SPS is continuing to die.

[theyangman]

Alright, at this point I have no answers. I have done nothing other than a few water changes since two weeks ago, and I am still continuing to lose SPS. At this point I have less than 10 pieces left. (one of them being big shows orange passion oddly enough, which is tiny but still colored up, I have lost probably in the neighborhood of 50+ pieces in the past two months)

What do I do? I have acquired a few LPS and obviously they are doing just fine oddly enough. I just can get a read on this. I have changed nothing, done my water changes.

Will the remaining pieces just eventually die as well? Is there ANYTHING that anyone can recommend to help? I feel like ripping everything out, scrubbing it all down and starting again. Quite frankly the loss wouldn't be all that big at this point. The sight of seeing corals continually dying off has become extremely disheartening.

There are a few corals that when they died, I dropped behind the rocks and couldn't get at them, I assume this is pretty bad as well, as I have read that STN and RTN is contagious?

If I were to rip everything apart are there any volunteers to come help me? I would have to remove the canopy and a few other pieces to get at everything in my tank. I would be more than willing to spring of a few cases of beer, and some grub if I could get a few of you guys to perhaps come over on sunday to assist with a teardown and rebuild...

 

[CanadaCorals.com]

Test all your parameters and let us know the results.

 

[theyangman]

SG: 1.026
Mag: 1350
dKh: 8
Cal:460
Nitrates: Less than 5ppm
Phosphates: 0.05 <--- this is rising. I assume my GFO is exhausted at this point so I need to change it out tonight at my water change.

 

[Salty Cracker]

If you rip it all apart at this point to 'clean it' I for one won't help you at all.  Seriously, since 'cleaning it' is exactly the same as 'killing it'.



If I had to conjecture.  When your tank was cycling, it stressed the sps coral you put in there quite a bit, to the point that even as the tank is improving, they were too weak to make it.  The orange passion was one of your later aquisitions, it's quite possible that it arrived after most of the nonsense was over.  Second conjecture was/is that perhaps some of your attempts to "fix" the situation is in fact, making it worse. 

I don't know how many times we can tell you that you need to leave it alone.  :dead:    Get your gfo, carbon and pellets running, feed the fish, look at the sps, and do your water changes, and that's it.  I think you think we have some secret thing we do to not kill sps, but straight up I think you just added them too soon, and the weakened coral just can't cope now that the tank is maturing.  Watch your remaining sps, and then maybe start with some 'hardy' sps instead of all the "really hard to keep but sought after" stuff. 

:dead: :dead: :dead: :dead:

 

[theyangman]

If you rip it all apart at this point to 'clean it' I for one won't help you at all.  Seriously, since 'cleaning it' is exactly the same as 'killing it'.



If I had to conjecture.  When your tank was cycling, it stressed the sps coral you put in there quite a bit, to the point that even as the tank is improving, they were too weak to make it.  The orange passion was one of your later aquisitions, it's quite possible that it arrived after most of the nonsense was over.  Second conjecture was/is that perhaps some of your attempts to \"fix\" the situation is in fact, making it worse. 

I don't know how many times we can tell you that you need to leave it alone.  :dead:    Get your gfo, carbon and pellets running, feed the fish, look at the sps, and do your water changes, and that's it.  I think you think we have some secret thing we do to not kill sps, but straight up I think you just added them too soon, and the weakened coral just can't cope now that the tank is maturing.  Watch your remaining sps, and then maybe start with some 'hardy' sps instead of all the \"really hard to keep but sought after\" stuff. 

:dead: :dead: :dead: :dead:

This is what I was afraid of, that most of the corals were just too far gone to bring back, which means that there will probably be more die off before this is all over and while I start down the path of heading into the clear in the future coming months.

What is a cheap, hearty SPS that I can toss in to watch and monitor?

 

[Big_Als_London]

I wonder about your lighting. The 220 is a really tall tank.  Have you seen the maxspects on a similar tank and having success with SPS.

If you want to try an easy frag I have some red millepora frags here you could try.  They have great polyp extension on them

 

[Duke]

Are u dosing cal and alk?

 

[Salty Cracker]

Yeah can't get more hardy than red monti, brown monti, green monti, blue monti. 

In fact the only way I've every killed monti is by bleaching it when I put in the new LEDs and honestly I don't think your fixtures are going to bleach anything.  There -is- the possibility that your light isn't good enough as Aaron suggested, maybe borrowing a par meter to get an idea of what levels you're actually getting.  I've never run one on mine, I more or less just stick a coral in and see how it does... white, it's too bright, brown it's too dark, and colourful, it's juuuuust right. 

 

[theyangman]

Yeah can't get more hardy than red monti, brown monti, green monti, blue monti. 

In fact the only way I've every killed monti is by bleaching it when I put in the new LEDs and honestly I don't think your fixtures are going to bleach anything.  There -is- the possibility that your light isn't good enough as Aaron suggested, maybe borrowing a par meter to get an idea of what levels you're actually getting.  I've never run one on mine, I more or less just stick a coral in and see how it does... white, it's too bright, brown it's too dark, and colourful, it's juuuuust right. 

This sorta boils down to why I was looking at getting a secondary tank and plumbing it into my existing system.

It would give me a chance to rear the same coral in a different lighting system (I was going to buy a t5HO fixture) and the water chemistry would be identical considering it is plumbed together with the same water. Have a few fish in there as well but ultimately check my lighting more than anything. I want to rule out things one at a time ideally without tearing shit down and starting fresh without knowing what the problem was in the first place.

 

[Duke]

i doubt its lighting, i have a few acros in my sump sitting by my skimmer that have zero light on them and they are still growing fairly well surprisingly, one colony has been down there for a few months now but they are pure brown looking. are you dosing anything into the tank? cal ? alk ? anything ?

 

[theyangman]

Calcium and alk via my kamoer dosing pump. magnesium I dose manually and I don't dose it very often.

 

[Duke]

i think you should stop dosing anything at all.. you have nothing that requires even a ml of either cal or alk, if your testing often and getting mixed readings i wouldnt worry about it one bit, just do your small weekly water changes while dose nothing at all and the tank should find a balance and once the biopellets and the natural ecosystem forms you'll be golden, then you can start dosing when you see levels dropping.

 

[dale]

my suggestion is... why dont you try not putting anything in there for a couple months and just sit on it and observe your tank with maintaning a strict water change routine...and dont o/d on the media you use.. let the tank sort itself out.. after years of struggling this is what finally worked for me.. good luck!

 

[dale]

i agree with slowing or stopping doseing.. without a huge bioload these tanks will take care of themselves..

 

[KBennett]

Sorry if this has been asked before,
Have you tried other test kits?  Calibrated your refractometer?
Maybe take a water sample somewhere for independant testing?

 

[teebone110]

another variable are your biopellets and aren't you also running prodobio too?

this can also have major consequences related to bioload balance...

 

[theyangman]

Bioload is medium? About 12 to 15 fish.

Yellow tang
Purple tang
5 anthias
3 domino damsels
3 striped damsels
4 blue damsels
Fire fish
2 clowns
bartlett anthias
Fox face
Hippo tang

Wait thats more than 15.... lol

Sent from my SGH-I317M using Tapatalk

 

[teebone110]

to simplify things, I think you really need to get that wavemaker out of there

 

[theyangman]

another variable are your biopellets and aren't you also running prodobio too?

this can also have major consequences related to bioload balance...

I have stopped prodbio.

I run GFO, pellets, and Carbon. Nothing else other than my doser.

 

[Salty Cracker]

Perhaps we can chalk another tank death to prodbio?  oop: