I messed up - Burnt tips and alk consumption dropped by 75% - Help please.

[Punchanello]

I never cease to wonder about my capacity to stuff up and in hindsight realise I did something that I should have known would cause problems. Like, for example, making sudden large changes, making multiple changes at once, forgetting mistakes I have made before. Or in this case all three.

I posted this - https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/i...-my-sps-chemiclean.645122/page-2#post-6464248 a few days ago. I thought that perhaps my use of Chemiclean had caused an alk spike burning the tips of my SPS. Of course I forgot I had changed out my 4 old T5s over the course of 4 weeks potential increasing output by 50%. This is likely the cause or maybe a combination of boththat and the Chemiclean.

So here's where I am at -

- 2 weeks ago my alk was at 8.1 and I was dosing about 125ml of Alkalinity (Randys Recipe) a day. Now, I am dosing 45ml after my alk kept rising presumably because my corals were stressed by the additional light and stopped taking it up. My alk is now at 8.9.

- As well as reducing my alk I raised the height of my lights a little and turned them down to 60%. Before I changed the bulbs they were set to 100%

- I see algae growing on the tips of almost all of my Acros and across my plating monti. I can't tell if it is growing worse but having reduced the light substantially I hope not.

- Nothing has died...yet.

I'm wondering how I get my tank back on track. My plan at this stage is to leave the lights where they are and wait to see my alk consumption increase again. Once that has happened I will very gradually increase the light intensity. Once I see growth again I will try snipping any tips covered in algae.

Is this a good approach? Don't want to stuff up again so grateful for any guidance or tips.

Thanks!

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

What’s your no3 and po4?
What are you using for nutrient export?

 

[Jettareefer223]

FWIW I had my alk consumption go from 120 mls per day to less than 35 mls in a matter of a few days (net volume 55 gallon). At the time my tank was so pack with acros. It was a precursor to my stn nightmare.

With that said after a month and half of chopping up most of my beloved mature colonies, and drowning stuff in super glue with limited success I had little hope left. At my breaking point after eliminating everything possible multiple times I even complete tore apart my tank emptying it sanitizing it along with sump, removing my sand, threw away any acros that I felt wouldn’t make it, and removing 60% live rock and loosing sleep every night I decided to treat the tank with chemiclean since it kept coming up in the forums as a possible solution for stn. It worked btw it got way worse initially with in a day after 48
treatment improvement started thank jesus acro’s affected are healing.

As far as chemiclean and the Alk go mine did not move even .1 it stay 8.6 dkh. I’m pretty sure that’s not the root cause decrease in consumption. My sps/some lps Corals start to almost look grey/pale during the treatment they looking normal after I skimmed heavy/added carbon and some shot filaments, but no rtn or burnt tips keep In mind my sps were already compromised stn’ing so it was something bad from chemiclean was going to happen it would have. Changing your bulbs is not going cause tissue necrosis some lose In color with higher par levels maybe. In the future replacing t5 bulbs do 1-2 at a time instead of all four at once and do the rest 2-3 weeks later this will cause less shock. Did you have you skimmer running during the chemi clean treatment?

 

[Punchanello]

What’s your no3 and po4?
What are you using for nutrient export?

No3 is at 10 and No4 is .25

At the moment I'm just using a skimmer but I sometimes use chaeto.

 

[Punchanello]

FWIW I had my alk consumption go from 120 mls per day to less than 35 mls in a matter of a few days (net volume 55 gallon). At the time my tank was so pack with acros. It was a precursor to my stn nightmare.

With that said after a month and half of chopping up most of my beloved mature colonies, and drowning stuff in super glue with limited success I had little hope left. At my breaking point after eliminating everything possible multiple times I even complete tore apart my tank emptying it sanitizing it along with sump, removing my sand, threw away any acros that I felt wouldn’t make it, and removing 60% live rock and loosing sleep every night I decided to treat the tank with chemiclean since it kept coming up in the forums as a possible solution for stn. It worked btw it got way worse initially with in a day after 48
treatment improvement started thank jesus acro’s affected are healing.

As far as chemiclean and the Alk go mine did not move even .1 it stay 8.6 dkh. I’m pretty sure that’s not the root cause decrease in consumption. My sps/some lps Corals start to almost look grey/pale during the treatment they looking normal after I skimmed heavy/added carbon and some shot filaments, but no rtn or burnt tips keep In mind my sps were already compromised stn’ing so it was something bad from chemiclean was going to happen it would have. Changing your bulbs is not going cause tissue necrosis some lose In color with higher par levels maybe. In the future replacing t5 bulbs do 1-2 at a time instead of all four at once and do the rest 2-3 weeks later this will cause less shock. Did you have you skimmer running during the chemi clean treatment?

I changed 1 bulb a week but my old ones were pretty old, like 12 months plus. So I thought That might be a huge jump in par.

I just let the skimmer overflow

 

[FishTruck]

I've been through this scenario three times in the 10 years that my tank has been running. Major setback each time, but, never enough to wipe everything out. I think... each time I have made things worse by constantly tinkering and trying to make it better. Your plan with the lights... leave them alone and be patient... is a good one.

What sets these events off??? For me, almost always unstable Alk - with too aggressive correction on my part... and tinkering with the lights at the same time. But, my Alk swings have been worse than what you described (like 6 to 12).... and newbie tinkering with my Radion LEDs certainly wrought more havoc than just changing T5 bulbs.

Keep checking your parameters. Lowering your nutrients a bit to help slow down the algae is what I would do. Water changes, diligent filter sock changes, should be the backbone of that project. Be careful with the elixirs. Check you RO/DI source - watch out for the silly stuff.

If you can't find any smoking gun - sometimes you just have to ride it out and keep up with the husbandry and the basics. I am just coming out of my current regressive period - and it has taking about four months. FINALLY seeing some color and growth coming back.

 

[Jettareefer223]

I changed 1 bulb a week but my old ones were pretty old, like 12 months plus. So I thought That might be a huge jump in par.

I just let the skimmer overflow

I run ati bulbs I replace them like every 18 months lol, bc I bought a par meter I’ve been able log par levels over time. Honestly they don’t seem to shift in color or loose a considerable amount of par (2 bulbs run 13 hours / 4 bulbs run 7-8 hours daily). If you did a bulb a week I really do think it would’ve caused any problems.

I was just making sure I truly believe of you don’t the oxyen levels getting depleted if you don’t let the skimmer run seems to be the major mistake people make. Is there any other notable things/ or changes other then the alk/chemiclean/bulbs you can think of?

 

[FishTruck]

Oh yea... and I am running my Calcium reactor at half the bubble rate and only for 8 hours per day to keep the Alk stable at 7. This is one sixth of the CO2 gas I was using a year ago... and probably means the Alk consumption is reduced by a similar amount. I hope to see that Alk consumption go up soon.

 

[Punchanello]

I run ati bulbs I replace them like every 18 months lol, bc I bought a par meter I’ve been able log par levels over time. Honestly they don’t seem to shift in color or loose a considerable amount of par (2 bulbs run 13 hours / 4 bulbs run 7-8 hours daily). If you did a bulb a week I really do think it would’ve caused any problems.

I was just making sure I truly believe of you don’t the oxyen levels getting depleted if you don’t let the skimmer run seems to be the major mistake people make. Is there any other notable things/ or changes other then the alk/chemiclean/bulbs you can think of?

Nothing I can think of except that 2 months earlier I switched to the Australian equivalent of BRS 2-part. Pharma grade alk and calcium. Before that I used Aquaforest. It took a little while to dial in but I didn't have any major swings.

I knew my bulbs were a bit old but I watched the BRS TV test which showed little or no degradation in the bulbs over 18 months so thought I was fine. So if it isn't likely to be the bulbs or chemiclean on their own perhaps a combination of these factors?

 

[Jettareefer223]

I've been through this scenario three times in the 10 years that my tank has been running. Major setback each time, but, never enough to wipe everything out. I think... each time I have made things worse by constantly tinkering and trying to make it better. Your plan with the lights... leave them alone and be patient... is a good one.

What sets these events off??? For me, almost always unstable Alk - with too aggressive correction on my part... and tinkering with the lights at the same time. But, my Alk swings have been worse than what you described (like 6 to 12).... and newbie tinkering with my Radion LEDs certainly wrought more havoc than just changing T5 bulbs.

Keep checking your parameters. Lowering your nutrients a bit to help slow down the algae is what I would do. Water changes, diligent filter sock changes, should be the backbone of that project. Be careful with the elixirs. Check you RO/DI source - watch out for the silly stuff.

If you can't find any smoking gun - sometimes you just have to ride it out and keep up with the husbandry and the basics. I am just coming out of my current regressive period - and it has taking about four months. FINALLY seeing some color and growth coming back.

You make a good here. Most of the time the rush to “fix/save” or in other words change a lot of things at once makes the situation worst. Now days with all craziness with all dosing/reactor fads there’s continuous messing a round with things putting your hands in the water. Not to mention the risk cross contamination with things enter the water column.

Personally haven’t put my bare hands in my tank for the exception of the overhaul in 12 months. I wear nitrile gloves or most of the time use grabbers to get things done. I purposely run really minimalistic systems super simple so there’s limited variable forgoing all constant messing around different things. I’ve had my best long term success sitting back and just leaving it alone religiously monitoring water parameters / observing my corals . If any problems pop up methodically consider my plan of action a lot of times unless there’s a obvious reason it’s usally double check water test and waiting it out before any further measures are taken.

 

[Punchanello]

With your comments in mind I'm thinking of the timeline here -

2 months ago - Changed over to 2 part - Alk 8.1
1 months ago - Changed a bulb once a week for 3 weeks. Alk 8.1
1 week ago - Ran chemiclean for 48hrs and noticed alk rising quickly and at 8.6. Lowered alk dose. Noticed some tips white and algae on some tips
5 days ago - Did 10% water change then 10% again 12 hrs later and changed the 4th bulb. Alk hovering at 8.6. Lowered alk dosing again
4 Days ago - noticed a lot more algae on tips - decided it was the lights. Lowered alk again and turned down lights to 60%
2 Days ago - Alk at 8.9! Lowered alk again....then I realised, reducing the light is slowing alk uptake
Today - confused about where things went wrong and thinking I messed up by doing too many corrections.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Sounds to me like you got a bad batch of something. What did you recently buy before the burnt tips?

 

[FishTruck]

I think you are saying that the Alk change is the symptom, not the cause - which seems right. You actually seem to be right on top of it - keeping it stable.

Once, I was trying to deal with one of these prolonged regressive events without success... I noticed that the TDS from my RO/DI unit was 5 or 6 ppm, which didn't seem that bad - but water changes weren't helping and I found out my water pressure was inadequate for the dual membrane RO system I was trying to run. Another newbie mistake. Once I got that fixed, my TDS was 0 ppm out of the membrane - and about a month later things turned around and acro frags actually started to thrive again. That particular event was caused by adding a huge amount of coral, leading to an Alk crash, over correction and then all the acros RTN'd and died. After that, any acro that I added would RTN within 48 hours for like four months. I took a break from SPS for about a year after that one.

Another thing I have done with very mixed results it fragging off all the marginal corals and re-planting the good bits. When I have just tossed the colony and saved one or two small frags... I have occasionally been rewarded with one of them coming back and reforming another big colony.

On the other hand.... moving big colonies around - trimming them by like 50% - and disturbing the aquascape in the process, (essentially, trying to save too much) - seems to re-ignite the regressive periods.

 

[melanotaenia]

From your list of changes sounds like ChemiClean was the culprit, perhaps it upset the balance of the tank and this caused the untoward response from your Acros. Going from 8.1 DKH to 8.6 DKH does not seem like it is severe enough a change to cause these reactions. Just my thoughts...hope you figure it out!!

 

[Punchanello]

I think you are saying that the Alk change is the symptom, not the cause - which seems right. You actually seem to be right on top of it - keeping it stable.

Thanks mate. Yeah, definitely the symptom not the cause. I'm inclined to think that neither the chemiclean or the change of lights was a lone cause but together and with my subsequent adjustments have tipped things out of balance.

I have good news and bad news. Lost a new colony that got burnt pretty bad. Could have been for the same reason but could just be what happens to stressed new wild colonies. Good news is I noticed a .2 alk drop without adjusting my dosing or lights. Hopefully the start of a turn around.

 

[Punchanello]

Sounds to me like you got a bad batch of something. What did you recently buy before the burnt tips?

Just what I have listed. I won't rule out contamination just yet though. Nitrile gloves for me from now on.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Just what I have listed. I won't rule out contamination just yet though. Nitrile gloves for me from now on.

Just nitrile??? I go disposable full sleeved equestrian veterinarian gloves and nitrile.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Uline Poly Shoulder Length Gloves - 35

When you're up to your elbows and need maximum coverage. Recommended for agricultural and farming applications. Ambidextrous. Extra-long length protects hands and arms and eliminates messy cleanups. Elastic band helps hold the sleeve up. 35" long. FDA compliant.

www.uline.com

 

[Punchanello]

Just nitrile??? I go disposable full sleeved equestrian veterinarian gloves and nitrile.

Haha, clean the tank, then deliver a foal. I like it.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Haha, clean the tank, then deliver a foal. I like it.

It’s best to be prepared
For anything