Acans and LPS dying off please help

[ryan paggi]

I have been chasing my tail for about 3-4 months on this and can't narrow it down. My lps are receding more and more. They used to be all plumped up and had their feeding tentacles out and now nothing. My sps are growing but have no polyp extension but my mushrooms and polyps are doing really well. I have a 30 gal tank with a bubble King dc150 skimmer I know it's over kill.
I have been running and NOPOX for about three months and that's the only thing that works to get my nitrates down I was doing 5 gallons a week but it really wasn't doing anything. I have tried everything possible to get my pH job I run Kaulk and my top off water I have an air pump coming directly from outside into an air stone in my sump and I have a bottle of soda lime connected to the inlet of my skimmer. I have an AI hydra light 14 inches off the water and I have tried a ton of different lighting options from being at 100% down to 60% higher on the blue side then higher on the white side and can't get a good enough result to see if it's working. I have stopped nopox and they seem to get worse I think or it could just be me because I'm frustrated. Can someone help me figure out what's causing it. The corals are dying but they are definitely fighting not to because I have only lost 2 acans but the look horrible.

My params
Temp-78
Alk- 10
Ca-450
Mg-1400
No3- 32-64 ppm
P04- 0
Ph-7.70

 

[nhat]

Do you feed them?

 

[nhat]

You mention above that, your skimmer is overkill... Then there will not food much on the water for them to eat, you should directly feed them.

 

[ryan paggi]

Yes I feed them reef Roids and I was directly feeding them but now since they don't have there feeding tentacles out I figured it was kinda useless and I had my skimmer on a timer that shut it off during the day for 3 hrs to help that. Do you think I should shut my skimmer off for a while to see if they rebound? My question is that I don't know how long it will take to see a benefit on any of my attempts like changing the light intensity, stopping the nopox, or skimmer

 

[nhat]

Dont change light intensity, leave it where all your corals happy, stop nopox instead do more waterchange, and yes turn off the skimmer when the light is off and on when the light is on. And acan like low light/flow also

 

[ryan paggi]

Will do thanks for the help I will let you know how it turns out

 

[Salty1962]

It sounds like your doing allot to your tank in a short time. While doing this you won't know what your true problem is. Slow down and change thing one at a time and see how your tank reacts. An oversized skimmer can remove a lot of the food that your corals would need but I wouldn't think that much with you feeding them.
Check your lighting to make sure your not cooking your corals, start off on the dimmer side and gradually bump up to see how corals react. I had to go through this same thing with my LEDs and my chalices are just now coming back. Try to get your Ph up a bit as well, slowly! Hope this helps a little bit. Good luck.

 

[ryan paggi]

How long will it take before I start to notice a change in lighting changes

 

[tankstudy]

Changes are usually slow. I generally don't expect to see change for about a week or two, sometimes its even longer. If the coral is no longer receding, it will return to normal in time. Doing several changes in this period usually results in a lot of bad things.

 

[jcdeng]

replace nopox with VERY frequent water changes to get the nitrate down. I would do 5g every other day. btw, when was the last time you check tds from your ro/di unit.

 

[Broadfield]

Which AI fixture are you running?

 

[ryan paggi]

Just changed filters in the RO 2 months ago and it's reading 3

 

[Broadfield]

The reason I asked is because I had the same exact problem, on a 30 gallon, with an AI fixture. My Acans would slowly shrivel away over a months time, but would still hold their color. I would also have Euphyllia that would polyp bailout. Ended up being I had too much light.

 

[Spike-Man]

Check your salinity. Maintaining high Mag can lead to elevated salinity. Good luck.

 

[ryan paggi]

What's ur light settings for that

 

[ryan paggi]

I have the regular hydra

 

[cjd]

I tried some acans when I had my AI Sol blues all in different locations of the tank . my tank was up and running for years with everything else growing just fine. they eventually all died. I saw a you tube video with Sonjay and Mike Palletta and Mike had trouble with his acans under I believe was AI unit also. The video is debatable since he admits to other issues with the tank, but my experience was the same with no issues with my tank and everything else was thriving.

 

[lazcub]

Check Parameters

 

[jrr]

Any new fish?

 

[ryan paggi]

No new fish but I think I figured it out it was the nopox because since I have stopped it there slightly more puffed up and my sps have more color so I will keep u up to date on the progress