Am I dealing with an ULN issue?

[Animal-Chin]

SO frustrated with my sps coral right now. All my acro other than my Red Planet wich seems to be fine are really loosing their color. Going super pale and the tips are burning. I bought a really big green acro colony from J&L right before christmas, like on the 22nd I think. Since putting it in my tank its almost white, not bleached out no tissue white but super super pale green and the tips have started burning. Most of my Acro are doing the same. My forest fire digi faded away to nothing.

Recent change was new roaphos and a killer skimmer.

Nitrates are reading below 1 and phosphates are under 0.001 acording to my salefert tests (sorry no hannah checker). Since craking up the skimmer my algae, in any form has dissapeared. No hair, nothing, pretty spotless rock for the first time ever.

My alk is 7.6 and cal is 460 right now. So alk isn't through the roof but is it too high for a zero nitrate/phosphate tank? Just notices yesterday to that one of my new green poci's is stn'n from the base. My SPS are just really angry right now.

Not sure what to do but man do my sps look like crap. Almost all colonies have burnt tips now and the pink stuff is super pale, green pale, blue pale, its like everything is turning grey.

I've been doing this for years and its the first I've seen of this. I've tried dipping them to check for pest and I seem to be ok.

Thoughts?

[DorySaid]

Typically alk swings would cause those symptoms.
As far as the alk level, it might be a bit too high since your nit and phos levels are almost undetectable.
Apparently, because at a higher level of carbonate/bicarbonate, corals can continue to grow through elevated levels of nutrients.

[DorySaid]

By the way how much rowaphos did you add into what size system. Maybe the corals are starving?

[Animal-Chin]

125 gallon and the middle size container that’s supposed to do 125 gallons. I’ve been using it for 3 years but with my small skimmer I always had some phos even while using it.

[aaron86]

Feed your corals more and use less gfo also get a Hanna phosphorus checker


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[adam84]

I went through a very similar issue a while back, I dosed calcium nitrate to bring the no3 up a bit and it worked like a charm. I now keep no3 around 5 ppm and things look great.

[DKoKoMan]

Judging by the change of skimmer I think your most likely experiencing a ULNS without the addition of amino acids.

[Myka]

Sometimes, guessing what the problem is in your leads everyone down the wrong path. I'm not convinced it's an ULN issue because you're still getting some color on the NO3 and PO4 tests. Maybe double check that. Maybe you're not getting accurate tests, and maybe NO3 and PO4 are both undetectable. If you stop using GFO, what does PO4 get to? What was PO4 at before you added the GFO?

FYI, provided the KH reading of 7.6 dKH is accurate, that is not high enough to cause burned tips from ULN in my experience. I've mainly seen KH of about 8.5 dKH and higher cause that problem.

So...how big is the tank and what do you have for fish? How often do you feed them?

Are you sure there are no pests in the tank? Which dips are you using? Are there ANY Acros that are doing well? If so, which species are they?

What do you have for lights? How many hours at what intensity? Have you used a PAR meter?

[DorySaid]

Originally Posted by Myka

Sometimes, guessing what the problem is in your leads everyone down the wrong path. I'm not convinced it's an ULN issue because you're still getting some color on the NO3 and PO4 tests. Maybe double check that. Maybe you're not getting accurate tests, and maybe NO3 and PO4 are both undetectable. If you stop using GFO, what does PO4 get to? What was PO4 at before you added the GFO?

FYI, provided the KH reading of 7.6 dKH is accurate, that is not high enough to cause burned tips from ULN in my experience. I've mainly seen KH of about 8.5 dKH and higher cause that problem.

So...how big is the tank and what do you have for fish? How often do you feed them?

Are you sure there are no pests in the tank? Which dips are you using? Are there ANY Acros that are doing well? If so, which species are they?

What do you have for lights? How many hours at what intensity? Have you used a PAR meter?

I think he said 125 gallon. The thing I'm wondering is when we're testing and getting ultra low values, is the color really meaningless because of the degree of inaccuracy of test kits in general? i.e not much difference between .001 and 0.000