Tank problems

[christyf5]

Hey guys,

So over the last few months, I'd say since about March, I've been having issues with my SPS. At first I figured it was a crab, and at that point it probably was. I could see little bits and pieces of tissue missing here and there from various SPS. They never had any problems with it and most of them recovered nicely and even grew a little. After removing the monster crab things seemed to be coming around. But in the past two months I've noticed that two of my millis don't have the best polyp extension. And strangely enough my frogspawn has been rather puckered up as of late. Could be some chemical warfare there? Who knows?

Anyways, in the past few months, I've noticed that more than just a few of my SPS have been actually receeding at the bases. Not just little bits missing anymore. Most of it was happening on one side of the tank. I had lost a piece of my tunze bracket and had to remove it from the tank, replacing it with a hagen 802 for what I thought would be a short time until I received the part. During this time most of the tissue recession/RTN/STN was happening only on one side of the tank, the side that was being fed by the Hagen 802. In an effort to correct this I returned the tunze 6060 to the tank siliconed to its mount. The tissue recession has not slowed.

I did have a few of the skeletons turn green (indicative of phosphate) and I added phosban back into my phosban reactor (I was previously running carbon in it). Since then, the skeletons remain white but they are still receeding. The majority of the SPS have taken weeks to die, and they've all been frags. Looking really hard at the tank now I can see that I'm starting to lose colonies now and its picking up speed.

Last week I tested my water for nitrates (5-10ppm) and phosphate (0ppm/trace). Salinity is 1.025, ph is 8.2, calcium 410, alk 10.8, Mg 1440. Everything seemed fine but I did a 30g water change and have another one scheduled for tomorrow.

Now I'm starting to suspect my refugium, after all it has a sandbed in it. Any thoughts??

TIA
Christy

[muck]

Do you have a grounding probe?

[reeferaddict]

You know we've been talking and I am having similar crap going on with my SPS... this sounds silly and is a real basic thing, but maybe recheck your nitrates? I had an old test kit that was giving me 0 - 10 readings so I thought I was fine... I checked with another test kit this week and it read 80! Needless to say water changes have been stepped up and underway, along with removing any sponges etc in the system and a complete sump scrub... ERRRGH! (This F%#@ING hobby sometimes!)

My corals are brown, poor polyps etc etc etc... I've been running Phosban, Ozone... blah frigging blah... at least my clams seem happy...

My problem is definitely bioload, but I like my fish so either I step up my water changes permanently or try a denitrator... *sigh*

Christy I don't know what the problem is in your tank, but what do you think the sandbed would be doing to adversely affect your system?

[christyf5]

Ryan, no I don't have a grounding probe. I would expect larger more steady problems if that were the case. The STN has been rather sporadic, some days I don't see any difference then the next day white, then slow recession for 3-4 days then poof gone the next morning.

Jim,

I have no idea what a sandbed could be doing to my system but when I had a sandbed in the main tank I had all sorts of problems. Ripping it out seemed to pave the way to good times with my tank. I mean, I've looked at pretty much everything I can think of. Now I'm sort of eyeballing the 'fuge as my next target.

I suppose we shall see after I do another large water change today. Things looked a bit better after the last one but weren't spectacular.

I don't know where the nitrates would be coming from if I have more than 5-10??? I haven't added any fish since this started happening. Mind you now that I think of it, that damned crab killed a helluva lot of snails and left little bits behind in them (peeyew they were stinky!). Still I don't see how half a dozen snails could be causing such problems. I do a 15 gallon water change weekly and last week and this I've done/am doing 30 gallons.

Ozone is next on my list too.

[Chin_Lee]

Christy
i've been experiencing the same thing and I saw the same thing last year in the summer time. It may be heat related - not sure. But some of my acros are starting to recede at the bottom. I'm doing more water changes in an effort to increase water quality. Where I have been successful is putting epoxy on the receding areas and into the surrounding healthy tissues to stop the recession. it has worked quite well for a few of the acros but on my big milli is still having some problems. its quite ugly but you do save the piece and in time, the healthy tissue will grow back onto the epoxy.

[christyf5]

Good idea I'll have to try that with the epoxy. Something has to be done to save some of these its just ridiculous how half the colony is gone yet the other half still has its polyps out and is all happy.

BTW I run a chiller so heat shouldn't technically be a problem at this point.

[muck]

Does the tissue just sluff off and hang?

[Delphinus]

It's amazing how many times we see this issue pop up, i.e., problems with SPS. The number of SPS setups out there that have run for years seem to be very few in comparison to the number of SPS tanks that have less than a year or two under their belt - plus the number of SPS tanks that have some sort of problem. Just a quick scan of recent posts here show me that a LOT of people have this sort of "my fuzzy sticks are not well" theme going on. Myself included although my troubles began well over a year ago and didn't take me too long to have lost most every SPS I ever owned, even those that had lived through tank calamities in the past. Just gradual and steady degradation that I couldn't turn around.

Anyhow I have no profound insights at this time, other than to say "yeah, me too, still" and having just come back from a real reef am having a real crisis of conscience with respects to the hobby and am wondering where I am going from here.

Oh, the one thing I did want to mention. Aren't our phosphate kits more or less useless? It's been a while since I tried to understand any reef chemistry (a la Randy Holmes-Farley level) and it's been an even longer while since I tried to understand chemistry of any sort (I took some chem courses in university about a hundred years ago {give or take 85 or so} that I don't remember anymore ) .. but isn't there something like the test kits can only detect inorganic phosphate but it's the organic phosphate that is really of primary concern to us (or vice versa and so on)?

The bottom line is, I think that, for "true long term success" SPS probably require water quality measures so pristine that it's beyond the scope of the average aquarist with a generic coral garden. Maybe not, I'm not sure. I'm not really certain if I'm just rambling incoherently. Inorganic versus organic phosphates, I'm certain there's something there.

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by muck

Does the tissue just sluff off and hang?

Nope, it goes "poof!". It disappears in the night. Sometimes I see little tiny hangy bits but for the most part its just gone.



Tony, I agree, phosphate tests are pretty useless. I think any phosphates I do have in the tank are immediately tied up by the gross amount of caulerpa I have in the main tank and the refugium (the refugium isn't doing as fantastic a job as I would have hoped). I think Seachem has a test that detects both organic and inorganic phosphate but I could be wrong.

Then again I'm running phosban so there shouldn't be any phosphates in my tank at all if it works

[Jason McK]

Christy,
Sorry to hear your still having problems.
A couple of things I've been finding, A lot of my SPS are causing there own demise. They out grow the flow in the tank, or another SPS grows and cuts off flow to a part of another coral. This allows detritus to settle and either kill the coral or allow algae to grow and kill the coral.
Not sure if this could be a factor in your case. But That is what I'm dealing with now in my 75G.

Is there any way you could isolate your refugium? If you could I would stir the crap out of the sand and let it run through a mechanical filter for a couple of weeks. This should clean out the sand while still getting the benefits from it after you hook it back to the main tank.

I still feel your base tissue loss is a flow problem. you may want to change your flow around drastically, by moving power heads to very different locations for a while.

Just a few thoughts
J