Sometimes this hobby drives me crazy, pinpointing the problem causer in a tank full of variables has left me exhausted and little worn down
. Any extra insight to what's causing my RTS/ STN and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated!
About 2 weeks before I started feeding my new food I had the tips of around 4 different SPS bleach on me, all my levels seemed to be in check so I did a water change and purchased some new carbon. A few days later I discovered that my skimmer air intake had plugged, my Phosban reactor intake had plugged and my biopellets had conjoined into one mass in the reactor (Talk about things compounding fast). I fixed all of those problems but I was a little too late and my giant green monti cap bleached in patches and then pretty much RTN'd. I did a few more water changes and let the tank sit for a few days.
After about 4 days of not touching anything I re-tested my water to find the following parameters:
Salinity- 1.025
pH- 8.0
Temp- 81 degrees
Ca- 440ppm
Alk- 5 DKH
Nitrate- 20ppm
Phosphate-??? (API need's to get a better kit because trying to tell the different between Light clear green and lighter clear green is a waste of my time...)
In trying to correct the 5 DKH I totally miscalculated how much baking soda to add and somehow spiked my ALK to 14 (Yes keep reading to see how I pretty much destroy my tank
). Around the same time I also started dosing the Prodibio Reef booster supplement along with Sponge power and Pohs coral vitalizer. So now I have been doing diluted water changes to bring it back down to an acceptable level but have practically screwed my water parameters. Surprisingly most of the SPS seemed to get a color boost but now I'm battling STN/ RTN from the base of my corals (On 4 new acros).
To compound my confusion my brother was nice enough to come over today and test my water with his kits. Between our 4 different ALK test kits I have a reading of 7,9,10 and 11...
My zoas which I use as an ALK barometer have not been phased by any of this (Actually 2 colonies that were on the melt have since stopped).
My Chalice collection is all doing very well with the exception of 2, 1 because of strings from a neighboring coral and the other had lost a very small amount of tissue.
The fish are plump and fat as always, even more confusing is that the initial 4 SPS that had tip burn have stopped burning and are making a slow recovery.
Here are some photos of the colonies bleaching from the base up, should I be fragging these up? Would a dip help them out? I have the option of bringing them over to my brothers tank, anyone have experience with moving an SPS that has STN?
