5 corals died, plus dino bloom. Don't know what I'm doing wrong, looking for recommendations

[Jorda320]

Let’s get back to basics...
How are you measuring salinity? When was the last time your device was calibrated?

Temp 78, verified how?

Are you testing your water or is the LFS?
Your Params look good to me.

Are you running activated carbon?

Rodi water with a verified 0 TDS?

For salinity I have a BRS brand refractometer. I looked in my order history and May 7th of this year was the last time I ordered refractometer calibration solution. I calibrated it shortly after getting in the mail but honestly I only calibrate it maybe every month or two. So far it has not been off more than one point and I believe that was late last year. Last time I calibrated it it was showing 1.026 accurately so I don't believe it is off currently. In regards to temperature I use this thermometer which I have a picture of below.

It's just a cheap one and I keep it on the side of the tank. I don't normally reference it with another thermometer except for what I'm doing larger water changes usually 20% or above. I have a spare meat thermometer that I have never used on anything but this tank and I double check that. I'm not sure if it's the most accurate thing but it usually is within a tenth or two of the cheap thermometer I have on the tank.

The test kits I use are all Salifert (except magnesium is aquaforest). None are expired. I basically follow all of the BRS YouTube videos for testing. No cutting corners. When it says to wait 15 seconds or shake for 30 seconds and make sure to use a stopwatch. I count the end point of the testing at the point in which the color does not change anymore. I could very well be doing it wrong but I aim to do it consistently. Not sure if that makes it better or worse

I do use the 0.8 ROX carbon. I do not have any sort of dedicated reactor for it so instead I just put it in a mesh filter sock, tie it in a knot, and leave it in the hang on back refugium. To be honest I do slack on changing this. I know it should be done every two weeks but I pretty much do it every three or four weeks. I will double down on that, as typically I forget.

I have never verified the TDS of the RO unit. It does have the TDS meter built onto it, I bought it that way I did not install it. If it is incorrectly installed then it was incorrectly installed at wherever they assemble them. I am aware of the the TDS creep and I do flush it after I make RO water and I typically let it run for maybe 5 minutes prior to collecting the clean water as I can see on the TDS meter it will usually read 5 to 3, and I just wait until that reaches 0 then start collecting water.

Like I said I am still really new to this hobby. I've done freshwater tanks for about a decade however saltwater is completely different approach altogether. I really used all of the BRS YouTube videos as a guide and did my best to stick to that. The only thing I have not been able to test is the light and I would be open to renting a PAR meter. anything that I am doing wrong I'm more than happy to change, I think my problem is right now I just don't know what I'm doing wrong

Looking through this thread vetteguy53081 recommended one milliliter of micro backer 7 per 10 gallons daily. I could give that a try and see how things turn out. I also have hydrogen peroxide on hand, but is dosing hydrogen peroxide going to stress the already stress corals out more? I do have spare tanks if I have to take the corals out and put them in a different tank while I address The main tank that would not be a problem. Just curious. I wanted to say thank you to everyone who contributed here. You are all really making a difficult situation much easier to deal with.

 

[Aqua Man]

Basics covered and look good to me.

My first thought is that my lights were originally a fluval marine 3.0. it was one of those thin profile LED strips. I switched those out with the two t5s a few months ago because I felt the light was way underpowered. The only things that were growing were the leptos and duncans. my thought was that since they were low-light corals they were doing okay whereas the torch and frog spawn were all around not showing much growth.

Few months ago, does this coincide with when corals started down hill?

Adding bacteria will not hurt anything. Although can bring your N and P down. Your N and P I think are good for the coral you have.

Some Dino are toxic.. so it would help to know For Sure if you have them. How’s your CUC? Any deaths of snails or crabs?

Is the FTS current? Like your rock scape! Sand looks like well taken care of too.

 

[Jorda320]

Basics covered and look good to me.

Few months ago, does this coincide with when corals started down hill?

Adding bacteria will not hurt anything. Although can bring your N and P down. Your N and P I think are good for the coral you have.

Some Dino are toxic.. so it would help to know For Sure if you have them. How’s your CUC? Any deaths of snails or crabs?

Is the FTS current? Like your rock scape! Sand looks like well taken care of too.

I'll try to answer the questions in order if I can. In regards to the change in lighting a few months ago I will say that the light change definitely did slightly bleach my four leptoseris Coral. I have them on the bottom of the tank and since then they have regained a decent amount of color but still have a white hue to them. Prior to that, and I'd say even as far back as maybe late last year, I noticed the duncans simply not extending. One of my Duncan frags has been partially closed for months. The alveopora were added last and we're only ever under these new t5's, never the fluval led strip. They did well under the new lights for maybe a month or two and then simply stopped opening. I would say that if anything the torch and frog spawn we're looking even better under the new lights, greater extension and color. It's within the last few weeks that the torch rapidly died, the chalice died almost overnight, and the frog spawn has stopped opening. Because of all that I did suspect the lights however the duncans remain unchanged under the higher intensity lights. One duncan is open what the heck polyps stretching upward and 3 are closed and look like the picture I posted in this tread. The blasto I have near the bottom of the tank, which I believe is more low light loving, remain unchanged despite not being moved at all in the tank.

As far as cleanup crew goes I have never really had much luck. Hermits would live only if they had the snails to eat and the snails always died. The issue is I have that brown curly/hairy looking algae which I assumed was dinos or diatoms. I've never really had green hair algae. Any green hair algae I do have is usually eaten by the lawn mower blenny. I currently have about a dozen small cereath snails and they usually stay on the glass. 2 nasarrius snails that have gotten big. They simply don't eat the brown stuff growing. Ive had 5 mexican turbo snails, all died without any kind of reason, about 10 turban astera snails (the type that can right themselves if knocked over), and easily 50+ little cerith snails over the past 2 years. All dead.

The tank shot is from this morning. As far as the sand goes I have been cleaning it daily with the pump/ Bottle and filter floss. Without daily cleaning the entire sandbed is a redish rusty dust.

And thank you for the compliment!

 

[schuby]

Here's my two cents (and copies of two previous posts of mine):

I had diatoms. I thought they were brown algae because I couldn't believe my RO/DI water from LFS was high in silicate. After killing several corals with wrong treatment, I got a Silicate test kit. My LFS water was high. I changed LFS and diatoms went away in a week or two.
If you make ur own RO/DI, u may need to replace something. IDK


Be aware. If you decide to run chaeto, it also requires iron. If your tank runs out of this trace element, then the chaeto will die and release all the phosphate and nitrate it used to grow back into your tank. It's not a pleasant experience and it extremely easy to prevent. Grey/white chaeto is something you don't want in your refugium.

 

[Tamberav]

I do 5 gallon water changes every Saturday or Sunday. And I always try to gravel back at least half of the sand. My plan for NOPOX was to help get the nitrates and phosphates down just a bit. I'm aiming to keep the nitrates between 5 and 10 and my phosphates from what I have read are in the acceptable ranges so I am not overly focused on them to be honest. I am absolutely not looking to get at complete zero however I was just hoping that a lower to normal nitrate level would prevent any kind of outbreaks in the future

I see no reason to chase them down with carbon.

This was my 25g before I upgraded... Nitrate 34, PO4 0.1-0.4

 

[schuby]

@Tamberav What test did you use to determine that your Nitrate was 34? I'm looking for something better than Salifert.

 

[Tamberav]

Oh I think I just used the high range part of red sea. Probably isn't any better then Salifert but I don't feel super accuracy is even needed with Nitrate unless a person is targeting ULN or such.

Hannah is coming out with a checker at some point for Nitrate but they have not announced the range on it yet.

 

[flabryth]

I do 5 gallon water changes every Saturday or Sunday. And I always try to gravel back at least half of the sand. My plan for NOPOX was to help get the nitrates and phosphates down just a bit. I'm aiming to keep the nitrates between 5 and 10 and my phosphates from what I have read are in the acceptable ranges so I am not overly focused on them to be honest. I am absolutely not looking to get at complete zero however I was just hoping that a lower to normal nitrate level would prevent any kind of outbreaks in the future

I would say go to 10 gallon water changes and get a bacterial booster/cleaner. Something may have gone wrong with you tanks biological filtration. Dono's thrive were they don't have completion for real estate. Or when there is flow issues and system imbalance of sort like when you use gfo for to long.