Corals keep dying... What am I doing wrong?

[reeferfoxx]

I'm going to definitely give that a read as I think it will help me also! Not to hikack the thread but if feeding isn't enough to provide nutrients to water column then what is best to dose? I'm trying stump remover personally right now and I'm adding a crap ton of it just to keep nitrates at below 5 or so! Are broadcast feeds also insufficient at addin nutrients. By broadcast feeds I mean things like Coral Frenzy, Rotifers, Reef Roids etc.

I find those types of foods are good ways to keep nutrients in the column. Part of the issue is accurately testing. I use Hanna ULR Phosphate checker the one with ppb not ppm. And I use Salifert for nitrates which has always done me well. With PO4 though, it's about having a presence of po4 not the amount. Same goes for NO3 but NO3 gets consumed at a faster rate. If NO3 is being consumed, then dosing is working for you!

 

[Pete_the_Puma]

My guess is your ALK is way too high. Zeovit suggests running the tanks at 6.5-7.0 dkH. You will find that although every system is different MOST people who run ULNS have alks in the 6-7 range while most people who are more oldschool, do not dose carbon and tolerate nitrates and phosphates in the 2-5ppm and 0.2-0.5 ppm respectively have higher alk values in the 8-10 dKH range.

I used to run zeovit and would definitely run into trouble if my ALK went over 7.5. It is also VERY important to use low DKH salt, such as the stuff from KZ if I remember and a number of other salt mixes that will not mix at 10dKH like reef crystals and cause you an ALK spike every time you do a water change.

 

[edosan]

Hi, I do not see flow info, return pump? wavemakers?

With ricordea only you do not need to add anything.

Cero Nitrates and Cero Po4 is a bit extreme! considering that you have bioload and 10% water changes weekly and you add aminos, what test are you using?

Anyway No3 in cero is not good.

Do you have Pictures of your tank?

My advice: Do a Triton test ASAP, to check if you do not have something poisoning your tank in silence.

 

[TravisParsley]

Forgive me if I missed reading any answers to the questions I ask.

Calibration:
Are you extremely triple sure you have calibrated your testing devices correctly?
Conductivity probe/ hydrometer/ refractometer , Temp gauge, PH?
Are the test kits for alk, cal, mag new or of a trusted brand?

Stability:
How stable are your parameters? Meaning how much do these parameters swing on a 24 hour basis?
Temp, Alk, salinity, PH, PAR, color spectrum, types of salt, how often topping off? Are you changing brands? Are you dosing additives?

Contaminates:
Are there any metal parts anywhere possibly corroding? Metal screen? Fitings? Are you using any green colored rubber tubbing? For plumbing, what did you use to seal pipes? Does your local water supply add chloramine, or does it have any increased levels of heavy metals or pollutants? Is your RO device clean/ reliable? Is there any windex in the nearby areas? Any sun tan lotion on skin, when putting hands in water? Any copper in the water?

Pests:
Any midnight pests? Any sight of nudibranch, red bugs, gorrilla crabs, parasitic copepods/isopods, flatworms?

 

[oneadam]

I'd try raising your lights up. On my 180 I had mine 12" above the water at 80%, changed the lighting a little bit and melted sps and killed an acan. All 3 were hydras. Raised them to 16" and dropped to 70% and everything seems happier now. Switching to radions one at a time and I don't think I'm going to go above 60%.
Full disclosure, had an alk problem also that had to be corrected.

 

[mikenestle]

Do you have algae in the tank?

 

[brilovescats]

Do you have algae in the tank?

Sure do.

 

[mikenestle]

Okay I thought for sure you were going to say no.

 

[brogers]

Forgive me if I missed reading any answers to the questions I ask.

Calibration:
Are you extremely triple sure you have calibrated your testing devices correctly?
Conductivity probe/ hydrometer/ refractometer , Temp gauge, PH?
Are the test kits for alk, cal, mag new or of a trusted brand?

Stability:
How stable are your parameters? Meaning how much do these parameters swing on a 24 hour basis?
Temp, Alk, salinity, PH, PAR, color spectrum, types of salt, how often topping off? Are you changing brands? Are you dosing additives?

Contaminates:
Are there any metal parts anywhere possibly corroding? Metal screen? Fitings? Are you using any green colored rubber tubbing? For plumbing, what did you use to seal pipes? Does your local water supply add chloramine, or does it have any increased levels of heavy metals or pollutants? Is your RO device clean/ reliable? Is there any windex in the nearby areas? Any sun tan lotion on skin, when putting hands in water? Any copper in the water?

Pests:
Any midnight pests? Any sight of nudibranch, red bugs, gorrilla crabs, parasitic copepods/isopods, flatworms?

What harm does green colored tubing cause? My red sea reefer 170 came with green tubing for return.

 

[JCSReefing]

Just browsing through. Saw you said your "Zoas were melting". If melting did you notice any thickness type goo or slime around them? If ya take some pics of the corals before they completely die could help determine what it may be but "melting" some times can be brown jelly

 

[brilovescats]

Hi, I do not see flow info, return pump? wavemakers?

With ricordea only you do not need to add anything.

Cero Nitrates and Cero Po4 is a bit extreme! considering that you have bioload and 10% water changes weekly and you add aminos, what test are you using?

Anyway No3 in cero is not good.

Do you have Pictures of your tank?

My advice: Do a Triton test ASAP, to check if you do not have something poisoning your tank in silence.

Hi Edosan!

Return pump/wavemakers - Jebao, don't remember exactly which ones off the top of my head, but they were powered correctly for my tank.

My testing is API (yes I know lol) for Nitrate/Nitrite/Ammonia/pH, but I also have a Seneye which obv measures pH, NH3 NH4 Temp O2. Ca/Mg/kH/PO4 are all Salifert testing, so decent. Triton is definitely my next step, 100%. Exactly what I was thinking. I think that honestly the API test kits (where the K is for Kwality) might be the culprit - what do you guys think? What's your experience with API vs. Salifert/Red Sea etc?

 

[van7271]

As the others have said your tank is too clean. Corals need a little nutrient in the tank to thrive. I have also read that implementing zeolite in a low flow reactor can strip nitrate and phosphate out of the reef environment so quickly, that it can shock corals to the point of inducing rapid tissue narcosis. Might want to drop the zeolite.

 

[Davy Jones]

What harm does green colored tubing cause? My red sea reefer 170 came with green tubing for return.

Would also like to know.. have a reefer 250 and struggle keeping corals happy for more than a month or 2

 

[Rob Romalino]

I have a 150 gallon w two 30 watt radions. I had to turn the intensity all the way down to 25% and after many months I am up to 40%. I was burning everything up on every preset program. Those lights are strong. Turn them down and add cheap small frags of Zoa/Lps which seem easier to keep. Be patient w adding and I would stay away from sod bc they are hard to keep.

 

[brilovescats]

Forgive me if I missed reading any answers to the questions I ask.

Calibration:
Are you extremely triple sure you have calibrated your testing devices correctly?
Conductivity probe/ hydrometer/ refractometer , Temp gauge, PH?
Are the test kits for alk, cal, mag new or of a trusted brand?

Stability:
How stable are your parameters? Meaning how much do these parameters swing on a 24 hour basis?
Temp, Alk, salinity, PH, PAR, color spectrum, types of salt, how often topping off? Are you changing brands? Are you dosing additives?

Contaminates:
Are there any metal parts anywhere possibly corroding? Metal screen? Fitings? Are you using any green colored rubber tubbing? For plumbing, what did you use to seal pipes? Does your local water supply add chloramine, or does it have any increased levels of heavy metals or pollutants? Is your RO device clean/ reliable? Is there any windex in the nearby areas? Any sun tan lotion on skin, when putting hands in water? Any copper in the water?

Pests:
Any midnight pests? Any sight of nudibranch, red bugs, gorrilla crabs, parasitic copepods/isopods, flatworms?

Hi Travis - missed this post earlier apparently, sorry!

My Salifert test kits (kH/Ca/Mg) seem to be calibrated correctly and are in-date, and I measure temp with the Seneye, the heater and the backup heater which all have a thermometer. As above, API kit for ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. Haven't checked stray voltage if that's what you mean by conductivity probe. I use a refractometer for salinity and it seems to be accurate compared to the fancy version at my LFS.

My parameters don't seem to swing very much - there is a very small dip in pH at night before the chaeto starts working, so I try to keep it a little higher than I might normally choose. Right this second, for example, the Seneye says that the pH is 7.87. For PAR, depends on the place in the tank, but I light with Radion XR15 with all channels on for "coral radiance" setting with red turned off (in an attempt to help with algae, doesn't seem to change anything). I have been using RS Coral Pro salt for about two years now, and just changed about 1.5 weeks ago to AF Probiotic Reef salt - the Alk is noticeably lower quickly after just two water changes (good lower, 8.8 now vs 11 before).

All the equipment is pvc/plastic, nothing metal in the tank. No green tubing, all vinyl I think, the clear stuff with the mesh built into the hose for the return. No adhesives in any place that would get wet, and the kind that was supposedly safe for drinking water. RO/DI I do myself, 0 TDS, filters change when it creeps up to 1-2 TDS. I use white vinegar to clean the glass and everyone in this house knows cleaning chemicals are forbidden near the tank (lol). I wash my hands up to the elbows prior to putting my hands in the tank, and usually wear gloves.

As for pests, no signs of flatworms, nudibranch, anything - I'll regularly go and look with a flashlight in the middle of the night when I get up to use the bathroom to see if there's anything. There are lots of tiny little (1cm) bristleworms that come out more during the night and hide most of the day except when I am feeding fish. They all seem to leave everything alone though, and I rarely see any that are very big. I used to have a Banded Coral Shrimp who used to love to hunt the bristleworms but he died a couple weeks ago in the ice storm when we had a power cut for 3 days - only have battery backup for 1.5 days. (As an aside, these troubles have been ongoing for my whole reef experience thus far, so the sad deaths didn't affect any occupants, I have so very few corals in there right now, and they are all mushrooms plus two blasto that keep holding on somehow, just not growing at all, and they've been there a year)

Thoughts? As above, my next step is a Triton test.

 

[brilovescats]

As the others have said your tank is too clean. Corals need a little nutrient in the tank to thrive. I have also read that implementing zeolite in a low flow reactor can strip nitrate and phosphate out of the reef environment so quickly, that it can shock corals to the point of inducing rapid tissue narcosis. Might want to drop the zeolite.

Hi Van -
Thanks for your thoughts - much appreciated. I don't know if my tank is too clean - I've only been running Zeolite for about a 1.5 weeks now, so I don't think that's the culprit. I got lazy over the summer so I'm doing it at least temporarily to clean up the water quality, because it wasn't good. I feed Reef energy A+B to the corals that I do have. When I had all my corals die within a couple weeks, I wasn't running Zeolite at all, only filter sock/cryptic sump/chaeto/DSB, skimming and carbon, no GFO or Zeo. I was trying to do the Red Sea method, and it seemed to be a flop for me, so I'm trying this one instead. Would feeding the corals not give them enough food to live?

 

[Yojoe10]

Are you running chaeto reverse daylight or 24/7?

 

[brilovescats]

Are you running chaeto reverse daylight or 24/7?

Yep - lights go off on top at about 10:45pm, and lights below start doing a sunrise at 10:30, half hour ramp up.

 

[Yojoe10]

I've found chaeto to be extremely effective with phosphate and nitrate removal all in its own. So effective that I have, in fact, removed every other type of filtration on my system. Took both then skimmer offline and the phosphate reactor down and chaeto is true workhorse at nutrient removal on my Ecosystem Miracle Mud refugium. Are you using it for nutrient removal primarily, or ph stability at night?

 

[Yojoe10]

Just going to say you could experiment with eliminating one piece of filtration equipment at a time and see what your system really needs. I've found my system just doesn't need all the stuff I was running for nutrient removal. Took all that off and still have an ulns just with chaeto 24/7 illumination