Tank problems

[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?

[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

[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.

[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

[christyf5]

Thanks for the input Jason.

Its not like anything really grows super fast in my tank. If anything they are gaining mere millimeters of growth and those that are faster growers are just frags. I agree about changing up the placement of my powerheads just to see if that is the problem but those corals that are experiencing the tissue recession have ample flow IMO, I can see their polyps waving about, so I'm not sure about that. But heck, I don't seem to be sure about much in this hobby so it can't hurt.

I think I'm going to take your advice about the refugium. Its only been set up for a short while (since about November) but that doesn't mean it can't be causing problems all on its own. There isn't much in there and what is in there isn't doing all that fantastically well anyways (its mostly a cyano/gack factory) so I'll have a go at cleaning up the sand and restarting it.

[danny zubot]

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

I totally understand this catch 22. I've been trying to find the best way to set up flow in my tank so that my flow loving prostrata gets its share, while trying not to upset my milli and other acros. One suction cup from a ph came loose and directed flow right onto a milli for a day, it now has a dead patch, which doesn't seem to be growing at all thankfully. And where flow hits my caps directly, they grow brown hair algae! Whats up with that!

The bottom line is that I probably have too many large corals for my tank, and I can't accomidate all of them perfectly. As far as flow is concerned.