I’m at a loss. Help me out here.

[jda]

Did you start your tank with dead/dry rock? If so, do you experience some of the things in this article:
https://reefbuilders.com/2017/07/08/revisiting-my-elos-tank-after-18-months/

If you suspect the radions cut the output in half. They are only supplementing your T5s.

 

[wopadobop]

Did you start your tank with dead/dry rock? If so, do you experience some of the things in this article:
https://reefbuilders.com/2017/07/08/revisiting-my-elos-tank-after-18-months/

If you suspect the radions cut the output in half. They are only supplementing your T5s.

Yes that is it exactly. There is definitely an imbalance there. Experience says its the lights being too strong AND low phosphates. Like running an engine lean. It’ll run good for a while but will eventually over heat and blow. I think the only thing that saved some of them from complete death was the high flow. We trouble shot the light down to a medium range for an sps tank. And while i do understand that iodine is a controversial topic , and in no way do i not trust RHF when it comes to chemistry i told myself I would follow tritons recommendations regardless of what my limited knowledge of biology is.

Turning down the leds by about 15% is already showing signs of improvement. Polyps are out at least. Time will tell on that one.
Iodine was dosed today at 4.35 ml with a recommended daily dose of .43 ml. This is not lugols of course but the triton elements. Lugols would be maybe a drop . I am hoping to see some improvement of tissue on other corals as well with that addition.

I does my phosphates up to bring them in line with the nutrient levels. Up to .05 today . I will let that ride for at least 2 weeks and monitor.

If those three things do not work. Then and only then will i look for other issues . Don’t want to change too much at once.

My thoughts on mikes article are that he is used to running radions and knows where to set them
New tanks with dry rock tend to run nutrient poor , which mike is definitely not used to .
Sponges are important for sure. But mine has quite a few , but could definitely use more.

Live rock really isn’t an option for me . The closest lfs that carries anything i would want to put in my tankis 8 hours away . :/

 

[jda]

Iodine is so complex, but IIRC, Lugols has no usable forms to most marine life... or just not all that useful. I cannot remember all of it, so my apologies, but Dr. Holmes-Farley has all kinds of great articles on it. Iodate is more useful if memory serves... which it probably does not. Sorry.

I personally do not think that low phosphates are an issue if you are not stripping them artificially. I have 5x 250W Metal Halides over a 240G tank with just acropora (and one Leng Sy cap) and my Phosphates are typically about .005 to .01... everything thrives. I would be terrified to use any GFO or organic carbon, but I do not need to. Anecdotally, I am starting to notice a trend of low phosphate tanks running LED being problems... perhaps this is because the SPS need more P to build to fight of the bad spectrum peaks, or maybe because they do not get enough energy from the light. In any case, the T5 tanks in Europe and US that all run Zeovit are thriving with low Phosphate... mine is too. Low nutrients were never really an issue until maybe five years ago. I think that there is something to this observation, but there are other variables in play.

I know that this does not help now, but when you need live rock next time, order some from LA and they will get on a plane to an airport near you... even if it is small airport. They will UPS ship too. I buy it for like $2 to 2.50 a pound and it is about $1 to ship... a bargain in the long run.

 

[Dana Riddle]

Issues such as these are so difficult to diagnose long-distance, but that won't stop me from making some comments. I watched your flow video and on the surface of things, it looks good. With that said, there were some studies done years ago about coral polyp expansion. These researchers found that polyp expansion is energy intensive, and if prey encounter rates are low, a coral will conserve energy by keeping polyps retracted. Prey encounter rates are dependent upon at least a couple of things - flow velocity and food particle count. With that said, I am not a big fan of oscillating flow as being the only water motion regimen. I've used gyre pumps in short-term experiments. Although corals initially had polyp expansion and grew, they eventually (60 days out) retracted polyps. I had some discussions with other hobbyists using only oscillating flow and a general trend emerged - SPS corals were difficult to keep. This is not to say that success isn't possible, but 'flow shading' certainly seems to be a potential issue.

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.

 

[rockskimmerflow]

@wopadobop I think a lot of good advice has been given here. Fix the iodine, improve nutrient profile, reduce overall light daily light dosage, etc. These may fix your problem alone, but I'd also recommend shutting off your dosage of Core7. Just looking at the pieces they are not growing and given the concentration of that additive I don't think there's any benefit to continuing a dosage even if you don't see your parameters increasing steadily. When I see corals in a tank that aren't growing and are in fact going in reverse I like to eliminate as many variables as possible so I generally will shut off a doser for a couple weeks and focus on getting the environment absolutely stable with no unnecessary inputs. It has proven effective for me to wait until I see noticeable improvement and some new base growth on small pieces before resuming a very low dose. I often advocate to keep a doser offline for the first 2-4 months with tanks that have very little stony coral mass in them. It just doesn't make sense to me to complicate something when manually dosing a few mL's once a week can easily account for the uptake of a tank full of small frags. In this way if you just tested once a week you will might actually be able to observe a change in alk over that time, whereas in such a young tank I don't think the resolution on most test kits will register much daily difference in alk numbers with the minimal uptake you'd see. Best of luck. Sometimes the basics of flow, light, and food with no dosing is the way to get corals stable again.

 

[wopadobop]

@rockskimmerflow . My current dosage is only 1 ml of each a day . Because of the growth In the Refugium if i do not do that little amount i start to see swings in alk on a very slow downward trend. I do have lps corals that are growing quite well down at the bottom of the tank so its really only to keep them stable. Interesting to note that everything has seemed to come stable now. No more withering and starting to see some flesh recovering. I’m just not touching anything Else but cleaning the glass and topping up the ato reservoir , cleaning the skimmer. Standard maintenance. So far so good. I was dosing 2 ml but was starting to see an upward trend over the course of the last week. So i did reduce it .

@Dana Riddle .

I have a program that does a gyre for 3 hours. Pulse for 3 hours and then back to gyre with a shorter interval. I too noticed that in the circular motion of the gyre style of the pump settings there was a sort of dead spot in the center of each side of the tank. The pulses tend to clear up some of the settling in those areas . Interesting that others have reported the same issues. I’ll keep an eye on it and take the research and keep that in my hat for future use. Good stuff. Thank you.

 

[rockskimmerflow]

@rockskimmerflow . My current dosage is only 1 ml of each a day . Because of the growth In the Refugium if i do not do that little amount i start to see swings in alk on a very slow downward trend. I do have lps corals that are growing quite well down at the bottom of the tank so its really only to keep them stable. Interesting to note that everything has seemed to come stable now. No more withering and starting to see some flesh recovering. I’m just not touching anything Else but cleaning the glass and topping up the ato reservoir , cleaning the skimmer. Standard maintenance. So far so good. I was dosing 2 ml but was starting to see an upward trend over the course of the last week. So i did reduce it .

@Dana Riddle .

I have a program that does a gyre for 3 hours. Pulse for 3 hours and then back to gyre with a shorter interval. I too noticed that in the circular motion of the gyre style of the pump settings there was a sort of dead spot in the center of each side of the tank. The pulses tend to clear up some of the settling in those areas . Interesting that others have reported the same issues. I’ll keep an eye on it and take the research and keep that in my hat for future use. Good stuff. Thank you.

Glad to hear things are on the mend! I just recommend shutting everything non-essential off if SPS start to recede, but it sounds like you've already turned the corner so keep it up and good luck.