Hard COral Diseases?
 

ALl of my hard corals died suddenly.
I only had three but it still makes me really sad!

I had a tri color nano acropora
a neon green milipora
and a birdsnest frag

They went white from bottom up. All the color dissapeared and they kinda got flaky after that.

my softcorals all seem okay.

anyone have any idea what could do this?

i should add they all died over a period of two days. I fragged one piece of nano acropora and it seems okay right now.

any changes you did to the tank?
were there all new corals?

what are your parameters...

.. how old is your tank?

tank is over a year and half old

the hard corals that died have been in there for over 5 months

all my parameters are good (or so i thought)
pH = 7.9
Ammonia = 0
nitrate = 0
nitrite = 0.1
phosphate = 0
calcium = 380mg/L

yah all my fish are good,
soft corals are fine
just the hard corals all died very quickly.

i looked it up on the net and it sounds like
Rapid Necrosis.

anyone else had or know of this?

in terms of changes:
i did add a neon dottyback
and some porcelain crabs that didn't make it.

tank is a 29 gallon with a 10 gallon sump underneath

Yes it is RTN. There is another thread about this happening in the spring. I recently lost two colonies for no reason. Others have had similiar happenings and those people know how to keep SPS's

What is your DKH at?

What do you dose to keep the DKH,Calcium up?

You don't have an anemone by chance, do you? My Anemone just made half my Hydno dissapear. Apparently they dont get along LOL

How much flow and what kind of light do you have? I've lost hard corals that were receiving inadequate light and flow before. In some cases it took months where the coral barely or didnt grow before it shed off all of its flesh starting at the base.

I do have a bubble tip anemone that is pretty small but would have to sting the hard corals wouldn't it?

and it hasn't come near the hard corals

I dont' have a kit for measuring DKH.

I dose with Purple Up maybe every 2-3 days.

I have quite a bit of flow and two T5HO's on it and my corals had been growing quite well with all their polyps out until this sudden dissappearance.

Could be a DKH problem you should check that for sure. That being said I lost two out of three caps this spring for no reason at all. Seems to be going around.

is DKH the same as KH?

i just was searching through my bucket of aquarium stuff and found a Hagen KH test kit

the KH for my tank was 80mg/L as calcium carbonate

apparently that's low according to this kit.

i'm supposed to be in 105-125

is that accurate?

I'm not a big fan of Hagen... A different test kit with units in ppm, dkh, or meq/L would make this a little easier. Also, make sure that your test kit isnt past its expiration date. Are you sure the test kit didnt mean ppm? If its 80ppm then your alkalinity would be 4.48dkh which is really low. You can boost it with baking soda using this online calculator http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html


"Alkalinity is a measure of the amount of acid necessary to reduce water's pH to the point where all carbonate and bicarbonate have been converted into carbonic acid (about pH 4.2 in seawater). In seawater, bicarbonate and carbonate provide nearly all of the alkalinity. Consequently, reef aquarists can use it as a surrogate measure for bicarbonate and carbonate which are taken up by calcifying organisms (Figure 1). The units of alkalinity can be meq/L (milliequivalents per liter), dKH (degrees of carbonate hardness), or ppm (meaning ppm of calcium carbonate equivalents). One meq/L = 2.8 dKH = 50 ppm CaCO3 equivalents. Seawater has an alkalinity of about 2.5 meq/L = 7 dKH = 125 ppm CaCO3 equivalents."

From: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-08/rhf/index.php

I can't believe the DkH is that low. I would find a LFS and get them to verify the carbonate hardness. Edmonton water is already hard( unless of course you are using RO/Di water) and plus fact that he is dosing with a calcium additive

The thing that jumped out at me in your posts were that you lost a couple crabs....how old and what brand of test kits are you using? First thing I would do if you wanna keep sps is invest in some quality test kits (salifert or elos) dkh, mg, ca and ph. ( I personally wouldnt bother with a phosphate kit).

yah all my kits are hagen ones.

didn't know those thing expired

:redface:

are Seachem test okay?

this one looks like it would do my Mg, and alkalinity in one.

http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/t-...+Test+Kit.html


ELos kits are really expensive!

I would aim even higher than that. 140 ppm is roughly 8 dKH and that is where I like to be. 80 ppm is about 4.5 dKH which is way to low for SPS.

Here is a conversion chart. I think most will agree you should be somewhere between 7 - 10 dKH.

http://www.saltwaterfish.com/vb/showthread.php?t=175205

Hmm, just a thought... how did you acclimate your crabs when you added them to the tank? Did you drip acclimate over the course of a couple hours? If you didn't slowly acclimate them, that is likely the cause of their death rather than some off parameter.

I really want porcelain crabs in my tank but they don't seem to survive.

I tried one from big als first,
after the drip for 3 hours it died within about 2 hours of being in the tank

then on my second attempt i bought 3 thinking it was maybe an unlucky crab and dripped for longer. One died in the drip chamber, the other two died after about 2 days.

definitely something abotu my water conditions that is killing the crabs.

I'm gonna invest in a slew of new test kits to get a better idea of what's going on with my tank.

Salifert are a good quality test kit and a bit cheaper than Elos. I much prefer the Salifert alkalinity kit to the Elos one as well.

My alkalinity is

2 meq/L!

that looks low according to everything I"ve read. Any ideas on how to fix this?

By using this calculator: http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

For a 30 gal tank dissolve 2 tsp of baking soda in water (I use RO/DI) to boost your alkalinity from 2 meq/lt to 3meq/lt

Dont add the solution all at once to your aquarium, add a little at a time perhaps over a day and keep an eye on your pH if you can.

Temp flux may start to cause havoc in smaller tank esp. Check in the morning and after the lights go out and see how wide the flux of temp is esp of a hotter day. Make sure you thermometer is accurate many are way off. You can pull it and cross check it with your home thermostat. Just another thing to check. Your salinity and how are you measuring it ?

therm is good (just checked)

and salinity with a refractometer.

+1 on the salifert kits i like using them too easy to use. i have never had any problems with them ever since using them....
I also know that a sudden drop in ALk will cause you SPS to die too... that may have been your problem too, any sudden change in Temp by chance, or PH

Hi
Usually a change in alkalinity may cause that problem. What is your alk?
Another direction is a change in salinity or in temperature. In my experience some folks damage their system during water changes without proper equalization.

I have also noticed your ca is on the low side and you don’t have an ALK and MG test results. If you can provide dose it will help diagnosing you problem.

When you touch you sps corals do they brake easily?

Scroll up the page by 6 posts. His alkalinity is 2meq/L

Oops didn’t see that….
Any way that too low in my book I think that’s the problem.
Now the question why you have such a low (5.8dkh) alk?
How do you supplement your ca and carbonates?