frag rack move:
milli 1.png

Today, after being move to high light for 2 days, only one photo period:
milli 2.png


- The acropora has probably done the best of them all. Like the milli, I think around Day 7 I started to see the base encrust over the glue. There was a bleached portion that was there when it came in (a very small spot) that maybe got a little bigger, but no skin loss there. As my previous email stated, the encrusted base did get a little crusty in the initial days but with the encrusting, I figured that was maybe just an adjusting period or, as you said, reacting to glue. I'd say the frag itself, not the base, looked about 90% as good as it did when it came in as of Day 9 prior to the move. However, as of the moving of the frag rack, it has started to pale out a bit. Polyps seemed quite happy in the higher flow area in the higher part of the tank though. Overall, I have hopes for this one but we'll have to wait and see.

Day 10, prior to frag rack move:
acro 1.png

Today, after being move to high light for 2 days, only one photo period:
acro 2.png


As an aside, I have gotten some frags from a couple of locals as of Monday this week. I also got a maricultured piece from Live Aquaria in an attempt to "seed" that tank with ocean rock and test the "SPS need ocean-seeded live rock to survive, dead/dry rock tanks always stuggle" theory I hear all to often on R2R. They are in my QT system. The SPS are a red plating monti, a spongode and a green slimer. The maricultured piece is a big secale with loads of plating/encrusting coralline on the rock. They are much newer to my possession so comparing them isn't entire accurate but they look almost identical as to when they came in. Maricultured piece is maybe lightening on the tips a very small amount, so small I hesitate to note it, but that's it. The 5 SPS in my QT look great.

In case its of interest, the following are the tank changes alluded to above:

- Salinity crept down to 33ppt. I've began raising it on Day 7 by adding salt water a little but every day instead of letting my ATO top off with RODI. As of today, its probably 34ppt.
- My calcium was low at 390ppm as of Day 1. Suspect its related to my low salinity. I've been dosing on my DOS to raise it to steadily. As of today, it read 450ppm.
- Alkalinity was lower at 7dKH. Like calcium, I think it had some to do with my salinity. I have not dosed it up. Increasing salinity has brought it up to 8.1dKH as of today.
- I've always struggled with readings of zero nitrates and phosphates. I've added sodium nitrate to my ATO as of Day 3. Its come up to 5ppm over the period.
- I added trisodium phosphate initially to my ATO but noticed it fueled algae growth pretty rapidly. It came up to 0.02ppm from dosing then went back to zero the next day. Interestingly, having not dosed for a week now, its reading 0.07ppm as of last night. It could be a bad Hanna packet but I thought it was positive to show some phosphates "naturally".

Finally, should it help share, here is a link to a short video I took of my tank. This maybe help communicate my setup details.

YouTube Video:

I'm partially writing this to get it all out and to organize my thoughts and document my experience. Should you find the time/interest in looking it over, I would be grateful. Of course, if you have ideas, I'm nearing desperate and very disheartened by all this. I firmly believe my "LARS" contributed to all this. I am looking into adding some more flow to my tank

cleardot.gif

If you're still reading at this point, thank you. I am doing this in hopes someone maybe able to help. Any and all feedback will be appreciated. As outlined above, I am going to try and change a couple things then throw away another $200 on a battle box I guess...

Thanks again for your time.



You ever take a sample of that brown crud on your frags under a microscope to see if it's dino?
 

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OP I see dinos on your corals in the pics in your first post. Dinos release toxins that are bad for coral. I lost all my corals due to a dino outbreak a little less than a year ago and my tank is just recovering and able to keep coral again. Something to consider if all else seems good.
 
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I could be wrong but your first couple pictures appear to show dinos on the corals. Dinoflagellates are poison to corals and can suffocate and kill corals. Your nutrients are low and can bring them out. I have been there before and had to implement heavy nutrients along with UV.

I circled a couple areas for reference in your picture.

20200428_214916.jpg


Could be wrong but Just a thought. Whatever it is hope everything works out for you in the end.

Hmm. I've had dinos before and didn't think this looked like that. However, my previous dinos took over the rock work completely. I figured this was just a normal algae thing. But the more I post/read, the more it seems maybe "normal algae"? isn't a thing?

Also in my past outbreak, I for sure had it to where they would smother the frags. The stuff you see in that photo is probably a week or so of build up I think.

Nonetheless, any suggestions on how I might try and get rid of this assuming it is dinos? I've tried dinos. I've got some nutrients in the tank. I'm not sure what else I can do.
 
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You ever take a sample of that brown crud on your frags under a microscope to see if it's dino?

OP I see dinos on your corals in the pics in your first post. Dinos release toxins that are bad for coral. I lost all my corals due to a dino outbreak a little less than a year ago and my tank is just recovering and able to keep coral again. Something to consider if all else seems good.

Seems like many are calling dinos. I will order a microscope today and upload photos here.

Any advice on treatment?
 
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I am by no means one to offer advice, but I didn’t see PH listed in your parameters and am wondering if large fluctuations could be happening in your tank. You said you’re in a newer home so maybe CO2 buildup could be driving down your PH? Just a thought.

you mention you are in a newer home that might have higher CO2. Have you tested PH? I was having some trouble and realized my ph meter was out of calibration and ph had been dipping below 7.6 and this was making it very hard for my corals to grow. I started dosing kalkwasser to get my PH up and my coral growth is taking off.

At the beginning of my tank, my Apex read pretty low pH, rarely above 8. However, a few months into the tank I ran an outside air line to my skimmer. Since then, my pH has been OK (or so I think). Below is a screenshot of a "typical" day on my Apex for pH. pH probe was calibrated maybe 6mo ago.

ph.JPG
 

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youur so lucky you get such high ph. once this is fixed your corals will grow like a disease. feed more and let your n03, p04 rise. no WC whatsoever either
 

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Seems like many are calling dinos. I will order a microscope today and upload photos here.

Any advice on treatment?

First step would be to confirm you have dinos with a microscope and if so, then identify which form of Dinos it is. Depending on the type would determine the method of treatment.

For me I had Ostreopsis which go into the water column at night. Mine only show up once I add a new, clean, sterile addition to my system. This happened when I added two frag tanks and they took over the frag tanks mostly.

What I did was dosed NO3 and PO4 daily along with daily removal consisting of blasting the rocks and collecting dinos with a fine filter. Also siphoned out all dinos weekly. I also dosed Microbacter7 daily for a couple weeks. Added a 55w Jebao UV sterilizer and ran it at night when the dunks go into the water column.
 
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One problem that I see is carbon being used constantly. I wouldn’t use it more than 3-4 days at a time, place it in a reactor, and only once a month or even every two months. This will bleach Acro, first hand experience. I had similar issues when I first started with Acros. The first, and most significant change that I made, was upgrading to a BRS 7 stage RODI. My previous system was not “good enough” to remove all the contaminants from my tap water. Second, I stopped the frequent water changes and I control nutrients with 2 Santa Monica algae scrubbers and NoPox. I only use water changes to remove solids like detritus, hair algae, etc... And to balance trace elements. These changes created stability, which is super important for Acro. Later on, I had several SPS getting eaten from the base similar to yours and I noticed very small flatworms infesting the bottom of my plugs and even the frag rack. Dipping the frags in CoralRx pro for 5 minutes got rid of most of them and I soaked the rack in vinegar. Once pests like these get in to your tank you just have to manage them. When I glued them on to my rock I didn’t have any issues. Flow is another important parameter to get right but I would start with the other stuff first.
Also, if you run carbon constantly you’ll want to check your iodine level. It’s probably very low or not measurable.

Thanks for the response. You're the third or more person to caution against carbon. I think I will just discontinue running carbon for the time being. I always figured it was good to keep toxins out should they somehow get in. However, it sounds like maybe it does more harm then good. For the sake of heeding online advice, I will just take it offline.

I've always dipped and QT'ed the majority of frags. One that I put straight into the tank came from reputable well-known vendors on here. I would be pretty surprised if I had acro pests. I don't even have acros for pests to be on, lol. Nonetheless, I will keep my eyes out looking for them.

I considered dosing iodine at some point but I hear its really hard to test for accurately. And if you can't test for it, how do you know how much to dose? Also, is lower iodine enough to kill coral? That is to say, is not dosing iodine enough to kill coral? I always assumed the trace elements in my salts were sufficient. Especially if I have no coral to consume them. But maybe my algae consumes it?
 
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I'm three months into a tank with a whole slew of SPS in it. Low nutrients can really really hurt a tank. I also started running rox carbon and it was pulling too much out of my water. Dino's and cyano followed. Took it offline and started feeding a ton and it's helped significantly.

If I recall you only have one set of zoas in your tank. Why run the carbon then? I know it can help remove bad guys but it can also do *to good of a job* and pull necessary elements out of your water.

I would rather have any phos at .15 then at .0 or .01.

Just weighing in.

Thank you for the info. I do appreciate the feedback.

Like others have advised as well, I will stop running carbon. I haven't run it for that long but I don't remember when I started. It was less than a year ago. I'm pretty confident i had acro issues before running it but per advice, it seems like taking it offline is a good idea.

I'll continue heavy feeding and may look back into dosing PO4.
 
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I just wanted to jump in and say THANK YOU VERY MUCH for everyones feedback. I apologize if any of my responses seem "testy". I am just overly frustrated about all of this. Nonetheless, I am not too proud to admit to myself that I am indeed doing something wrong and it really can't get much more wrong than this... lol.

That said, I am on and off the computer but I am reading every response individually and will be taking action based on the feedback. I will keep this updated as my situation progresses.

THANKS AGAIN! :)
 
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Man. I feel you bud. I'm on year 2.5 and have had similar issues. All sps die within a month. Acros get slight burnt tips, tissue thins then succumbs to algae.. all montis seem to fade and caps lighten then algae takes over.

All stable, no more than +/- 0.2dkh swings in 24 hrs (so not alk spikes) Always have no3>12 and po4 =0.07-0.15 (not low nutrients). Tests done daily for months at a time. It gets exhausting having to re-explain all your efforts, so I applaud you for posting b/c I'm sure its not easy.


I started with sterile dry pukani and nothing live. So figured mine is a bacterial issue. I've been hell bent that its my Kessel ap700s that are burning things and have been thinking about going to aquaticlife hybdrids, but it makes me feel better seeing you're getting this with t5 hybrids.
I also spent tons on 10 icp tests which I did months apart and did massive water changes bc I thought tin was the issue.

I then replaced pumps bc I saw slight rusting, etc. Its been an exhausting journey.

Anyway, I'm following bc I feel we have similar issues. You're not alone. Some of us do research and do everything experts due and shut just doesn't workout.

Oh yeah, I also finally switched salts from aquavitro salinity to tropic marine and seeing if that helps. I do have gonis and zoas and some acans/blastos doing fine. On a current batch of acros I'm testing again too..

Man... man man man... I read your post and its like the last year in my brain put into words. (I'd "lol" but its just so frustrating there's no lol'ing here...)

I've been concerned about my LED's as, like you, my tips look worn out in the dying process. I've got more T5's coming in the mail today actually. Like you and others have alluded to though, I don't think that's my issue (unfortunately). Oh, how I wish it was. I am very close to buying Radion G5's just to rule that out...

I also switched from Red Sea blue to Tropic Marin pro. It seems to be a good salt. But also like you, I don't think that was my issue. I feel like I have something MAJOR wrong and I can't find it.

Press on my man. I am too far into this to shut it down. I have definitely wished I never started this but this tank is pretty big and built into my house somewhat. I'm pretty committed at this point. I just hope I'm not another 2 years from now and still have no coral...
 
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