Frog Spawn and other corals slowly dying

[MomSaysNo]

Hello Folks,

I have a small GSP, Frog Spawn and two other corals I don't know the names of that seem to be slowly dying.

Salinity 0.026 (refractometer)
Nitrate .5ppm
Nitrite .25
Phosphate .25
Calcium 460
Alkalinity 8.2
PH 8.2
Temp 79.4 - 80 (it fluctuates a bit cause the weather is up and down here. Makes it hard to keep the house at a certain temp.)

The tank is about 4 months old, but doing very well. I even have a blue hippo tang that is thriving.
I have 6 fish
2 Clowns
1 Blue Hippo
1 Pajama Cardinal
1 Goby
1 Royal Gramma

I run a protein skimmer in a sump constantly that is also full of live rock and charcoal in the drain section. UV Sterilizer installed as well.

The tank is 170gal with a 40gal sump and I just did a 50gal water change but nothing seems to be doing any better. I am starting to wonder if the issue is my lighting.. though I've seen these same corals thrive in this lighting a month or two ago. I have a leather that is doing well and a large GSP doing well.. but the small GSP and Frog Spawn are struggling and I cannot figure out why. I've spent several hundred dollars on Hanna instruments recently to check all parameters accurately and everything is within recommended ranges.

I did have a mandarin disappear in the tank a few weeks ago that I am sure if dead. I am waiting on my ammonia instrument to arrive, but the standard color vile test was yellow. I had a large hair algae outbreak during cycling and used some H2O2 to treat, but everything seemed to come back to full health after that.

Does anyone have any idea what might be choking them out?? What am I doing wrong?

 

[Spare time]

You have no nitrate, an very high amount of phosphate which is a bad combo. Lower phosphate and raise nitrate. Start here.


What light are you using? What are the dimensions of the tank?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

The tank looks too new honestly. Maybe wait a little while before buying more. PS- IMO tank needs more rock.

 

[Sleeping Giant]

Everything in the second picture looks dead, sorry to say. Your tank looks and sounds a bit too new for the coral and fish you have. Gotta take it slow.

 

[Greg P]

I'm seeing what looks to be either Dinos, or Diatoms mixed with Cyano. See the air bubbles?
Either will smother your corals. Until you get it under control, daily turkey basting to keep the surviving corals clean will help.
I dose NO3 and PO4 to maintain 1.0-2.0 PPM and .03ish PPM respectively. Once I was able to maintain those readings, it took about 3 weeks for the issue to resolve itself. Your mileage may vary.

FIY, your tank is in my opinion about a year too young to support a mandarin, unless you are able to find one that will eat pellets/frozen.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Your Phosphate is high and im surprised no one mentioned presence of dinos. Dinos are likely causing this. At your soonest, Prepare by starting with a water change and blow this stuff loose with a turkey baster and siphon up loose particles.
Turn lights off (at least white and run blue at 10-15%) for 5 days and at night dose 1ml of hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons for all 5 nights. If you dont have light dependent coral- turn all lights off.
During the day dose 1ml of liquid bacteria (such as bacter 7) per 10 gallons.
Clean filters daily and DO NOT FEED CORAL FOODS OR ADD NOPOX as it is food for dinos.
Day 5,, you can start with blue lights - ramping up and work your white lights up slowly

 

[Sleeping Giant]

Is your salinity 0.026?

 

[Greg P]

Just spotted the starfish in your pics. Consider spot feeding it or return it as it won't last long with your current conditions. Your current situation may poison it and your sand probably doesn't have any food for it.

 

[MomSaysNo]

Thank you everyone for the input! I have had a dino problem, though it has gotten better lately. I have been only running lights for 8hrs or so a day and dosing with Vibrant and DinoX. I was worried with the corals in bad shape that H2O2 would finish them off, but it sounds like we already beyond that point so I'll start dosing again.

Lights- I am using Nicrew 150 Watt HyperReef LED lights. May need to change these out, but it was all I could afford at the time and was still a large step up from what I was using.

@vetteguy53081 Thank you for the procedure! I'll start giving this a shot. At what point in time would you introduce corals?

Also, I know this is a stupid question, but I am still probably 6-8 months into reefing and learning a lot. "IMO" means what?
Also can someone explain the correlation between Nitrate and Phosphate? I thought Nitrates resulted in phosphate, so lowering Nitrate would drop phosphate. That's why my Nitrates are so low. Also I was battling algae so I've been trying to keep them low to choke it out.

I appreciate everyone's input here and the quick responses!

 

[MomSaysNo]

Is your salinity 0.026?

Well, technically it is 1.026, but yes.

 

[Greg P]

Nitrate and Phosphate are used together. Adding one without the other will cause the non-dosed one to drop.

IMO is In My Opinion

 

[MomSaysNo]

You have no nitrate, an very high amount of phosphate which is a bad combo. Lower phosphate and raise nitrate. Start here.


What light are you using? What are the dimensions of the tank?

Tanks dims are 48" X 24X" 30"
The lights are Nicrew 150 Watt HyperReef LEDs

 

[MomSaysNo]

Nitrate and Phosphate are used together. Adding one without the other will cause the non-dosed one to drop.

IMO is In My Opinion

So many things make more sense now LOL

 

[tranceFusion]

What lighting are you using? Did you adjust it to take the pics? Cause it is severely lacking in blue spectrum in the photos.

also, since your tank is so young I don’t think you should assume anything was ever thriving in it. Many corals that die will do so over the course of a few months. And the needs of fish are very different from coral so not really relevant that the fish are doing well.

EDIT: saw you posted the lighting while I was typing. What lighting spectrums are you using?

 

[MomSaysNo]

I'm seeing what looks to be either Dinos, or Diatoms mixed with Cyano. See the air bubbles?
Either will smother your corals. Until you get it under control, daily turkey basting to keep the surviving corals clean will help.
I dose NO3 and PO4 to maintain 1.0-2.0 PPM and .03ish PPM respectively. Once I was able to maintain those readings, it took about 3 weeks for the issue to resolve itself. Your mileage may vary.

FIY, your tank is in my opinion about a year too young to support a mandarin, unless you are able to find one that will eat pellets/frozen.

Yeah.. I thought I had a healthy amount of copepods.. but they didn't breed fast enough. All of the ones in my sump seem to have been wiped out by this as well. Learned that one the hard way, but boy was it a beautiful fish.

 

[MomSaysNo]

What lighting are you using? Did you adjust it to take the pics? Cause it is severely lacking in blue spectrum in the photos.

also, since your tank is so young I don’t think you should assume anything was ever thriving in it. Many corals that die will do so over the course of a few months. And the needs of fish are very different from coral so not really relevant that the fish are doing well.

Ah that is a good point. Yes the lights are Nicrew 150 Watt HyperReef LEDs. I turned the blue off completely for the picture because it is way over amplified in pictures. You can't hardly see anything with the blue on my phone for some reason. I usually run it white in the day and a lighter blue later in the day.

 

[MomSaysNo]

What lighting are you using? Did you adjust it to take the pics? Cause it is severely lacking in blue spectrum in the photos.

also, since your tank is so young I don’t think you should assume anything was ever thriving in it. Many corals that die will do so over the course of a few months. And the needs of fish are very different from coral so not really relevant that the fish are doing well.

EDIT: saw you posted the lighting while I was typing. What lighting spectrums are you using?

Just saw your edit sorry. I am mainly using white. Wife doesn't like the blue. So I'll do white the majority of the day and blue in the evening.

 

[tranceFusion]

Just saw your edit sorry. I am mainly using white. Wife doesn't like the blue. So I'll do white the majority of the day and blue in the evening.

Corals really only use blue and violet spectrums. White light has blue in it but not nearly as much as a pure blue led. It’s quite possible they are not getting enough light.

 

[Greg P]

Worry about tweaking the light after you beat the Dinos.

You can set your light to be bluer when you're not around and whiter for your Wife's viewing time. Just keep the daily length within reason - 8hrs/day for now is plenty.

 

[brahm]

I would go with the simplest route, add more live rock (if possible check and see if your local store has pieces from a teardown, or check with other local reefers with established tanks to see if they have any extra, or look for a local tear down), do some water changes, start testing on a regular basis, verify you are testing correctly and if a piece of equipment you are using is something that requires regular calibration do so, log your parameters to monitor swings (a single snapshot in time doesn't offer much info unless something is way off), get your husbandry down, don't add any more corals (for now) at least until you see what you have that's alive start to perk up and stop adding dosing a bunch of random things; it's only adding layers of complexity that is unneeded at this point in time.

I've kept little pico tanks on simple water changes alone, no skimmer, no heater, a couple of sexy shrimp, tiny goby, some softies on the rubble they came on, and a little hob filter for minimal flow. Too quickly everyone wants to jump to complicated solutions for complicated problems when the solution is simply giving your tank time and learning more about the basics of reef keeping in practice vs paper.

I wouldn't overly focus on Nitrates or phosphates, feeding corals, or anything outside of the most basic things to keep your fish healthy and letting your tank & husbandry skills mature. Often the best solution to a problem in reefing is knowing when it's time to keep our hands out of the tank.

If you want to go a little extra and you 100% don't need ro/di but it's good to know the source of the water you are making up your SW is good, but not needed

Looking like you are using used equipment, is all your equipment in good shape (no electrical issues from heaters, or pumps leaking into the tank). Is your heater big enough for your tank (based on your temp swing comment). How are you doing your water changes, how frequently, are you heating the water to match your tank? Think of all the things that could be adding "shock or instability to the system" The all-around goal is stability. You'd be surprised at the wide range of acceptable parameters things will adapt to as long as they aren't swinging all over the place.