Alabamareef
Well-Known Member
Epuipment/Inhabitants: 4 year old reef. Moved it almost two years ago. SPS and LPS. Heavy fish. Vertex Illumina 1500/260 lighting. 2 MP40’s and 2 Tunze 6105’s. Most SPS are acros. Some stylos and monties. Estamitaed 150lb of live rock with sand substrate about 2 inches. Heavy clean up crew. Was using 2 part and changed to Ca reactor and Kalk stirrer. All controlled with apex. Sump with micro. Reef Octopus skimmer. Carbon and GFO reactor. Bio pellet reactor. ATO system.
History: Well established. Showing great growth but color not so good. I started using some additives. One was iron and it said if I see hair algae to make a water change and stop using. I did stop and did a water change after a few days. But it seemed the hair algae started to take off. At the time my P04 was around 3-5. Nitrates 0 and Ca was 450 and Alk at 8.3dkh. I saw what I thought was cyao and thought this may be causing my lack of color. I used chem clean before and thought this may be my answer. Right after I used chem clean my corals started looking bad and all has went downhill from that point.
After a few weeks I made a change from 2 part to a Ca reactor. Did not really notice much change. I also turned off the bio pellet reactor thinking I may be stripping the system. After a little time I started to notice some corals turning color and no polyp extension. I thought maybe my light was to strong and turned it down. Later I noticed a problem with my light. It had a programming problem and was turning itself on at night. I also had my moon light to bright. After fixing the programing and turning down my light I took out all the dead acros. No bugs on the acros. They would turn white at the base and it would work its way up. It appears on one large colony with super glue I did stop the tissue death.
So now the corals are still stressed but my light is working properly. All levels are stable, confirmed with aquariumwatertesting.com. I sent off water to be tested because that’s where I thought my problem may be but all is well. So now I’m looking at my 180gallon reef wasting away with still no answers. I’ve been trying to rid my tank of the hair algae with weekly water changes, 45 gallons and getting out as much as I could. Finally I hired a friend that cleans tanks for a living. He cleaned the tank and got out most all hair algae. We sat down to eat dinner and when we went back to the tank several fish were dead. 8 fish in total died. The crazy thing is we were just bragging how good all the fish looked. And it was the expensive fish not the little inexpensive ones. I really hate that my animals have suffered and I can’t find the reasons.
It seems there were a lot of things that happened over this three month time period. I also have made to many changes. But I’m trying to find the root cause. I’ve still got some coral living but it’s not looking its best. My anemones are doing well. And I’ve got some coral dying. My good friend has suggested we empty the tank and take out the sand, thinking a nitrogen pocket caused the death of the fish, and scrub the rock of the hair algae and put in a new sand substrate. He also suggested maybe not using any old water, starting new. I’m worried if I do this my current animals, mainly the anemones, will not do well. Just want some other opinions or suggestions. Thanks for reading
History: Well established. Showing great growth but color not so good. I started using some additives. One was iron and it said if I see hair algae to make a water change and stop using. I did stop and did a water change after a few days. But it seemed the hair algae started to take off. At the time my P04 was around 3-5. Nitrates 0 and Ca was 450 and Alk at 8.3dkh. I saw what I thought was cyao and thought this may be causing my lack of color. I used chem clean before and thought this may be my answer. Right after I used chem clean my corals started looking bad and all has went downhill from that point.
After a few weeks I made a change from 2 part to a Ca reactor. Did not really notice much change. I also turned off the bio pellet reactor thinking I may be stripping the system. After a little time I started to notice some corals turning color and no polyp extension. I thought maybe my light was to strong and turned it down. Later I noticed a problem with my light. It had a programming problem and was turning itself on at night. I also had my moon light to bright. After fixing the programing and turning down my light I took out all the dead acros. No bugs on the acros. They would turn white at the base and it would work its way up. It appears on one large colony with super glue I did stop the tissue death.
So now the corals are still stressed but my light is working properly. All levels are stable, confirmed with aquariumwatertesting.com. I sent off water to be tested because that’s where I thought my problem may be but all is well. So now I’m looking at my 180gallon reef wasting away with still no answers. I’ve been trying to rid my tank of the hair algae with weekly water changes, 45 gallons and getting out as much as I could. Finally I hired a friend that cleans tanks for a living. He cleaned the tank and got out most all hair algae. We sat down to eat dinner and when we went back to the tank several fish were dead. 8 fish in total died. The crazy thing is we were just bragging how good all the fish looked. And it was the expensive fish not the little inexpensive ones. I really hate that my animals have suffered and I can’t find the reasons.
It seems there were a lot of things that happened over this three month time period. I also have made to many changes. But I’m trying to find the root cause. I’ve still got some coral living but it’s not looking its best. My anemones are doing well. And I’ve got some coral dying. My good friend has suggested we empty the tank and take out the sand, thinking a nitrogen pocket caused the death of the fish, and scrub the rock of the hair algae and put in a new sand substrate. He also suggested maybe not using any old water, starting new. I’m worried if I do this my current animals, mainly the anemones, will not do well. Just want some other opinions or suggestions. Thanks for reading
