chefmur
Active Member
So I have 150 gal mostly SPS tank, upgraded from a 75 almost two years ago. Up until 2 months ago things were awesome SPS looked amazing , great growth and color. I had a red planet colony that was a foot and a half long and a foot wide that shelved along the middle of my tank. I run Radium Pros for lighting and whole system controlled and monitored with an Apex. Levels have been constant for over a year within perfect range for keeping SPS.
One day a couple of months ago I noticed my red planet starting to loose tissue on the base, a full check of parameters showed everything was good. It was pretty slow so I just left it to see, slowly my other SPS started loosing it's super bright colors and my smaller pieces and frags were dying. One morning I came down to look at the tank and my whole red dragon was gone. So now I was freaking out, once again all levels were fine. I was pretty sure it was not bugs as all corals were dying from base and my magnifying glass showed no pests or bite marks.
The only thing I could think of was my wife had been spraying for bugs and she finally admitted to spraying a little behind my tank, however my fish and lps corals remained healthy and unaffected. So I did a series of major water changes, I already run carbon so I kept it running switching the carbon out every few days. Not only did things get better they got worse, more losses and now even all my monti caps that grow like weeds were losing color and dying.
I was now totally frustrated and ready to tear my tank down, my reefing buddy told me to bring some of my water by and he would run a batch of tests using his test equipment. He called me and said all tests were same results except one salinity. I normally have salinity at 1.023-1.104, he has a Milwaukee meter and it was reading 1.029. I could not believe it , I had the refractometer you hold up to the light and obviously was completely out of calibration. This had never crossed my mind to check , sure enough after slowly getting salinity back to normal range over a couple weeks things are looking much better, the few sps that made are looking better, my encrusting montis which all had lost their color were returning to normal colors.
After all said and done I probably lost a couple thousand dollars in SPS and a beautiful reef. A stupid and expensive mistake so many times we are looking for a complicated fix to a problem we miss the basics.
One day a couple of months ago I noticed my red planet starting to loose tissue on the base, a full check of parameters showed everything was good. It was pretty slow so I just left it to see, slowly my other SPS started loosing it's super bright colors and my smaller pieces and frags were dying. One morning I came down to look at the tank and my whole red dragon was gone. So now I was freaking out, once again all levels were fine. I was pretty sure it was not bugs as all corals were dying from base and my magnifying glass showed no pests or bite marks.
The only thing I could think of was my wife had been spraying for bugs and she finally admitted to spraying a little behind my tank, however my fish and lps corals remained healthy and unaffected. So I did a series of major water changes, I already run carbon so I kept it running switching the carbon out every few days. Not only did things get better they got worse, more losses and now even all my monti caps that grow like weeds were losing color and dying.
I was now totally frustrated and ready to tear my tank down, my reefing buddy told me to bring some of my water by and he would run a batch of tests using his test equipment. He called me and said all tests were same results except one salinity. I normally have salinity at 1.023-1.104, he has a Milwaukee meter and it was reading 1.029. I could not believe it , I had the refractometer you hold up to the light and obviously was completely out of calibration. This had never crossed my mind to check , sure enough after slowly getting salinity back to normal range over a couple weeks things are looking much better, the few sps that made are looking better, my encrusting montis which all had lost their color were returning to normal colors.
After all said and done I probably lost a couple thousand dollars in SPS and a beautiful reef. A stupid and expensive mistake so many times we are looking for a complicated fix to a problem we miss the basics.
a very good tip to pass along
