Another bleached Acro?

[One Reefing Boi]

to me its just looks like the result of instability.
not regularly dosing, inconsistent nutrients, low alk.
SPS just do not tolerate volatility well and should values swing they generally just die without giving a chance to fix the issue.
in my system i measure stability in terms of months of solid parameters

Yeah it’s about 5mo old at this point. So still pretty new but other than alk, does everything else look ok?

 

[landlubber]

Yeah it’s about 5mo old at this point. So still pretty new but other than alk, does everything else look ok?

they aren't crazy by means but what you just said is my new smoking gun.
Unless your rock is from a previous system and kept live its going to be a struggle to keep sps in a 5 month old system. if it was dry rock i would wait until its a year old.
dry rock by nature is cause for instability as it fights to gain biological maturity.
the tank otherwise looks really good!

 

[One Reefing Boi]

they aren't crazy by means but what you just said is my new smoking gun.
Unless your rock is from a previous system and kept live its going to be a struggle to keep sps in a 5 month old system. if it was dry rock i would wait until its a year old.
dry rock by nature is cause for instability as it fights to gain biological maturity.
the tank otherwise looks really good!

It’s about half! Some of the base I moved from my other system that was about 8mo old when I took it down for this new system, and other pieces are “live rock” so dry. I also broke up some of my old rock into rubble and put it in a bag in my filter compartment for some biological filtration.
Thanks for the response tho!

 

[dedragon]

i suggest slowly bringing alk up to 7.6-8 and leave it like this for a day. Next day raise it back to your target (i prefer 8).
Day after you should test again and it will begin to show your daily usage of alk. Test calcium now as well as it should have fallen but not too dramatically. I target 8 alk and 420 calcium in lower nutrient tanks. When you know daily uptake you can start to dose, i use 2 part as i can just track calcium and alk and increase or decrease the amount dosed based on the uptake. For the first bit you will be testing a lot but it is worth it as testing will decrease after you tune in your dosing schedule. I use a dosing pump for alk from BRS because the alkalinity is easy to precipitate into the tank if not dripped.
I would also raise nitrate and phosphate a bit, should be easy to just use a full cube or 2 of pe mysis, just dont strain the fluid, you want all that in. Acros are easier to keep at a little higher nitrate (.5-2.5 my target for lower nutrient system) and phosphate can raise a little too and shouldnt cause a problem. Just watch for cyano

 

[terraincognita]

Sorry for the delay — crazy fam stuff going on rn.

so looks like my alk is superrrr low so I’m sure that has something to do with it

Yeah that alk is super low.

Are dosing at all?

Let me review the thread again.

 

[terraincognita]

Yeah You gotta fix that Alk.

What's your maintenance schedule routine? Are you doing WC's?

That' Nitrate also has to bump up to 10-15

Phos is fine.

Get that alk handled slowly if you wanna save the SPS, or just do it suddenly if it's already dead lol.

I'd do some WC's and increase your feeding/ lower your nitrate export.

 

[One Reefing Boi]

Yeah You gotta fix that Alk.

What's your maintenance schedule routine? Are you doing WC's?

That' Nitrate also has to bump up to 10-15

Phos is fine.

Get that alk handled slowly if you wanna save the SPS, or just do it suddenly if it's already dead lol.

I'd do some WC's and increase your feeding/ lower your nitrate export.

I have been dosing Mag, Cal, and KH using red seas products (just haven’t in a awhile because of life). I rarely do water changes (maybe a 10% once every 2 mo) because I have been trying to get nitrates up but can’t. I have been feeding generously and dosing AB+ prob 3 days a week. I don’t run a skimmer. Just carbon. I have a ton of green hair algae and Bryopsis hence why I can’t get my nitrates off 0 but just got Vibrant yesterday so hopefully they will help with my algae problem and I can work on getting the nitrates back up.

I sold my other 3 sticks to my LFS yesterday and got this massive 7 head torch in exchange.

Going to wait for tank to mature a bit more before getting into it again. Focus on my torch obsession lol

 

[terraincognita]

glad your lfs was willing to exchange.

just get your params more consistently stable in the proper ranges and you’ll be fine.