We are new to sps. We placed small frags in our 300 gal tank four months ago. The frags did ok until about a month ago, when we started to lose them. One example, we have a montipora that had grown a third again its size, but is now bleached. We moved our lights up a bit- six AI hydra 26's, and cut them back to 10 hours with a two hour ramp at both on and off. We have seven chromis as our only fish. Have snails, hermits, sea cucumbers, shrimp, brittle star, star, and a few sponges. The refugium algae is doing ok, but not as established as it will be. I made the rookie mistake of not calibrating my Apex pH probe, when it started with funny readings I cleaned and calibrated to find a lower than desired pH - a little less than 7.9 - this was around the time the bleaching started. Other parameters: ammonia 0 salifert, Nitrates 0 salifert, Nitrite 0.011 Hannah, phosphate 0.01 Hannah low range phosphorous, alkaliniyn 11.5 Hannah, pH now varies between 8.05 and 8.25, mostly 8.15-8.25. calcium 450-470. Magnesium 1450. We have some cyanobacteria. I have not added amino acids or coral specific foods. Feed the fish frozen brine, mysis, cyclops. Do you think that the bleaching may be due to the problem with pH? Other suggestions?
corals dying need help figuring out why
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Maybe high light and low to no nutrints. add high alkalinity and its not good.
Keep beating me to it, I'm going to agree again with saltyfilm. No food for coral and high KH, you should try target feeding or a broadcast feed for corals. And let your KH come down a bit.
Never used reef chili, heard good things though. I make my own coral food slurry every night and they're different depending on what day it is. Phytoplankton, diatoms (yes you read that right) and i mix that with one two of the following. Golden pearls (mix of sizes), rotifers, oyster eggs, brine shrimp nauplii, Arctic copepods. I think that's it...
your corals ever jump out of the tank and kiss you on the lips?
they should.
Nah I'm still stuck in the friends zone (;
Cherub
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when I first got SPS mine were dying too and it turned out to be the way I was dosing. My numbers were always good but I didn't use a doser and would dump capfulls of chemicals. Sure the tests would show nice but it's a bit much for sensitive corals. If you don't use a dosing pump maybe try that.
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GoVols
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lol
mcarroll
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NO3 and PO4 are basic building blocks for growth and cellular processes that your corals have been missing.
Worse, once they become depleted beyond a certain extent, some animals become extremely unhappy....corals, algae, et al.
Get that nitrite number checked. Either you have a defective test kit or a defective bio-filter. If your fish seem happy, I'd suspect the kit....but get it checked. (Is your kit expired by any chance?)
All kinds of problems right here, so I would not be distracted by anything else until you correct this and then wait at least a few weeks to see how well the correction takes. (Chemistry and lights are fine IMO...especially if you get the rest of this fixed.)
Feed more!
And if you have to, you should feel comfortable putting an auto-feeder on the tank loaded with some quality flake and/or pellet food. Make it feed small amounts as many times a day as it takes to make a difference in your nitrates and phosphates....or as many times as it'll allow. I know folks with big tanks and some use multiple auto-feeders.
Just make sure you take is slow with them if you go that route – start small and only make small changes to your feeding routine at any one time. When you do make a change, make sure you wait at least a few weeks before making another change since it can take that long for you to see the full effects of a change like that.
Another tool for you to consider using in the short term is liquid nitrogen and phosphorus supplements.
For nitrates, use something like KNO3-type stump remover, or a similar commercial product like those from Brightwell or Seachem.
I'm not familiar with any commonplace PO4 sources, so seek out one of the commercial additives from Seachem, Brightwell, etc.
Especially the PO4 supplement as it should stop the coral stress.
If you pick up some of these additives, be sure to get advice from me or someone else here before using them!!
If you have to follow the package instructions, I would almost always start with 50% of the target range they suggest and increase the dose only if three or four weeks pass without seeing any change in the tank.
Hans-Werner
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Maybe coral food is even more suitable than a phosphate additive since it target feeds the corals and not primarily algae and bacteria. Also coral food is not adsorbed by the rocks like inorganic phosphate salts tend to be.
