Advice wanted - 5 years with unsatisfactory.

[Pete1968]

I think you are low on light and nutrients personally. that was my immediate thought. I would get your nitrates up (just kill the skimmer for a week). then slowly increase the par at your sps to 350 or so. I have a Pair of the same light and they are wonderful. I run mine at about 350-400 at the SPS levels. i would also prefer my alk to be a bit closer to 8 or 8.5.

you may also want to start feeding a coral food like reef chili or something of the sorts. that may help your situation. remember, with that small box of water, you can go too far quickly. as stated above, i would not dose any nutrients.

You posted those photos as I was replying. AB+ is so basic. I was not a fan of it. I have swapped to a Saxby version and really like the color mix.

100 percent true! Par is way too low and dkh needs tobe 8.5 to 11

 

[JohnnyTabasco]

Day 1.
Tested my No3 after dosing 1ml yesterday.
Now it's 1ppm - so I will stick to the plan and see if 1 drop a day can keep it at 1ppm.
I will give that a week then raise it to 2ppm if everything is all good.

 

[ccombs]

You are getting a lot of advice so I will step back from this one. I just want to commend you for sticking at it and not giving up. Best of luck to you, I hope you get it sorted!

 

[JohnnyTabasco]

100 percent true! Par is way too low and dkh needs tobe 8.5 to 11

My experience is that the coral can't sustain higher par with low nutrients- they will bleach. BRS also concluded that 250 could be the sweet spot if spectrum is good.
Not saying that it's not a valid point, just saying that I have been down this rabbit hole for a year
I don't think it matters of the alk is 7 or 11 as long as its rock stable.

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

First welcome glad your here on R2R. After reading your thread I have had some time to ponder. If your thinking about dosing the redsea noprox no3no4 that is the last thing you want to do. That will not increase those it will decrease them, and you normally should use the trace elements with it.

We have all had similar problems and they are all solved different ways. You know your tank the best, so with that said we want to help you fix it. Usually corals react to something you did two weeks ago etc. running small nutrients means you need to run lower alk (in theory). I kept my alk at 6-7 and always had sps dynng. I then went to 8 maybe 9 on a few times and my sps bounced right back and my nitrates are between 2-5 ppm and phosphates lower than .25 (first color on api color chart). Anyway do not bottom your tank to zero, lps and softies can’t handle it.

Honestly I also have a huge leather attached to a huge rock. I moved it two weeks ago, because it was shading my clam and then after my clam died after being in there for 15 months. Possibly leather who knows but I’m extremely tempted to move it totally out of my tank. I don’t run carbon to remove toxins but I should. I don’t have many problems with sps but when nutrients are low lps don’t like it much.

I definitely suggest spot feeding all corals, also try marine snow. Turn your skimmer off and turn flow up full blast. I have to dose the redsea noprox because I was doing 80 gallon water changes every two weeks, and my nitrates would not go down. The noprox brought them down within about a week and a half. Now with that said I have had good luck with it, but it’s very tricky. Once you start using this you can Nsver take your tank off of it. Yes go down to the min dosage (example I have 240 gallons plus 75 sump minus rock and sand call it 220 water volume, so 16ml a day. You can’t skip any days your tank and corals will not like it and you can kill them. You have to measure it daily, and for example I have to dose trace elements because of it and it’s 1.5ml a day but based on calcium. But I dose 1.5 table spoons of alk and calcium daily. If I miss a day I will go from 8 to barley 6 and calcium will drop from 440 to usually 380 looking at my charts. I do this weekly and daily, and it’s not fun but works. I would prefer water changes and more natural but it didn’t work for my tank.

Only use the no3no4 noprox or your nitrates are high, you will strip the water way to clean. Another suggestion is to change flow once a week. I have also made my lights more random by week one they run at 33%, week two they run at 44% then I can cun cloudy for a week. I do mix it up and have amazing growth and color.

You can try and feed your fish more but again that’s only a start. It’s time consuming to spot fees corals, but when they stick their Polyps out to eat, I know they are not starving. I also literally feed every one by using a small 10cc syringe and mixing the food up. I turn all the flow off and I spray each coral. So far it has helped with some lps that were made at me. The other problem is if I get between 10-15 I have cynao breaks outs and I still have small amounts of nuisance algae which is good, because it means I have some nutrients.

In terms of lights I don’t run the hydras or radions but I have very powerful lights also. The forest fire digi does like light and lots of it, but it will also not show its polyps if it’s mad. Sometimes mine takes a day to come back out and it’s grows insanely fast. With that said, it has a ton of flow in the tank, but you have the same problem as I. I have other corals that can’t handle the insane light, and softies or lps for some. Lobos, plate coral I can’t keep alive I don’t know why, but easier corals and I suck st them.

Depending where your lights are maybe try turning down the whites till you have a slight blue tint. It may work it may not, but I do know they do not like super bright white lights.
With your tank so small any change will be huge, and only change one thing at a time. If you don’t you will have too many variables. If you have any other questions please ask mixed reef tanks are very complex.

Sincerely
Sarah

 

[Idaho-reefer]

Keep it simple, load that up with small fish and feed well, will take some time but in my opinion easier to sustain than dosing nitrates. Check your sg too. You may want to decrease the intensity your lights even more.

 

[Jon Fishman]

I'm completely new to this, so I am only throwing this out as a possibility and not a "Hey you should do this" but, it seems like you have gone through a lot of efforts, testing, etc.... and in your words "chasing" this thing...... Maybe having the tank under the microscope isn't working..... How often, say, during the calendar of 2018, would you dose 'something' for your tank?

Have you tried to just feed the fish, keep the lights on whatever schedule you have them on, and change some water every week or two? Maybe the tank just never finds a happy balance because it's constantly being adjusted to try to force it to fit into some 'perfect' parameters?

I didn't read everything prior, so I don't know what you have done/haven't done, but if you're going on 6 years with chasing a tank for results, I would personally try a hands-off approach, even at risk of losing stuff..... if the whole thing starts going up in smoke, then I would take some action, but even a fish dying, or single coral bleaching out etc...... I would just let it happen if the rest of the tank looks good, and just try to take a wait-and-see approach.

5+ years..... You have some amazing persistence, that's for sure.

 

[Stigigemla]

I would like to know what fishes You do have and how You feed them.
I think the skimmer is a bit to efficient for your tank so i would take down the pump to step 1 or 2 and raise the level in the skimmer to get a descent color in the skimmate.
Algae is only a problem if You dont have enough animals that eat them. A blenny and a few hermits can do wonders.
For me and many other water changes is the general method of refreshing tanks, especially when they are small.
BUT if you have neglected waterchanges a while You should only do small so You dont shock the animals.
10% a day for a week should make an impact. Just be careful with the salinity of the exchange water. I hope You have a calibrated refractometer.
I believe the SPS frags You have will do best in a flow of 4 to 8 inches per second. Just feed a little crushed flakes to the tank and look how fast they pass at the corals.

 

[Tiffany Johnson]

your tank look good! be happy!!!

 

[JohnnyTabasco]

I'm completely new to this, so I am only throwing this out as a possibility and not a "Hey you should do this" but, it seems like you have gone through a lot of efforts, testing, etc.... and in your words "chasing" this thing...... Maybe having the tank under the microscope isn't working..... How often, say, during the calendar of 2018, would you dose 'something' for your tank?

Have you tried to just feed the fish, keep the lights on whatever schedule you have them on, and change some water every week or two? Maybe the tank just never finds a happy balance because it's constantly being adjusted to try to force it to fit into some 'perfect' parameters?

I didn't read everything prior, so I don't know what you have done/haven't done, but if you're going on 6 years with chasing a tank for results, I would personally try a hands-off approach, even at risk of losing stuff..... if the whole thing starts going up in smoke, then I would take some action, but even a fish dying, or single coral bleaching out etc...... I would just let it happen if the rest of the tank looks good, and just try to take a wait-and-see approach.

5+ years..... You have some amazing persistence, that's for sure.

Thanks . Haven't changed a thing for about 5 months. The tank is as simple as can be, the only thing I dose is different coral foods.

 

[JohnnyTabasco]

Hello,

First welcome glad your here on R2R. After reading your thread I have had some time to ponder. If your thinking about dosing the redsea noprox no3no4 that is the last thing you want to do. That will not increase those it will decrease them, and you normally should use the trace elements with it.

We have all had similar problems and they are all solved different ways. You know your tank the best, so with that said we want to help you fix it. Usually corals react to something you did two weeks ago etc. running small nutrients means you need to run lower alk (in theory). I kept my alk at 6-7 and always had sps dynng. I then went to 8 maybe 9 on a few times and my sps bounced right back and my nitrates are between 2-5 ppm and phosphates lower than .25 (first color on api color chart). Anyway do not bottom your tank to zero, lps and softies can’t handle it.

Honestly I also have a huge leather attached to a huge rock. I moved it two weeks ago, because it was shading my clam and then after my clam died after being in there for 15 months. Possibly leather who knows but I’m extremely tempted to move it totally out of my tank. I don’t run carbon to remove toxins but I should. I don’t have many problems with sps but when nutrients are low lps don’t like it much.

I definitely suggest spot feeding all corals, also try marine snow. Turn your skimmer off and turn flow up full blast. I have to dose the redsea noprox because I was doing 80 gallon water changes every two weeks, and my nitrates would not go down. The noprox brought them down within about a week and a half. Now with that said I have had good luck with it, but it’s very tricky. Once you start using this you can Nsver take your tank off of it. Yes go down to the min dosage (example I have 240 gallons plus 75 sump minus rock and sand call it 220 water volume, so 16ml a day. You can’t skip any days your tank and corals will not like it and you can kill them. You have to measure it daily, and for example I have to dose trace elements because of it and it’s 1.5ml a day but based on calcium. But I dose 1.5 table spoons of alk and calcium daily. If I miss a day I will go from 8 to barley 6 and calcium will drop from 440 to usually 380 looking at my charts. I do this weekly and daily, and it’s not fun but works. I would prefer water changes and more natural but it didn’t work for my tank.

Only use the no3no4 noprox or your nitrates are high, you will strip the water way to clean. Another suggestion is to change flow once a week. I have also made my lights more random by week one they run at 33%, week two they run at 44% then I can cun cloudy for a week. I do mix it up and have amazing growth and color.

You can try and feed your fish more but again that’s only a start. It’s time consuming to spot fees corals, but when they stick their Polyps out to eat, I know they are not starving. I also literally feed every one by using a small 10cc syringe and mixing the food up. I turn all the flow off and I spray each coral. So far it has helped with some lps that were made at me. The other problem is if I get between 10-15 I have cynao breaks outs and I still have small amounts of nuisance algae which is good, because it means I have some nutrients.

In terms of lights I don’t run the hydras or radions but I have very powerful lights also. The forest fire digi does like light and lots of it, but it will also not show its polyps if it’s mad. Sometimes mine takes a day to come back out and it’s grows insanely fast. With that said, it has a ton of flow in the tank, but you have the same problem as I. I have other corals that can’t handle the insane light, and softies or lps for some. Lobos, plate coral I can’t keep alive I don’t know why, but easier corals and I suck st them.

Depending where your lights are maybe try turning down the whites till you have a slight blue tint. It may work it may not, but I do know they do not like super bright white lights.
With your tank so small any change will be huge, and only change one thing at a time. If you don’t you will have too many variables. If you have any other questions please ask mixed reef tanks are very complex.

Sincerely
Sarah

Tanks for the (long) reply
I'm obviously not going to use nopox..
I have raised my No3 by using NaNo3, I'm monitoring the effect and testing the water daily.

 

[xiaoxiy]

Just as a reference for feeding amount: I used to feed approximately 1 cube of mysis in my ~20 Gallon nano daily.

 

[sfin52]

My experience is that the coral can't sustain higher par with low nutrients- they will bleach. BRS also concluded that 250 could be the sweet spot if spectrum is good.
Not saying that it's not a valid point, just saying that I have been down this rabbit hole for a year
I don't think it matters of the alk is 7 or 11 as long as its rock stable.

Fully agree

 

[LilElroyJetson]

When I saw "Unsatisfactory" and "not growing" I was expecting to see a much sadder tank. Your tank looks great! Haha. But I understand, at 5 years I too would expect better growth and coloration. @pickupman66 advice was pretty spot on if you ask me. How high off the tank is the Hydra? I'm getting much higher PAR directly beneath my two Hydras (30 gallon long - over 400 PAR at the center of the tank between the two lights), on your nano I would expect at least dead center to be breaking 300 PAR. I think feeding the corals more would be helpful and I don't see an issue with very conservatively dosing nitrate. Have you considered maybe also bringing up your Alk and Ca? Also, that 7.9 pH could have a lot to do with it. These two BRS videos show much faster growth (almost 50% faster growth) with higher levels of Alk and Ca as well as pH at 8.3:

 

[tnyr5]

The look of your tank screams: "nutrient-starved". I will not pretend that I know how to fix it, but I can tell you what I would do (not all of these may apply to your situation).
- If I were running any chaetomorpha, I would completely remove it, and in one swoop. Same goes for GFO or carbon (other than maybe a few tablespoons changed every couple weeks.)
- If I were carbon dosing, I would stop
- If I had been in the habit of ripping it apart and redoing it every so often (in other words, yanking the rocks out of the tank, scrubbing them, and otherwise doing things that throw the microbial population of the rock out of balance), I would stop, and force myself to accept that it must get worse before it gets better.
- I would turn the lights DOWN, not up, by about 20%, and at the same time, change the proportion of colors to a slightly warmer spectrum, if possible.
- If hair algae is a problem, I would increase my cleanup crew until they are consuming it as fast as it can grow in any spot they can reach. The first thing I'd get is a small urchin. As things get under control, they can be sent to friends before they starve.
- I'd get more fish, within reason, but this cannot be done quickly or recklessly.
- When I saw nitrates around 10ppm and phosphates around .08ppm, only then would I risk more light.

 

[LilElroyJetson]

Also, one other note, I don't see green hair algae in your tank from the photos. From what I can see it looks like you have "golden algae." I recently finished battling what looked very similar to yours. My solution was a lawnmower blenny and increasing the number of trochus and turbo snails as well as hermits in my tank. My algae outbreak was much worse than yours appears to be and it was gone in about 3 days.

 

[JohnnyTabasco]

Great suggestions !
Many of you are talking about algae - just to be clear, algae is not a concern to me. I have all sorts of macro algae growing, but it's under control and I know how to combat it if needed.
Also many suggest to remove Carbon, GFO, refugium and stop carbon dosing - I don't have or use any of that stuff

I have successfully kept the No3 at 1 ppm for a week now. I'm not seeing any thing that I can contribute to this, but again - it's only been a week.
I do see a little bit of changes, like my zoas look super happy for once. I also have a Lobo that I'm trying to heal and that one is also looking promising. It's colors are slowly returning.
But I'm deffenetly not concluding any thing here !

For now I will try to keep it at 1-2 ppm and see what happens in the next week.

 

[sfin52]

Great suggestions !
Many of you are talking about algae - just to be clear, algae is not a concern to me. I have all sorts of macro algae growing, but it's under control and I know how to combat it if needed.
Also many suggest to remove Carbon, GFO, refugium and stop carbon dosing - I don't have or use any of that stuff

I have successfully kept the No3 at 1 ppm for a week now. I'm not seeing any thing that I can contribute to this, but again - it's only been a week.
I do see a little bit of changes, like my zoas look super happy for once. I also have a Lobo that I'm trying to heal and that one is also looking promising. It's colors are slowly returning.
But I'm deffenetly not concluding any thing here !

For now I will try to keep it at 1-2 ppm and see what happens in the next week.

Your macro algea is keeping nutrients low. You may have to dose because io the macro. That little bit of info just told us why nutrients are low

 

[ramona]

How is the tank doing now?