Watch me kill SPS...

[Skep18]

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!!

Thank you so much for the kind words. It's always a happy and sad feeling to see others experiencing issues I am. All too often, the posts I see are of success and it just feels like it comes so easily to others and I just can't get it right, lol.

Ditto on the dose pumps. I ran clear lines using air tube so I can make sure there are no bubbles. What I didn't realize was the air line will harden at the DOS nipples over the course of a year and it was letting air draw in. I think that made my dosing either inaccurate or just pushed air around altogether, no dosing. Nonetheless, I cut the hardened ends off and bled the lines. All seems good now.

Good to hear some of your turned corals are coming back. It seems my experience has been, once they turn, mine tend to finish themselves off. I've had multiple zoa colonies that once multiplied to many. Then one day many of them closed up and shrunk into nothing. Feelsbad.

Thanks again for the reply. I hope you keep pressing on! I have to stumble on success eventually, right?! lol

 

[wkd4b11]

Just a few things off the top of my head from skimming this thread..

1) This is a fairly new thread and you've gotten a lot of suggestions. If you are going to make changes take it SLOW and do things one at a time. Raising your nitrates and phosphates should be taken at a very slow rate otherwise you end up shocking your tank and causing imbalance. Taking a slow approach goes for any change you make to your tank. You won't see drastic improvement in a few days.

2) Do another ICP test and check for any signs of rust. Check all your magnets and equipment. Could possibly even be a screw or something that accidentally fell into your tank. Rust is one of the most missed culprits of a struggling reef.

3) Add more fish. Fish poop is your best friend. The more fish poop the more nutrients for your corals. A lot of people think that feeding the tank heavy is what feeds the corals. Actually, it's feeding your fish so they poop more!

4) Stay consistent in whatever you're doing/changing. If you're going to raise the nutrient levels, don't just do it for a week and then stop if you don't see any changes. You won't see immediate response from your corals. It'll take at least a few weeks before you see improvements.

 

[Skep18]

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

Thanks for the validation! lol. That's what I am hoping to do with my current coral QT. I am putting "ocean rock" in there for the biodiversity. I figure I am just going to let that thing mature and do its own thing. Hopefully it can become something similar to what you describe!

 

[Potatohead]

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.

I'm going to quote this again, because you can lead a horse to water...

Before you do anything else, dose the tank with phosphate until you have consistent reading of around .08. There is a very strong probability this will not only help your corals immensely but will also reduce the dinos/algae. There is no point chasing your tail with carbon/icp/biodiversity/iodine etc if the basic building blocks are not met first.

 

[Skep18]

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.

I lol'ed.

I have heard of the strainer test idea. I think I'll jump in and get the microscope. That should help me to help R2R to help me (???) figure this out.

Any ideas on treatment? Just more nutrients?

 

[Skep18]

I'm going to quote this again, because you can lead a horse to water...

Before you do anything else, dose the tank with phosphate until you have consistent reading of around .08. There is a very strong probability this will not only help your corals immensely but will also reduce the dinos/algae. There is no point chasing your tail with carbon/icp/biodiversity/iodine etc if the basic building blocks are not met first.

I see you. lol. And thank you. I will.

Tough thing about dosing PO4, it seems to be very volatile in that my test results will change if I wait 5hr in that they will drop pretty drastically. Not sure how to approach that other than maybe dose daily to bring it up once a day to where I want? Any ideas?

 

[Jax15]

Hi Skep--I've had a similar issue, where everything looked good on paper and it just made no sense. Ruled everything out 1 by 1, and couldn't find an answer. However my gut told me it was a nutrient and bio-diversity issue... that the "keep your P at .03 and N at 5" is old, bad advice.

I started to really research the redfield ratio, and the importance of carbon (talking C, not the activated stuff) to get your N and P in balance. It's a pretty offball strategy, most people resort to carbon dosing just to get nutrients DOWN. But here's the thing - it works by boosting the availability of P for bacteria to consume. So I actually started to manually dose small amounts of N, P, Dr. Tims probiotic, upped my feeding - and introduced carbon dosing for a short time. The goal was to kick start the heck out of the biosphere.

Carbon dosing is still kind of a mystery in how it works, so what I did is a little mad scientist. But I did a lot of research first, and was sort of desperate. So far, I have seen results - remaining SPS is coming back, and new test frags are looking good.

If your tank has been running for 2+ years, and you can't figure out anything else, find a way to really kickstart the bio and nutrient processes. Whether or not you choose my route. Having corals is more important than never having algae.

 

[Skep18]

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.

Gosh, I know this feeling.

I'm glad to hear you figured it out. I am going to get some new calibration liquid just to make sure mine is OK. I have an Ice Cap digial salinity probe. Its very convenient but I have had rare instances with it where it was way off. Now I rarely use it and when I do, its just to double check the accuracy of another tool.

500gal full of acros must be gorgeous! Share a pic if you want!

 

[ap7x]

2) My alk admittedly went untest for a while. When I did finally test, it was down to 7dKH. That was also when my N and P were zero'ed out. I have heard that lower nutrients needs lower alk as well, thats why I didn't freak totally. Nonetheless, I will be working towards the more "typical" numbers in the 8's as my nutrients rise.

Oh I meant to maybe keep it closer to 7 instead of 8. You are correct that generally, closer to 7 fits better with lower nutrients. As I understand it, higher alk is more for growth but obviously many successful tanks run near 7. And I think leaves more of a “safety” net (unless you let it drift too low). Maybe when alk was 7, it was the zero-ed nutrients (and not alk) that could cause issues.

So basically, my suggestion being keep alk steady at the lower-mid 7s, esp. with lower nutrients. Keep it steady there even if you are raising nutrients. (unless someone can chime in why 8s would be better atm).

3) The gyres push in the direction of the tank along the back wall. By the time they reach the opposite corner where they hit the side glass and move forward, the flow is actually pretty slow. That's why I was kinda disappointed initially when I wanted these to contribute to my "coral flow" if that's a thing. I'd say they more act like a pump that people use to stir their salt water. It basically keeps all the water in the tank from being stagnant. The gyre itself will not cause the frag rack polpys to "whip around".

Oh I misunderstood... I thought that gyre behind the rack switched every 3 min so that it pushed water along the right wall and into the front corner where the rack is. Wouldn’t really see “whipping” in that case (esp with smaller polyps), but just guessing the constant 3 min, high flow in one direction might be wearing down the frags. But if that’s not the case, ignore lol. You’re right that gyre flow from the opposite back corner of the tank probably wouldn’t be too strong...

 

[Potatohead]

I see you. lol. And thank you. I will.

Tough thing about dosing PO4, it seems to be very volatile in that my test results will change if I wait 5hr in that they will drop pretty drastically. Not sure how to approach that other than maybe dose daily to bring it up once a day to where I want? Any ideas?

Dose 0.1 ppm daily for a week. Test every day at the same time, see what happens and adjust as necessary. It will probably take 4-5 days to start getting a consistent reading. My tank requires .1-.12 daily dosing to maintain about .08-.1 in the water column. I now test phosphate just as much as I test alkalinity, about 3-4 times a week.

If you aren't aware, Hans-Werner's last name is Balling. He is the owner of Tropic-Marin. I took his advice in the other thread I linked before and in the last 3-4 months the difference in my tank and corals is absolutely astounding. I feel like you are exactly where I was six months ago.

 

[Skep18]

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!

Thank you for the appreciation and feedback. I hope one day it will still look good with coral in it, lol.

I guess its hard to see but I do have coralline throughout my tank. If I understand correctly, not all coralline is purple. I have a dark olive green colored coralline that has covered near 100% of my rock work. That came in around the 6mo mark as well.

I seeded my tank with some purple coralline. It is covering maybe 5-10% of my rocks. Its a sort of encrusting kind though. Its not the thick plating stuff you see all over powerheads. But its super purple. Some areas it grows quickly. Others is slow. It mainly grows in the shadows of the rocks though.

 

[Skep18]

Thanks again to everyone! I have to do some house stuff but I am going through all the replies. I can't express enough how appreciative I am. I will come back to these and continue to work towards my issue. Thanks again!

 

[drawman]

I see you. lol. And thank you. I will.

Tough thing about dosing PO4, it seems to be very volatile in that my test results will change if I wait 5hr in that they will drop pretty drastically. Not sure how to approach that other than maybe dose daily to bring it up once a day to where I want? Any ideas?

Dose 0.1 ppm daily for a week. Test every day at the same time, see what happens and adjust as necessary. It will probably take 4-5 days to start getting a consistent reading. My tank requires .1-.12 daily dosing to maintain about .08-.1 in the water column. I now test phosphate just as much as I test alkalinity, about 3-4 times a week.

If you aren't aware, Hans-Werner's last name is Balling. He is the owner of Tropic-Marin. I took his advice in the other thread I linked before and in the last 3-4 months the difference in my tank and corals is absolutely astounding. I feel like you are exactly where I was six months ago.

I agree with @Potatohead here. Think of rock/sand (especially dry rock/sand) as a PO4 sponge. Every time you dose the rock and sand will suck it up. You will likely have to dose PO4 daily for multiple weeks at least before things balance out. Then hopefully you can get to a less frequent maintenance dose or feeding can take over.

If you want a very cheap microscope for dino ID only then you don't have to spend a fortune and can get a cheap toy microscope from amazon. Just make sure you get slides and coverslips as well. Taking cell phone photos is a bit of a challenge but you can take them with a very steady hand. You definitely get what you pay for and I will not blame you for going for a more expensive scope as they are fun to mess around with.

Amazon product

Again good luck!

 

[Surfzone]

The first one or the second one?

the first one

 

[Junglejim]

Skep18,
2 years is an established aquarium, to me I suspect you have an undetectable toxin in your aquarium. I read over this article and found some interesting points. http://blog.coralwonders.com/en/dinoflagelados-en-el-acuario-marino/
If you have a close reef store, I suggest running a 10 gallon nano tank run completely off water supplied from their store, this would rule out an airborne toxin getting into your tank. If you cant keep drags thriving in that environment maybe its something in the air?
Jim

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

My no3 is 25ppm.

I also run a uv sterilizer on my system

 

[TexasTodd]

What is the max you're running your white channel?
How many hours are you above 200 PAR where the frags are?

 

[DesertReefT4r]

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

Any advice on treatment?

Check out the dino thread super helpful. Erradication depends on what type of dino it is. In most cases with dinos that free swim at night UV is the most effect approach. Most of the types of dino also respond well to stopping all water changes, increasing no3 and po4 zero of both is bad, no 2 part dosing, no trace element dosing, no coral foods or aminos and heavy dosing of good bacteria. I did all of this as well has removed all sand while fighting amphidinium and ostreopsis. Removing the sand eliminated the amphidinium and UV was the most effective against ostreopsis.

 

[Jax15]

Skep, definitely get the scope or find a way to test for Dino’s. But you should consider the possibility that your system is carbon limited if you do rule that out. P/N/bacteria - these bio systems need some amount of carbon to cycle properly, and for sterile reefs with dead rock originally it’s not a given that it’s finding a way into your system on its own. I doubt it’s your lights, flow, params.. it could be Dino’s, and it could be a broken nutrient cycle. I don’t know why some people have no issue with nutes and others do, but it often is the case.

If you’re dosing P/N and the readings remain unchanged, consider this possibility.
Good luck.

 

[Tplummer]

Thanks for the response. I have a $170 divers den brown acro in QT now. I bought it for the coralline and the "magic ocean bacteria" (as I cynically call it) in hopes to test just that. Hopefully QT does not kill this biodiversity.

At this point, I'm guessing I'm in the 1% that QT everything that can bring in fish parasites. My reading and discussions seem to show almost no one actually QT's very much. That said, I'm reluctant to throw away 2 years of efforts to maintain a pest-free tank by putting "fresh" live rock into my tank. To your point though, maybe my not doing that is 100% of the issue. I have to hope there is someone in the world who has actually practiced disciplined QT and has had SPS success. I will keep this in mind though but I'll probably throw away another $2,000 on new lights, more frags and other ideas before I compromise there... One thing is for sure though, what I am doing is not working...

I would be quite interested in understanding what bacteria diversity might do to help the system though. I know people speculate and I don't know anyone has a real, experimentally backed answer to this or anything really in this hobby. But it would be interesting to know.

Keep the qt practice going. Youre doing it right!