Hello,
I would appreciate any advice on my current situation as I am at a complete loss as to what I need to do anymore. I had a previous tank several years ago that was relatively successful -- I was able to keep any LPS that I had tried without any real problems, but, with this new tank, I haven't been able to keep any LPS or hardier SPS alive for more than a couple of months. Some corals that I have added noticably decline within a day or two -- most notably I had added a candy cane coral, and within a day, flesh was receding from the bottom.
Most of them start off well, good polyp extension, growth, albeit slow, and then there always seems to be some tipping point whether it be several days, or weeks that they slowly deteriorate. I would say most of them have slowly lost flesh from the bottom upwards towards the polyps to where the polyps eventually either just recede into nothing, or they bailout. With some of the acans and the blastos that I have tried, they add a couple polyps during this period, but the new polyps end up fading off as well.
The tank is almost a year old now, and I have not had a specific colony in the tank for more than 2-3 months because of the slow loss of tissue. Soft corals seem to do.... Ok? I have a rhodactis and a ricordia that have split, and seem to be doing well, several zoanthids that have added polyps over the past month or two, but haven't really been open the past month, or very rarely. Even though they're closed up, they've gotten a little bigger.
I had started the tank off just dosing, BSV 2part, which I was able to keep ALK between 8 - 8.5 DKH testing once a week. Once I started to notice the decline after a few months, I switched up to doing water changes, roughly 10% a week.
I have a 6 bulb T5 over the tank, probably about 6-8 inches from the surface. I had it a little bit closer but I had some dynos pop up and raising the light has helped a bit. There are two bulbs on from 10-12, with all 6 being on from 12-6 and again two on from 6-8. I had the lights on previously from 10-10, but during the Dino's I had, I turned it down a little bit to help get rid of them without doing a full blackout.
I had a period of my Phosphates dropping to 0 (Hanna checker) which had caused a dino outbreak, but over the long term, it had been hovering between .02 - .05. I'm thinking of trying to get them a little higher between .08 - .1 to see if that will help as originally this is what I was thinking my primary issue was (being the low Phosphates) but I have no idea....
I currently am only running carbon in my sump, and recently I had cuprisorb running as well as I had found some rust on a nail above the sump (which was previously holding my light for my fuge, but when I had chaeto in there previously that died out within a couple of weeks as well, it turned white and then just kinda melted?)
I just got back triton results this previous Friday -- my calcium and magnesium were a bit low (I have since done a water change and will do another in the next day or two to help get those numbers up), but I also have a bit of Aluminum in the test as well (I'm not sure if the cuprisorb had helped reduce this number as I sent in my test once I had taken it out, there didn't seem to be any black pellets as it said it would once it had absorbed CU or other metals).
https://www.triton-lab.de/en/showroom/icp-oes/99485
Here are the results of that Test
Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated as I am at a loss...
I would appreciate any advice on my current situation as I am at a complete loss as to what I need to do anymore. I had a previous tank several years ago that was relatively successful -- I was able to keep any LPS that I had tried without any real problems, but, with this new tank, I haven't been able to keep any LPS or hardier SPS alive for more than a couple of months. Some corals that I have added noticably decline within a day or two -- most notably I had added a candy cane coral, and within a day, flesh was receding from the bottom.
Most of them start off well, good polyp extension, growth, albeit slow, and then there always seems to be some tipping point whether it be several days, or weeks that they slowly deteriorate. I would say most of them have slowly lost flesh from the bottom upwards towards the polyps to where the polyps eventually either just recede into nothing, or they bailout. With some of the acans and the blastos that I have tried, they add a couple polyps during this period, but the new polyps end up fading off as well.
The tank is almost a year old now, and I have not had a specific colony in the tank for more than 2-3 months because of the slow loss of tissue. Soft corals seem to do.... Ok? I have a rhodactis and a ricordia that have split, and seem to be doing well, several zoanthids that have added polyps over the past month or two, but haven't really been open the past month, or very rarely. Even though they're closed up, they've gotten a little bigger.
I had started the tank off just dosing, BSV 2part, which I was able to keep ALK between 8 - 8.5 DKH testing once a week. Once I started to notice the decline after a few months, I switched up to doing water changes, roughly 10% a week.
I have a 6 bulb T5 over the tank, probably about 6-8 inches from the surface. I had it a little bit closer but I had some dynos pop up and raising the light has helped a bit. There are two bulbs on from 10-12, with all 6 being on from 12-6 and again two on from 6-8. I had the lights on previously from 10-10, but during the Dino's I had, I turned it down a little bit to help get rid of them without doing a full blackout.
I had a period of my Phosphates dropping to 0 (Hanna checker) which had caused a dino outbreak, but over the long term, it had been hovering between .02 - .05. I'm thinking of trying to get them a little higher between .08 - .1 to see if that will help as originally this is what I was thinking my primary issue was (being the low Phosphates) but I have no idea....
I currently am only running carbon in my sump, and recently I had cuprisorb running as well as I had found some rust on a nail above the sump (which was previously holding my light for my fuge, but when I had chaeto in there previously that died out within a couple of weeks as well, it turned white and then just kinda melted?)
I just got back triton results this previous Friday -- my calcium and magnesium were a bit low (I have since done a water change and will do another in the next day or two to help get those numbers up), but I also have a bit of Aluminum in the test as well (I'm not sure if the cuprisorb had helped reduce this number as I sent in my test once I had taken it out, there didn't seem to be any black pellets as it said it would once it had absorbed CU or other metals).
https://www.triton-lab.de/en/showroom/icp-oes/99485
Here are the results of that Test
Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated as I am at a loss...
