I’m at a loss. Help me out here.

[wopadobop]

hey everybody . Give you all a little background on my reefing experience. I have been keeping SPS Corals for about 5 years off and on . I worked in lfs that was strictly saltwater and corals keeping everything from mushrooms to high end sps . We actually had one named for us that we imported and is still in the hobby. That being said i am at a loss here .

My sps are slowly dieing. Tissue recession from both base and tip! Also a very slow recession of the tissues from the outside in. Very strange.
The run down.

Tank is 9 months old.
Mg 1350
Ca 410
Alk. 8.1-8.3 dkh checked twice a day for the last 3 weeks that i have been having this issue.
N 5 ppm
Po4 .03 ppm or 14 ppb phosphorus
Triton test comes back clean on all but low on iodine(ordered have not dosed yet) and by low i mean 0.000

I do not run phosphate binders. I do not run carbon. I have an oversized skimmer and Refugium that grows macro like crazy and i feed my tank A LOT.

My lighting (which is why i am here since i cant imagine its anything else at this point )tank is 4 feet wide 18 tall and 24 inches deep.

I run 2 xr-15 pros with ab+ settings at 80% 12 inches over the tank . With 4 ati blue plus.
Leds run 10 hours a day with 8 hours of peak . T-5 are on 4 hours a day at noon to 4 .
Acros and birds nest are around 8 inches under the surface .

It’s not just acros having this issue. I have a Superman Monti , a. Reverse Superman Monti , a forest fire Digi that are also “shrinking” . Polyp extension is non existent on the encrusting montis . Matter of fact i have never seen the polyps on the reverse Superman at all.. ever.. in 6 weeks. My acans and blastos and micromusa all look good and are actually growing down around 12 inches down .

Too much light? Not enough? Very odd.

 

[glb]

Has anything changed recently in the tank? Same lights, salt, etc? Were the corals ok before?

 

[Finhead]

NO temp spike or Alk spike in the last month or so? Sounds like a Alk spike to me, they can take weeks or more to show signs once it happens though.

 

[happyhourhero]

How and with what frequency are you replenishing your alk?
How are you maintaining your salinity?
How frequent are your water changes?

 

[splix]

You might be running your peak a little long. I run a long schedule overall, 12 hours, but my peak is 6 which to me is a bit long. I'm 8:30am ramp to 80% at 11:30am, 5:30pm to 8:30 ramp down to just some cool looking uv only at like 5% until 9:30pm.

Post a pic of your channels?

Also, are you doing water changes? How is your iodine 0.
I would start running carbon right away. Maybe you have a contaminant. Find some of that polyfilter stuff that changes colors depending on the type of contaminant. Maybe a screw fell is and is rusting. You never know.

 

[dansreef]

How long have you been running your radions at 80% intensity? I have the gen3's and I run mine at 75% AB+ schedule. The are 13" above water... and the coral are about another 12-16" below the surface. I spoke to a distributor at a show in the fall.... he was surprised I was running them that high... It works for me. I also run two 48" t-5 reto's... My Radions run about 11 hours each day. The T5's run about 8.

Are you dosing any trace or aminos?

 

[wopadobop]

Has anything changed recently in the tank? Same lights, salt, etc? Were the corals ok before?

Everything the same. Frags are about 6 weeks old and have just slowly but surely withered.

NO temp spike or Alk spike in the last month or so? Sounds like a Alk spike to me, they can take weeks or more to show signs once it happens though.

I run the triton system and have all 4 parts dosed equally on a GHLControl doser. Always 8.2-8.5 since i started 3 months ago.

How and with what frequency are you replenishing your alk?
How are you maintaining your salinity?
How frequent are your water changes?

Alk is maintained through a GHL doser . .5 ml of all 4 triton additives 4 times a day running core 7 .
Salinity is maintained with a tunze osmolator.
Still do water changes once a week of about 10% (detritus is still a thing regardless of triton or not )

You might be running your peak a little long. I run a long schedule overall, 12 hours, but my peak is 6 which to me is a bit long. I'm 8:30am ramp to 80% at 11:30am, 5:30pm to 8:30 ramp down to just some cool looking uv only at like 5% until 9:30pm.

Post a pic of your channels?

Also, are you doing water changes? How is your iodine 0.
I would start running carbon right away. Maybe you have a contaminant. Find some of that polyfilter stuff that changes colors depending on the type of contaminant. Maybe a screw fell is and is rusting. You never know.

Have always been running at 80% 12 inches above tank. I have the 4 bulb t5 hybrid from aquatic life. My initial instinct was that it was too much light and cooking them so i reduced the t5 on time to 4 hours instead of 6 .
Triton does icp tests for heavy metal contaminants. They all came back at 0 with a recommendation to dose iodine up to normal. That was my second thought that the tissue receding into the skeleton could be the lack of iodine. I know it plays a part in removing or protecting from some of the free radicals associated with photosynthesis.

How long have you been running your radions at 80% intensity? I have the gen3's and I run mine at 75% AB+ schedule. The are 13" above water... and the coral are about another 12-16" below the surface. I spoke to a distributor at a show in the fall.... he was surprised I was running them that high... It works for me. I also run two 48" t-5 reto's... My Radions run about 11 hours each day. The T5's run about 8.

Are you dosing any trace or aminos?

So your running less t5s than me about half. Your 1 inches higher than me , and your corals are about 6 inches deeper than mine. That would fall in line with too much light .

Triton doses all traces elements in the 4 part solution. I do not dose amino acids as i keep a decent amount of nutrients in the tank . I have some acropower if you think that would help? It is definitely a nutrition or lighting issue as my water is about as close to new as you can get at this point.

I can throw some carbon in the system, i do have a reactor setup that just runs with nothing in it Incase i do need it.

I’m thinking reduce the lighting down to 65% and maybe cut the lighting schedule down by a few hours ?
Thoughts?

 

[dansreef]

So your running less t5s than me about half. Your 1 inches higher than me , and your corals are about 6 inches deeper than mine. That would fall in line with too much light .

I honestly don't think it is too much light. I have seen guys running 85-95%... roughly the same distances from top of water and top of corals. Of course...they have some high light intensity requiring corals. Birds nests and Montis don't require such high light...but they will do ok with it.

How long have you had all of these lights in place. Have you changed anything....light related? I use the acclimation function on their cloud portal if I up the intensity of the radions. Try bringing them down to 70 or 75% and see what happens.

Another question.... how is the flow in your tank? Also, how long have you had your SPS in the tank. 6 weeks like the Superman Monti?

 

[wopadobop]

I honestly don't think it is too much light. I have seen guys running 85-95%... roughly the same distances from top of water and top of corals. Of course...they have some high light intensity requiring corals. Birds nests and Montis don't require such high light...but they will do ok with it.

How long have you had all of these lights in place. Have you changed anything....light related? I use the acclimation function on their cloud portal if I up the intensity of the radions. Try bringing them down to 70 or 75% and see what happens.

Another question.... how is the flow in your tank? Also, how long have you had your SPS in the tank. 6 weeks like the Superman Monti?

Have these lights in place about 3 months? Give or take a week or two. With the added 4 t5 bulbs i was thinking maybe too much light . But they aren’t growing. I have had the birds nest and pocillipora in there for about 2 months and they have not done anything . I have a pink sand dollar porites about half way down that looks really good and is growing.

Flow is ... a lot! I have two gyre 260’s (which ever the mid sized ones are ) running on reverse cycle every minute or so at 50 % thats about 30 x tank volume in overall flow . I run bare bottom as well so dont have to deal with sand storms.

The reason i think it may be too much light is that they were encrusting at the bottom of the tank and once i moved them up they stopped and then slowly receded from the tip and the base at the same time. I also had a highlighter and a bubble gum milli that immediately bleached out the second i moved them. Like within a day . The difference was only about 6 inches in depth from the rack to the base of the rock structure. And they had been down there for 2 weeks from shipping and looking really good.

I really miss having 4 foot deep displays where such a minor movement wasn’t so traumatic.

Ugg.
That was taken 1 month ago.
That was taken today .
Big drop in color density. And that efflo in the back is just going by bye.

 

[mcarroll]

Tank is 9 months old.

This stands out as a potential source of problems.

New tanks are rarely all that stable since everything from tank maturity to livestock load is usually in a state of flux.

N 5 ppm
Po4 .03 ppm or 14 ppb phosphorus

How stable have these numbers been?

Do both seem to vary normally, or do one or both of them seem to be always the same?

low on iodine(ordered have not dosed yet)

I don't think I'd bother. Check out Randy's article(s) on iodine.

Too much light? Not enough?

If you don't have a light meter at all, I'd suggest getting a #lux meter to answer questions like this with some actual data in your pocket.

Check out all that past posts under that hashtag (or just run a search for posts with "lux" in them) and check this out as well:
Beginner’s Lux

They only run $10-$20, so it's an easy buy. Anything like the "LX-1010B" I have will do.

 

[dansreef]

Yeah... I would be inclined to lower the intensity of the radions.... take them down to 65-70%.... Leave them on for the same time.... but just drop them down a bit in intensity. The T-5's I wouldn't worry about. The worse that can happen is some of the corals would get less light.... and then brown out a bit.... if that happens... you can slowly ramp up the light a bit more. Do it in small increments.

I have a highlighter that is directly under one radion and is about 12" below the surface.... it glows nice.... but the growth is a bit slow... until recently when it finished encrusting.... It is starting to go now. I also have a shortcake that a few guys said is too high. This thing is doing really well. Not growing so much but the colors are awesome. Lastly... I have a PC Rainbow that came in as a tiny frag. It has encrusted... and started to really take off.

 

[wopadobop]

@mcarroll
Yes those nutrient number stay pretty spot on.
I waited 6 months before i put anything other than fish in the tank. I understand that a 9 month old tank will not run as stable as a more mature system. I am pretty experienced with starting new setups and am very diligent at monitoring these things. I do dose some potassium nitrate in very low amounts to maintain that number .

The lux thing is interesting to me. But i still dont understand how that works. What lux number am i shooting for? You cant say go for this at the surface and place corrals accordingly. Every tank has different depth . You follow what I’m throwing down? I do agree its better than nothing. Ill check into it.

It’s just dang odd. No growth to me says not enough light. But bleaching out with some nutrients in the tank tells me too much . Hence the dilemma lol.

 

[wopadobop]

That is with the phone at waters surface directly under the light. Is this the proper way to measure or should i be shooting it through the glass. This is also after i lowered intensity to 65% and set it for a 6 week acclimation to 75%.

@mcarroll

 

[mcarroll]

You got it right from the looks of it!

30K lux ins't all that bright either. About "medium" in terms of reef tanks. (I'd estimate that to be between 400 and 700 PAR.)

Certainly there is room to turn it down, but I wouldn't guess that level would be automatically problematic.

 

[wopadobop]

Hmm ill throw another test on at 80%.



That’s at 100%

 

[mcarroll]

I do dose some potassium nitrate in very low amounts to maintain that number .

With PO4 that low I would not dose any more nitrate without reassessing.

If anything, indications (i.e. bleaching and no growth) are that you need to be dosing PO4.

Mucho protective effects from it as well as an untold number of biological processes that depend on it.....not the least of which are cell growth, cell repair and cell division. Some very important stuff for corals – and everything else living that you care about in a new tank!!!

Every tank has different depth

Only trivia here...not part of the troubleshooting.....but actually that's almost not true. The real difference between a tank that's 12", 18" and 24" deep (by far the most common sizes) is not all that much for most fixtures. The biggest difference between tanks of those depths is usually surface area....which more surface area does take more power to light, regardless of depth.

(This somewhat depends on the LED's you're talking about too......for example, if you're talking a single array of un-lensed LED's, then "deep" might be 12 inches.)

IMO, your 18" tank is pretty shallow.

No growth to me says not enough light. But bleaching out with some nutrients in the tank tells me too much . Hence the dilemma lol.

Accuracy of your meter from Hanna's site.

Accuracy @ 25°C/77°F ±5 ppb ±5% of reading

That means you may only have around 9 ppb phosphorus which seems to translate to 0.028 ppm PO4.

That's very, very close to zero.

Especially for a new tank. (where lots of things should be growing like CRAZY and demand should be HIGH from multiple sources)

Double-especially if you're an organism ina new tank that doesn't compete for PO4 all that well at low concentrations.

Flow is ... a lot! I have two gyre 260’s (which ever the mid sized ones are )

i moved them up they stopped and then slowly receded from the tip and the base at the same time.

Any chance you can post a movie (go to tube or vimeo) that shows your pump placement and maye demonstrates the flow in the tank too? Maybe dump in a little flake food to give some visuals to it? Something like that anyway.

Also the corals you named are particularly sensitive to being moved once they get established, so the move certainly has contributed some to the situation.

I'm putting my ducats on the PO4 level being too low to be useful to your corals.

You might be able to dim the lights (or perhaps pull the T5's....get things back to the state where they were happy as much as possible) and reduce the damage being done, thus reducing some of the demand for PO4 for cell repair.

But I'd probably be picking up some PO4 fert., myself.

 

[wopadobop]

I’ve got some. Lol you know me . We talked about this in Adams lighting thread . Basically have the fixtures to cover the top of the tank and let the light bounce around .

Just in turning them down to the 65% I’m seeing polyp extension for the first time in a few corals . That’s just in the time we have been talking about.

I have the sea chem phosphorus. Your thinking dose that up ? How far ? How fast?

 

[wopadobop]

Flow video

 

[mcarroll]

I knew I recognized your handle!!

Since you're not at absolute zero PO4 and you're seeing a little positive response from what you've changed today, I'd generally go slow.

Don't wanna be changing too many things at once either, so maybe play it by ear for at least a day or so before you begin something else like this.

I think if you follow the directions on the bottle they have you adding 0.15 ppm per dose...should be OK.

Anywhere >0.05 ppm should be fine and very conservative....overshooting that to their defaul level (.15ppm) for extra reserve shouldn't be a problem either if you can't be around to test (and maybe dose) again in a day or few. Reserve is better than running low again (if that's what turns out to have been going on).

 

[wopadobop]

Ill jump it up to .10 ppm and see what it does. Honestly i dont fear the stuff like some people. That’s just where my tank runs . Ill give it a few ml and see where it takes me. Can’t hurt. If anything it should counter act the negatives of the over lighting. It may slow down calcification but I’m looking for survival over growth at this point in time.

Thank you everyone for your help. Think we have narrrowed down some of the balances here.