I am about to throw in a towel

Macdaddynick1 · Jun 23, 2016

My purple monster colonies are just RTN'ing , while my other acros are showing a great deal of improvement in color and growth. This is my favorite acropora in the entire tank. it was doing great for over4 years it took me forever to get them to this point , I am at a loss and I can't seem to figure out what is causing it. My parameters are CA 430, Alk 7.8 (may be too low?) Po4 .054 No3 - 2 ( low for my system i usually get 5 at minimum) Mag i don't usually test for but its around 1100-1200 last time i checked. Here are the changes I've made. About a month ago, I replaced all of the LED's on my photon 32 because my entire blue channel went out . I started dosing Elos last week. I usually don't use my skimmer, but I started to skim my tank a month ago just for the aeration purposes. Mind you none of my other SPS are affected at the moment.
If anyone has any idea or an opinion of what could've caused it , I would really appreciate your input.
Thanks Again.

redfishbluefish · Jun 23, 2016

If your nitrates and phosphates are that low....it's too low.

Macdaddynick1 · Jun 23, 2016

redfishbluefish said:
If your nitrates and phosphates are that low....it's too low.

thank you, i think you're right, my nitrates might be the issue. Im going to start dosing potassium nitrate and see what happens . otherwise i have no idea what could be causing this

Diesel · Jun 23, 2016

No3 is low but not that low that it causes a STN.
You sure nothing is stinging at the bottom?
Post any pics please.

Macdaddynick1 · Jun 23, 2016

Diesel said:
No3 is low but not that low that it causes a STN.
You sure nothing is stinging at the bottom?
Post any pics please.

It RTNs from the center, I will post a few pictures of the tank once i get to my iPad

Diesel · Jun 23, 2016

Is it a Rapid RTN or Slow STN?
if it was a RTN it should be gone in less than 24hrs.

Macdaddynick1 · Jun 23, 2016

Diesel said:
Is it a Rapid RTN or Slow STN?
if it was a RTN it should be gone in less than 24hrs.

about 7 hours i checked this morning all of them were fine. Im attributing it to increasing my light intensity and low nitrates. But thats just a guess. I am not sure what exactly could cause that ,

Diesel · Jun 23, 2016

Ugh man........ that's sucks!
I would swing the towel to for a moment.
Did you frag it to save some maybe?

LakeCityReefs · Jun 24, 2016

Drop the light back to where it was.

Macdaddynick1 · Jun 24, 2016

Diesel said:
Ugh man........ that's sucks!
I would swing the towel to for a moment.
Did you frag it to save some maybe?

can you feel my pain? =/

watchguy123 · Jun 24, 2016

The hobby is full of what the heck moments. Lots of reefers would say 2 ppms of nitrate ideal, same with you alk. My purple monster does well right below the water line with lots of light and flow. Perhaps those new lights overwhelmed it. Do you think the replacement led's have more output than your previous ones. Otherwise pretty hard to understand.

Macdaddynick1 · Jun 24, 2016

LakeCityReefs said:
Drop the light back to where it was.

Its kind of hard to do, because while i was in school , all of my blue LED's burned out and my tank ran mostly on whites for about a month, after I got my new board, i added 90 degree optics. I did however dial down the lights some more, i think thats a good idea.
I also dosed potassium nitrate , all of my acros showed good PE after i added it into the system . Hopefully that helps

domination2580 · Jun 24, 2016

Macdaddynick1 said:
about 7 hours i checked this morning all of them were fine. Im attributing it to increasing my light intensity and low nitrates. But thats just a guess. I am not sure what exactly could cause that ,

It might be from brand new leds in your system. Was acclimated to your lower par from the lights going out and put me ones in amd just gave it to much part to handle

Macdaddynick1 · Jun 24, 2016

watchguy123 said:
The hobby is full of what the heck moments. Lots of reefers would say 2 ppms of nitrate ideal, same with you alk. My purple monster does well right below the water line with lots of light and flow. Perhaps those new lights overwhelmed it. Do you think the replacement led's have more output than your previous ones. Otherwise pretty hard to understand.

Yeah you're right , one of my colonies has a great PE an grows pretty well still, Im afraid to jinx it , but these were lower down my tank on the frag racks, and yes I'm leaning towards the light issue, here is the board i had to replace, the blue channel led's worked but since the bulbs were burnt, after i got a new board i added 90 degrees instead of 120, so i feel like even though i dialed them down to 30% , i think it was way more than my corals were use to .

Vaughn17 · Jun 24, 2016

Mag 1100 or 1200...that is too low.

A.G · Jun 24, 2016

IMO, its nitrate dosing. Had similer thing happning to me when I dosed.

If i were you i would do a big WC and stop the dosing.

A.G · Jun 24, 2016

Also lightin shock will rtn corals.
If u could reduce ur lighting for a while it would be good.

Diesel · Jun 24, 2016

Lots of answers you got do I have to agree on that is a question as we will never find out.
Looking back to what all happened and what you did might be your answer

SPS don't like sudden changes and with blue light out, only have white lights, dosing, new lights with lenses might have triggered the stress point of your PM.
Not always it will happen to more SPS, that's why we found it weird.
STN from the center can be the cause of unhappy due to a rapid change and what ever that was you will never know for sure.
Just hope that you saved some frags from your colony and although this coral is super slow in growing it can give you back some satisfaction on still having a frag of the PM as they hard to come by.

Vaughn17 · Jun 24, 2016

I would check your Magnesium. The numbers you listed, 1100 to 1200 are really low. SPS corals, in particular, are not going to thrive with low mag. In fact, IMO, they do better with the mag a little high (around 1500 ppm).