20!!! LOL....your nuts. I had 5 at one time a few years back and couldn't do it.

130G Reef
180G FOWLR
100G Brackish
33G Brackish
10G Fresh

Yup, I must be nuts....I can't help myself. I am planning some consolidation though, maybe get it down to 10 or something.lol

Just get 1 huge tank and mix all 20 tanks together xD

You must be karazy.....

zing!

Things continue to go badly, with almost every coral in the tank now showing signs of decline. I've lost two or three colonies completely...As usual, polyp extension is great, even as they die!

However, I think I may have found something. Oh...how I hope that I've found something.

I've just noticed that my pH is not even making it back up past 7.9 at the peak and dropping to 7.74 overnight. That is too low. I recalibrated the probe to ensure that was accurate...and it is.

So the Ca Reactor is now shut off, and the Kalk reactor will be running all night..and I've got to figure out how to get the tank some fresh air. (both the tank and I need to vent some CO2!!)

I hope I'm right about this. Stay tuned...might be a few days before I know if I'm right. I hope I have that much time...

Jeez...Im so sorry to hear this Brad! Thats so terrible :sad:

I really hope this works and you get things turned around. Your tank is by far my favorite tank to visit. Every time I have been to your place, my 10 minute plan to pick up frags turns into an hour or two :)

Good luck man.

I as well hope you have found the answer.
Wish you well

Wow Brad sorry to hear the bad news. I hope that is the answer.

Chris

WOW Brad Sorry to hear of your issues.

Let me know what your working on

J

Oh man! Sorry as well... Hope things turn around for you..

Yes, good luck indeed. I know how it feels, I can only imagine how amplified it would be in a tank of this stature.

I'm sure you've checked, and sorry if I've missed the info, but you've confirmed that you're not getting a NO3 reading? Elevated NO3 can depress your pH somewhat.

ubber build, what is the final cost if i may ask?

I got a NO3 reading of 19ppm a few days ago. My last water change seems to have reduced that to 14ppm. Phosphates are also slightly high, measuring 12ppm yesterday. Not perfect...but not the kind of levels that kill coral.

Sorry to hear about your troubles, I hope things turn around for you.

I apologize in advance for a difficult to read post....
 

It has been a very challenging month or two...but I think I can say that the tank is on the mend. For the past week or so, I do believe that I'm seeing improvement in the coral health/colour and polyp extension. Here is what I believe happened.

1) My lights bulbs were nearing the end of their life. They were almost 1 year old and were not putting out enough light anymore.
2) As a result of less light, calcification slowed down.
3) As the tank began to use less calcium/alk, my Ca reactor began to deliver too much Ca/Alk.
4) Too much activity in the Ca reactor drove my Alk too high and burned off many of the acro tips.
5) I changed my refugium to a 'fuge/frag tank and began lighting it on the same daylight cycle as the tank. Combined with the fact that it is winter and the doors/windows of the house are always closed, the overall pH of tank tended to be lower than normal. This makes it even more difficult for coral to calcify. Tank was never reaching pH of even 8.0 at peak.
6) I shut the Ca reactor down completely and fired up my Kalk reactor trying to drive up pH.
7) I increased water changes, carbon and phosphate removal trying to drive Nitrate and Phosphate levels down. They were slightly elevated, but I now doubt that these were the problem.
7) I replaced the light bulbs. I measured that my existing bulbs were putting out 25% less PAR than the new bulbs.
8) Coral immediately began to look better. I had not realized how much coral colour had gone away.
9) Kalk alone began to fall behind Ca/Alk demand. Calcification was happening again.
10) I began dosing baked, Baking Soda in order to keep up with increasing Alk demand and carefully restarted the Ca reactor. The baked, baking soda tends to drive the pH up, but I still only peak at 8.1.
11) I put an addition flourescent light on the fuge and returned to reverse lighting cycle on the refugium.

So..in the end I now believe that my ONLY problem was that my bulbs were old. Everything else was a spin off effect from there. At this point, I believe the corals are healing. Unfortunately, some have suffered such damage that it will probably take months to recover completely. I probably lost 2 or 3 corals completely.

That's an important observation made possible by the little PAR meter. I'm glad that the time/money/effort that went into its purchase has paid off for someone in a tangible way.

As Dr. Evil would say: "One miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillion dollars!"

The bulbs were scheduled to change out regardless, but the PAR meter gave me some hard data concerning how bad they had become.

I gave up attempting to accurate measure the PAR at various tank depths. I simply measured the bulbs at surface level with the lights a set height above that. That's about 8" or so and I can easily measure a 25% difference between my old and new bulbs (same bulb type) At depth, this seemed to translate into about 1/2 the PAR, but these readings were pretty sketchy.

Yes...now to follow up with that device every now and then to find out how quickly the bulbs fall off. Clearly, my original plan of annual replacement isn't going to work. Maintenance cost just went up!

Glad to hear you figured it out Brad...I'm a regular visitor to your thread and enjoy this build a lot.

So what are you thinking Brad... every 9 months for replacement bulbs now? maybe even 6?

What is your lighting schedule like?

excellent detective work.
nice to see you got to the bottom of it, I can only imagine how much stress this episode gave you, probably more than it did your corals....

Brad and the other purchasers of the PAR meter will be keeping a close eye on our PAR levels over time to determine how quickly PAR levels drop off. It will probably vary somewhat depending on bulb and ballast combos.

Glad to hear you figured it out!


There is a big thread on RC about how quickly PAR levels drop off and with what bulbs. I think it was pretty much determined that the biggest drop was after a few months and then the next year was pretty minimal.

I would have to go back and read (too lazy) but in the first 3 months, most bulbs dropped to like 70% and then a year later were around 65%. Or somewhere around those numbers anyways. One guy tested for 1.5 years and was still at 60% of the original output and stayed there until the burned out.

I sure hope I don't need to replace those bulbs every 6 months...they cost $600 a set! Based on this past experience, I'm guessing that my current situation will result in new bulbs every 10 months. The PAR meter will help, but I'll also be a bit wiser than before about recognizing the symptoms.

My lighting cycle is such that the bulbs are running 9 hrs per day. Just this moment, I realize that I increased the lighting hours/day in the 2nd year of the tank. That might explain why my first bulbs seem to make it to 1 year without problem, while this set didn't...I ran this set 11% longer.

You may want to read some of the threads around about photoperiod too.

I am at 6 hours now and corals have never looked better. Bulbs should last much longer too. I decided to give it a shot after seeing the RC TOTM a few months back that was at 5 hours only. He explained all his experiments over the years with photoperiod and how coral can only use a certain amount of light anyways. In many cases people seem to be finding that 6-7 hours gives their tank best results for color and growth. For SPS anyways.

There is a thread right now in the SPS keepers section of RC about this. Might be worth looking. Might not be for you but many have been shortening the photoperiod and getting nicer growth. I have seen nothing but positive results and there are the added bonuses of less bulb use and less algae. I have a feeling the cyano I used to have was from a long photoperiod (used to be 10 hours). And since corals are not using the light the whole time, may as well not feed the cyano I figure :D

Just thought I would mention it.

I'll read that...and I might consider dropping to 8 hours per day.

However, growing coral isn't the only goal. Part of the goal is having a pleasant aquarium to enjoy..and it's much less interesting when it is dark! (well...sometimes it is interesting in the dark also...but you know what I mean)

Dropping to 6 hours a day though is ... well, I don't know. I've seen those suggestions before too, but to me the problem is .. I'll never see my tank during the daytime hours then, except for maybe on weekends. It's not really something that appeals to me, don't know how others feel on the subject though, maybe I'm alone on this :p

Short of throwing the daytime cycle so far off the regular daytime at least .. I guess that's an option but then the problem is sunlight from the windows will interfere with your "daytime."

Maybe just enough white lights to give aesthetic appeal but not the most intense for the actual photosynthesis.

When I lived in Florida, I knew many people who run their tanks at night because of heat in the day. They would have lights on around 5-6pm and off in the middle of the night.

For me, I have my lights on at 3pm to 9pm. There certainly is a decent amount of light from windows on the tank before 3pm and it allows me to view the fish nicely.

I work from home though, so 6 hours is more than enough time for me to view the tank. My fiance enjoys the tank too and usually gets home around 6, so she also gets a good 3 hours of lights on.

Certainly not for everyone. Just thought it was worth mentioning since bulb life is also an issue.

Just in case anyone wants to read:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...readid=1582958

And the TOTM that convinced me to try a shorter photoperiod. He talks about how too much light causes coral growth to slow and color to fade.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2009-01/totm/index.php

Nick moves on....
 

If you are one of those who check the video camera frequently, you've probably noticed that Nick (the Lookdown) isn't in the tank anymore.

It was time for him to move on. He had become so large that he was taking runs at the smaller fish and it was only a matter time before he inhaled one. That would have been fine with me, except that I am completely dependent on the gobies to keep the sand bed under control. I can't live without the gobies, so Nick had to go.

Since he will NOT swim under any rockwork, he was quite easy to catch. I simply spooked him in the direction of the trap and Chris dropped the trap door. Total time...maybe 3 minutes. He wasn't very happy and let us know with a few loud grunts.

JL has agreed to sell him on my behalf. I do hope he finds a good home. He deserves it. He lived in the tank for about 1 year. If you have an aggressive fish-only tank, I would highly recommend these fish.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0511.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0516.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0517.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0519.jpg

Funny you should mention that.. I was just watching it about 15 mins ago...

Sorry to hear about Nick.. but if it's for the benefit of the tank, I guess it's just something that needs to be done.

lookdown
 

saw that specimen at j@l, absolutely splendid looking like a slab of pure silver.

Tank running 2 years now...
 

With little fanfare, the tank had it's 2nd anniversary recently. Unfortunately, it seems that I've spent more time lately hauling OUT giant pieces of dead/dying coral than anything else.

I look back and it really doesn't feel like the tank has progressed anywhere for over 6 months now. Every tank parameter that I can check seems fine and I've even made progress on raising my average pH considerably. The mystery is that some coral continues to do very well, while others just stop all growing and decline slowly. Without growth, any damaged area on the coral eventually spreads and the coral dies. Flesh between polyps thins and dies and the very last part to go is actually the individual polyps themselves.

I'm experimenting with various dips. Since some of the coral is thriving, I'm pretty sure now that there isn't anything with water conditions that I can improve.

So...I'm really in the process of removing every coral that isn't healthy and just ditching it. This has resulted in removal some colonies that I have had for 10 years or more.

Meanwhile, the fish are quite happy and continue to grow. If you've skipped all the blah..blah so far, here are some fish pictures!

"Freckles" is just plain huge!
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0523.jpg

"Ripple" has finally turned into a real Atlantic BLUE tang and is now significantly larger than the Achilles Tang.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0526.jpg

"Lance" has also grown considerably and is now probably the 2nd largest fish in the tank.
(spots you might notice are algae on the glass in front of him)
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0532.jpg

"Moe" Getting more fancy every day, although somebody shortened his bottom tail streamer recently...
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0528.jpg

I had the same problem with my corals last year, and coincidentally it was right at the 20th month to 2yr mark.
The only thing I could think of was the inteceptor treatment I did but I will probably never know for sure

What type of tang is "Lance"?

Naso unicornis...aka Bluespine Unicorn fish. Fortunately, he shouldn't get to be more than 2 feet long!

He's a beauty! And I really like his name. :wink:

Brad, sorry to hear your still having coral troubles :neutral:

I am glad that your fish are doing so well though. They look great!

Very nice fish!

You weren't kidding when you said your Vlamingi is the biggest in the tank.. I've had the webcam running for awhile now, and he is one WIIIIIIIIIIIDE fish.. :mrgreen:

Is that a misprint? I freak out if my phosphate reaches 1.0 ppm! :lol: What are you using to test phosphate and nitrate?

I'm glad to hear you have figured out the problem. Sometimes automation kicks our butts doesn't it? Eep! I look forward to hearing about the turn around! :)