Acros/Montis dying

[Michael Llabona]

Also, What is your salinity and temp at? I doubt lighting is the issue. Other params look decent. Are you dosing anything? Calcium/ALK etc....

 

[djorijun]

I'm keeping mine around 0.06ppm. I am using brightwell neophos everyday. I'll get home from work, check phosphates via Hanna, then dose accordingly. I've found that my tank kills phosphates within hours, so I've begun dosing in the morning, before work, as well.

Check your nitrates if your start dosing phosphates. I found that mine were rapidly used up once I got some phosphates going again. Don't let your phosphates get higher than your nitrates.

Awesome! I'll look into that.

Tell me about your coral. Did you buy maricultured sps acros or tank raised frags?

When your torch started dying did it start getting lighter in color or whitening?

Is your saltwater from your LFS mixed with what salt? or is it ocean water?

Have you had any difficulties keeping fish?

Do you have an ATO system?

How often do you test and how do you test your KH?

What corals are surviving the best in your tank and how long have you had them?

Did you say you do 20% water changes weekly and you do not dose with anything except a bag of puregen and occasional carbon.

1. The color remained the same, the actual tentacles began to recede head by head
2. It's mixed from my LFS and I believe they use Tropic Marin
3. All fish I own have lived very happy lives so far
4. I use a Tunze Nano ATO and am running kalkwasser through it
5. KH is tested weekly using a Hanna checker
6. The corals surviving best are the mushrooms, zoas, ricordias, 2 of my oldest Hammers, birdsnest, finger
7. I run 15-20% water changes a week. I have a bag of Purigen and a bag of ClearFX Blue. As far as manual dosing, I do Kalkwasser via ATO and was Vodka dosing for a bit. The vodka dose actually helped some of my corals a bit.

 

[Zagreus]

Okay do you know if the Acros and Monti's you are getting are Mari-cultured (imported from the ocean) or aqua-cultured (tank raised frags)? I have never personally had luck with Mari-cultured Acros ever.
1. Okay, the reason I asked is I fried a torch with less than 200 PAR using an AI 26HD in a 45 gallon.
2. Tropic Marine is good salt, but find out definitely. I did not have acros living for over 2 weeks until i started mixing my own consistent saltwater. The good news is even 10% weekly WC should provide all the export and the proper elements needed for a young tank.
3. Good sign
4. Great just be careful as I run an Tunze Osmolator and stuff happens to create ato tank dumps. Its one thing to have a salinity swing, another to add a kalk flood to it.
5. okay
6. good signs
7. With that size water change weekly, i cant see how you would need other nutrient export as you new saltwater should provide all the incoming elements and parameters needed at 15% -20% weekly

Best advice I could give is what in part has been said and what i was told. New small tanks, which is what you have are hard to raise SPS and some LPS corals in. I will send you a link to my thread but one of the key points was that young tanks like ours need to grow more and develop a more complete eco-system before we can support things like SPS corals. I basically did everything the same as you. At the 7 month mark i could keep SPS frags alive but not great color. Then with more time, patience and letting my tank run with the same basic parameters as you, things changed. Now color is my issue. I cut my vodka NOPOX way down to almost nothing, took out my GFO and stoped doing anything accept CA and KH that my water 10% weekly water-changes could not keep up with on a balling method dosing pump. I am letting my nitrates exist around 10 ppm and my Phosphates try not to exceed .16. Also letting some algea show up but also sponges, tunicates and other eco-supportive inhabitants all while trying to keep things as simple as possible. Its working but just requires consistency and patience. Patience is tough for me.

 

[XNavyDiver]

Okay do you know if the Acros and Monti's you are getting are Mari-cultured (imported from the ocean) or aqua-cultured (tank raised frags)? I have never personally had luck with Mari-cultured Acros ever.
1. Okay, the reason I asked is I fried a torch with less than 200 PAR using an AI 26HD in a 45 gallon.
2. Tropic Marine is good salt, but find out definitely. I did not have acros living for over 2 weeks until i started mixing my own consistent saltwater. The good news is even 10% weekly WC should provide all the export and the proper elements needed for a young tank.
3. Good sign
4. Great just be careful as I run an Tunze Osmolator and stuff happens to create ato tank dumps. Its one thing to have a salinity swing, another to add a kalk flood to it.
5. okay
6. good signs
7. With that size water change weekly, i cant see how you would need other nutrient export as you new saltwater should provide all the incoming elements and parameters needed at 15% -20% weekly

Best advice I could give is what in part has been said and what i was told. New small tanks, which is what you have are hard to raise SPS and some LPS corals in. I will send you a link to my thread but one of the key points was that young tanks like ours need to grow more and develop a more complete eco-system before we can support things like SPS corals. I basically did everything the same as you. At the 7 month mark i could keep SPS frags alive but not great color. Then with more time, patience and letting my tank run with the same basic parameters as you, things changed. Now color is my issue. I cut my vodka NOPOX way down to almost nothing, took out my GFO and stoped doing anything accept CA and KH that my water 10% weekly water-changes could not keep up with on a balling method dosing pump. I am letting my nitrates exist around 10 ppm and my Phosphates try not to exceed .16. Also letting some algea show up but also sponges, tunicates and other eco-supportive inhabitants all while trying to keep things as simple as possible. Its working but just requires consistency and patience. Patience is tough for me.

This is tremendous advise. Your last line applies to me also. I like so many "new" reefers don't really have a concept of what it really means to be patient. You really just have to live it to understand it. I started with dry pukani 6 months ago, and it's only in the last few weeks that easy sps frags are now starting to look happy in the tank. Some monti's (caps, setosa and digi), birdsnest... I won't be buying any acro's (again) for at least 4-6 more months. The rock has just exploded in coralline, and looks like coralline grenade went off in the tank, but none of these positive things started happening until I stopped trying to manipulate the water. No dosing, no gfo, no co2 scrubbers, no chasing numbers. Not easy for control freaks. I just test everyday and chart in Fusion. I guess I will see where it leads me.

 

[Zagreus]

This is tremendous advise. Your last line applies to me also. I like so many "new" reefers don't really have a concept of what it really means to be patient. You really just have to live it to understand it. I started with dry pukani 6 months ago, and it's only in the last few weeks that easy sps frags are now starting to look happy in the tank. Some monti's (caps, setosa and digi), birdsnest... I won't be buying any acro's (again) for at least 4-6 more months. The rock has just exploded in coralline, and looks like coralline grenade went off in the tank, but none of these positive things started happening until I stopped trying to manipulate the water. No dosing, no gfo, no co2 scrubbers, no chasing numbers. Not easy for control freaks. I just test everyday and chart in Fusion. I guess I will see where it leads me.

Thank you and I appreciate your reinforcing how important patience is. Its good for me to hear personally as a reminder.

 

[kris2001]

Salinity of exactly1.024,25 is best for SPS IME .

 

[landlubber]

zero phosphates will pale and eventually bleach your coral. "undetectable nutrients" is misleading term that is thrown around way too much and is confusing as hell considering it should really be "nearly undetectable nutrients".
also, the reason you can't control your nitrates is probably also due to the absence of phosphate.