Lps Disaster

[Ranjib]

This cant be due to params, like nitrate/nitrite or salinity or even temperature, Nothing will killl corals that rapidly on a 1 year old tank. Chances are some kinda shock or poisoning (heavy metals from rust or some ointment, stray voltage or something else) can cause such drastic failure, unless the tank is crashed (i.e. one failure leads to another ... and then the whole thing crashes).

 

[Oohkris123]

Without testing for Alk, Ca and Mg, doing water changes every few weeks and "dosing" a few drops once a month, my guess is you're not properly maintaining calcium and alkalinity. Thus, your LPS are depleting the essential elements in the tank and since they aren't being maintained, they're dying. When you say Alk and Ca are perfect, we need to know your numbers. Experienced reefers know the numbers of the big 3 (Alk, Ca & Mg) in their sleep, as maintaining their stability are the cornerstone of keeping a successful reef.

For softies, the big 3 aren't nearly as vital as they have no calcereous skeleton to maintain, hence your zoas are still alive.

Ca: 400-425
Alk: 9-10 dkh
Mag: 1375-1450
I use red seas test
for nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, and ph I go to the lfs

I check them every two weeks before adding anything

 

[Oohkris123]

Also, looking at your FTS, I didn't see any powerheads in there. What are you using for flow?

FTS?...

I'm running the stock pump on low and a rio 600.. I removed the nozzle because it spread the water through out the tank

 

[Water Dog]

Reef nerd speak for Full Tank Shot. What size is your tank?

 

[Oohkris123]

Try not running biopellets or at least take half of them out to see if you can get your po4 and no3 up to a detectable level. If you had an ALK swing probably didnt help starving corals either. How often you check ALK?

I check my alk, mag, and ca every two weeks.
I thought having a little more bio pellets were good... I'll reduce the to half and keep with water changes

 

[Water Dog]

Are you running a protein skimmer? Without a skimmer, you should take the bio pellets offline.

 

[Oohkris123]

Reef nerd speak for Full Tank Shot. What size is your tank?

My tank:
Fluval Spec V
Light: 18" orbit usa marine light
Filtration: stock sponge, biomaxx bio pellets , purigen, and filter floss
Pump: 600 rio

Corals:
10+ of different zoas
Frogspawn -all dead
Hammer -all dead
Mushroom
Xenias -all dead
Green polyp toadstool -dying? Maybe shedding
Cadycane
Entrusting monti - dying/bleaching
Acan -all dead
Maxi mini anemone
Blastos -all dead

Livestock:
Tiger pistol shrimp -all dead
3 scarlet hermits -all dead
2 margaritas snails -all dead
1 turbo snail
Yellow damsel

 

[Oohkris123]

Are you running a protein skimmer? Without a skimmer, you should take the bio pellets offline.

I am not running a protein skimmer...
May I ask why and what should I replace bio pellets with?

 

[Water Dog]

I think we may be confusing terminology here... are you running bioballs in your rear filtration chambers? Or biopellets in a fluidized media reactor? I'm beginning to think it's the former...

 

[Oohkris123]

I think we may be confusing terminology here... are you running bioballs in your rear filtration chambers? Or biopellets in a fluidized media reactor? I'm beginning to think it's the former...

Bio pellets from biomaxx I made a acrylic box that can sit on the bottom near the pump and all are always moving

 

[Water Dog]

Okay, so they're tumbling biopellets. The reason you want to run a skimmer is that biopellets encourage bacteria to grow to consume excess nitrate and phosphate. You want to skim out that excess bacteria as excess bacteria can lead to bacterial blooms and problems like cyano outbreaks. Look at running biopellets as a form of carbon dosing to consume N & P.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. I noticed in your FTS that you have a leather coral over on the right. Has it been bothered recently? Leathers are known to release toxins and if the toxins aren't removed with carbon, they have the potential to nuke a tank.

 

[OREGONIC]

Biopellets without skimmer is not a good idea, the skimmer removes the bacteria the pellets shed. Biopellets are just a carbon source. You really should check your ALK at a minimum 2-3 times a week. You are probably having a pretty decent size ALK swing between water changes. Are you only testing before or after water changes? Do you test the fresh saltwater to compare to your tank water? The tank water and replacement water should match as close as possible. My torch coral lets me know when there is any decent swing in my ALK +\- .3dkh if it swings +\- .5 dkh it really shows. I had a timer on a dosing pump randomly reset and loose all of its programming DKH dropped from 8.3 to 6.5 in a day or two torch looked horrible, lost 1 head on my hammer coral and all my frogspawn barley extended. Took a week or two for them to look themselves again.

 

[Ranjib]

If my tank were to be poisoned my fish and other corals would have gone

Depending upon the poisoning, if its some specific element it can be selectively detrimental to only a group of the animals.

 

[OREGONIC]

Did your reactor with the pellets in it turn off for any prolonged period of time? That can poison your tank aswell.

 

[KirtiS]

All my lps has died hammer, frogspawn, blastos, and now my monti. My water is perfect, temp is 78-80, salinity is at 1.026, ect.... also my 3 snails have died
What is going on.
My zoa garden seems great, candy cane but my toadstool is not realising it polyps even tho it's not shriveled or shedding.
Help?

You are sure that they are dead and not just retracted, right? Once my temperature dropped and my peppermint shrimp starting eating the heads of my frogspawn and hammer one by one and once they start dying the shrimp finish them off pretty fast...

 

[jld]

water source different? salt different?

rusting something?

you mention filter floss - is it 100% with "no added flame retardant chemicals??"

test kit/kits off? i had low alk about 1.5 years ago in my 14gallon and lost a bunch of stuff over a course of 6 months till i figured out test kit was off.

 

[bgoldb]

I would perform a triton water test to determine if something got into your water. You need data.

 

[klp]

Triton test would be a good way to check that your test kits are giving you good numbers and possible contaminates. Peace of mind.

 

[Falcon53]

Did your reactor with the pellets in it turn off for any prolonged period of time? That can poison your tank aswell.

This was my question as well. I once shut off the valve to my pellets during a water change. The next week I noticed it was still off. I wasn't aware of the poisonous gas that can build up, so I opened the valve. Almost everything in my tank was dead within thirty seconds.

 

[Sandroni]

What salt do you use? If you use Red Sea pro salt and you are dosing, you could be sending the dKH way too high.