Acro, Death Of

Liquid360 · Jul 10, 2013

Memorial Day weekend I awoke to a milky white 60g Cube (see photo). Whatever it was it took two complete water changes to get rid of it. Nothing showed up in testing. Even the fish were gasping for air propped against the glass. Over the following two weeks I watched all my Acro evaporate and die. See photos for livestock. Everything else survived. Now I'm terrified to add anymore Acro... should I be or is it irrational? I do zero dosing and 20% water changes monthly using Coral Pro salt.

Mike J. · Jul 10, 2013

I wouldn't be afraid to continue on. I remember this incident and IMO it was a bacterial bloom and it used up the available oxygen in the tank. I know this is unsolicited, but I would do WC's more spread out like once a week or every two weeks. Since your keeping lots of corals it will not be as drastic a change at one time.

3Twinklets · Jul 10, 2013

I am so sorry!!
I understand your fear but honestly I think this happens to all of us once.
Its hard to say what happened to start fouling your water but I would suggest weekly water changes.

Liquid360 · Jul 10, 2013

Yeah a bloom was the best explanation I found. When I said 20%/month I meant over the course of. Lol I would've given the same unsolicited advice!

Mike J. said:
I wouldn't be afraid to continue on. I remember this incident and IMO it was a bacterial bloom and it used up the available oxygen in the tank. I know this is unsolicited, but I would do WC's more spread out like once a week or every two weeks. Since your keeping lots of corals it will not be as drastic a change at one time.

Liquid360 · Jul 10, 2013

Thank you! yeah what a drag!! sooooo much cash and beautiful coral up in smoke
I should've said 5% a week instead of 20% a month huh? Lol thanks!!

3Twinklets said:
I am so sorry!!
I understand your fear but honestly I think this happens to all of us once.
Its hard to say what happened to start fouling your water but I would suggest weekly water changes.

cmaxwell39 · Jul 10, 2013

Sorry to hear about your tank issues. You had a very nice collection of corals started and it would stink to lose it all.

Has everything stabilized in the tank? Do you have any corals that survived? If you do, how are they doing? As long as everything has stabilized and things are looking better, I would say that you should be fine to start adding SPS again. If you are nervous about it, take it slow. Add a couple of cheap pieces and see how they do over the next few weeks/months before going hog wild.

If you have any locals reefers they may even be willing to give you a couple pieces to try out, of at least you could get some deals on stuff. Good luck. Remember, you won't ever know for sure until you try it.

Liquid360 · Jul 11, 2013

Thanks so much! Yeah it seems in order to have a disaster your tank must be doing perfectly. Luckily the SPS was the only loss... everything but the Acro made it but it was touch and go for a couple weeks.
I like the idea of doing a few cheapies and see what happens. My heart wants more big colonies but that'll have to wait. I need that canary in the mine.

cmaxwell39 said:
Sorry to hear about your tank issues. You had a very nice collection of corals started and it would stink to lose it all.

Has everything stabilized in the tank? Do you have any corals that survived? If you do, how are they doing? As long as everything has stabilized and things are looking better, I would say that you should be fine to start adding SPS again. If you are nervous about it, take it slow. Add a couple of cheap pieces and see how they do over the next few weeks/months before going hog wild.

If you have any locals reefers they may even be willing to give you a couple pieces to try out, of at least you could get some deals on stuff. Good luck. Remember, you won't ever know for sure until you try it.

mcarroll · Jul 11, 2013

Definitely soldier on!

I don't know if I'd bother with stony corals if your goal is to never have to dose.

To be successful past the short term on on moderate water change program alone, you'd have to either have very few stony colonies or cherry pick the slowest growing stony corals you can find. (Which kinda sounds boring, but who knows! And you should actually be using your alk test kit to dictate your water change schedule, if you are not already.)

If you at least run an ATO you should consider adding a very simple kalk reactor like the Tunze 5074 and if you don't already have them get Ca and alk test kits from Salifert, or similar, to keep track of when adjustments will need to be made. (Inevitable.)

With that kalk setup (or something like it) you should be able to keep your preferred stony coral and maybe your water change schedule too.

If you really prefer water changes to dosing or even kalk, you can still go much further than you have. I've gone as high as 30% weekly and even 10% daily at different times. I've never had better stony color or growth than when I was changing 10% per day.

-Matt

Liquid360 · Jul 11, 2013

I'm sorry but I must ask... you believe SPS can't be successfully kept without dosing?

mcarroll said:
Definitely soldier on!

I don't know if I'd bother with stony corals if your goal is to never have to dose.

To be successful past the short term on on moderate water change program alone, you'd have to either have very few stony colonies or cherry pick the slowest growing stony corals you can find. (Which kinda sounds boring, but who knows! And you should actually be using your alk test kit to dictate your water change schedule, if you are not already.)

If you at least run an ATO you should consider adding a very simple kalk reactor like the Tunze 5074 and if you don't already have them get Ca and alk test kits from Salifert, or similar, to keep track of when adjustments will need to be made. (Inevitable.)

With that kalk setup (or something like it) you should be able to keep your preferred stony coral and maybe your water change schedule too.

If you really prefer water changes to dosing or even kalk, you can still go much further than you have. I've gone as high as 30% weekly and even 10% daily at different times. I've never had better stony color or growth than when I was changing 10% per day.

-Matt

revhtree · Jul 11, 2013

So sorry! How did your fish fair?

Liquid360 · Jul 11, 2013

Thanks Rev!! Amazingly everything else survived and I only lost the Acro. I'm reasonably certain it was a random bacteria bloom. It's the only thing that makes any sense. I'm unsure though the mechanism by which it'd only kill the Acro. By the look of the fish I really thought I'd lose it all. I was relatively lucky. Coulda been much worse. Don't you love awakening to that panic? I was mixing salt, water splashing everywhere before I was even fully awake lol

Mike J. · Jul 11, 2013

Of course SPS can be kept without dosing. The main reason people dose is that water changes get very expensive when you have critters that may use all available calcium carbonate in maybe just one day. Personally, I do at least 10% water changes per week and I top off with kalk, and sometimes manually dose to keep levels stable. Anthony Calfo recommends 50% water changes weekly if you don't want to use chemicals. I respect Anthony and his advice, but wow that can get expensive.

Liquid360 · Jul 11, 2013

Understood. I've never dosed and have always done 20%/month. In my current 60g cube and the salt at roughly $60/200g the water changes are quite inexpensive. It's simply that I prefer not adding anything. Keeping it simple means that should something go horribly wrong, figuring out what happened is made simpler. I'm a subscriber to the Keep It Simple theory on life.

jservedio · Jul 11, 2013

Liquid360 said:
Understood. I've never dosed and have always done 20%/month. In my current 60g cube and the salt at roughly $60/200g the water changes are quite inexpensive. It's simply that I prefer not adding anything. Keeping it simple means that should something go horribly wrong, figuring out what happened is made simpler. I'm a subscriber to the Keep It Simple theory on life.

The problem with this is that as you get more acros and they start growing faster and faster, they are going to use up a TON of Alk - more than you can keep up with only doing weekly water changes. You will have to start changing the water 2-3/week and changing larger quantities of water. If you don't, you will be causing large swings in alkalinity by changing 20%+ a week killing any sensitive acros. Really, if you want to keep large acropora colonies in small tanks, you have no choice but to dose (2-part, kalk, or ca reactor) or be doing daily water changes (which is far less simple than just dosing Alkalinity, Calcium and Magnesium) - because to get consistent results you will need your daily water to be spot on - which means testing it for pH, salinity, temperature, alkalinity, and calcium.

In my tank right now, with the SPS taking off, I am going through around 1.84dkh/day of alkalinity. In order to not lose my acros from alkalinity swings, I would have to be changing the water at least once a day to bring that alkalinity back up and that would still be very stressful because of the be alk swing. You can get VERY pure 2-part additives with only Ca and Alk and manually dose them - this way you are still keeping things simple - no more equipment to fail and dose once or twice between water changes.

I went with a doser so it could dose small amounts 6-8x per day to keep the alkalinity within 0.1dkh. Since going that route I haven't lost a single Acro colony.

It isn't so much the expense of salt (which is fairly cheap all things considered), but the stress you are going to be putting on your corals with alkalinity swings if you can't change the water ever day as you start getting bigger, faster growing colonies.

Edit: I go through so much Alkalinity because I only have around 22 gallons of water volume between the DT and Sump and have 12 different acro colonies that are all settled in and growing like mad, 3 monti colonies, and another 8 larger frags on the rack and are in various states of adjustment, some fully adjusted to my tank and taking off as well.

Liquid360 · Jul 11, 2013

I've got PLENTY of coralline for a tank that's never been dosed... a sign of plenty of calcium.

Liquid360 · Jul 11, 2013

Yes I would expect that. You're dosing because you've maxed out what your tank can support without dosing. I have no intentions of getting to that point. I'll upgrade my tank before I max out my waters natural ability to support it's contents. I just don't like dosing. I tried it.

Frick · Jul 11, 2013

Sorry about the loses. If you get a quick bloom like that some thing had to of caused it. Either an introduction of excessive nutrients or the sudden depletion of your biological filtration.

I thought I saw a sand cucumber in one of those pics? If so, Could that have gotten into a powerhead or stressed out before this happened? Cuc Nukes can wipe out your entire bacteria population real quick then new bacteria will frantically try to establish causing a bloom.

cmaxwell39 · Jul 11, 2013

Liquid360 said:
Yes I would expect that. You're dosing because you've maxed out what your tank can support without dosing. I have no intentions of getting to that point. I'll upgrade my tank before I max out my waters natural ability to support it's contents. I just don't like dosing. I tried it.

I think what everyone is trying to say is that unless you have relatively few SPS or change a lot of water, long term success with your current system is difficult at best. That is not to say that you can't make it work. One of the great things about this hobby is that there is no "right" method to keep a tank. There are multiple methods that will work, the key is to find one that works for you and stick to it. Just realize that every method has its positives and its negatives.

Glad to hear that you are going to get some more SPS. I personally can't imagine a tank without them.

jservedio · Jul 11, 2013

Liquid360 said:
Yes I would expect that. You're dosing because you've maxed out what your tank can support without dosing. I have no intentions of getting to that point. I'll upgrade my tank before I max out my waters natural ability to support it's contents. I just don't like dosing. I tried it.

That max-out point where weekly water changes just aren't enough always comes way too fast... :squigglemouth:
With my 20g, I was maxed out with only 3 small acro colonies and few LPS with lacking light. Almost all of my SPS colonies are still pretty small (fist size or smaller) with only a few bigger and I am losing nearly 2dkh a day - I can't imagine what that number is going to grow to as my colonies grow. To mitigate 14dkh a week and get by with only water changes, I would need a 100g tank - and that would look really sparse with just the corals I have now.

I think you will get to a point (even without a lot of SPS and upgrading your tank) where things are just growing so fast you will have to do SOMETHING about your Alk and Ca. The good thing about all the solutions to that problem is they are all really simple and you can test for everything - not really adding any complexity to your typical post-mortem. Not having to change water every week is always nice too. I only change 10-15% a month.