LPS dropping heads

[steallife904]

I am at a loss... I have been in the hobby for many years and for the most part know what I am doing and have had a thriving tank with LPS and SPS. Well back in October my wife and I had a baby, my attention shifted and I slacked on the tank. During this time I over dosed ALK and lost a lot of coral, pretty much all of the SPS. Well I have been working on it for months now, have my alk back at 7.6 (i had doser but shut it down until i got all levels back, i just turned back on alk only to bring it to 8.) my calc has been 500+, mag 1480. No nitrate or phosphate readings, salinity 1.026 and do weekly water changes with Kent reef salt. I feed frozen rods food with nps pellets and flakes daily.....

Problem is corals still going down hill. Some have decided to stop opening up like my acans, I have had 2 lobos just drop there heads and now my giant frogspawn colony i have had for 10 years head a few heads just detach from skeleton and float away???????????? What is going on. Anything you guys can think of that could be the issue, what i should look at or test, or what should i do???

 

[steallife904]

forgot to mention I do use RODI, I just replace filters a few weeks ago and have 0TDS, I also put new lights on a few weeks ago (upgraded to reefbreeder V2 from RB v1) but started % low and working it up. I was already having issues though before the lights.

No other changes

 

[drawman]

Lights may be just enough to send things over the edge it sounds like you've had a lot of changes. If you have 0 NO3 and PO4 you may be nutrient limited especially for LPS. I would try to get some nutrients back in the water. Truly 0 PO4 can be a bad thing and no nutrients makes alk swings even worse.

 

[AcroNem]

It's called polyp bailout, some thing must have really stressed them out. If there's really no other changes then I'm going to guess that they really didn't like the change in lighting. I had half an LED pad go out once while I was on a week long work strip and had Euphyllia polyps bail out. They can potentially re attach but they need some serious TLC to do so. It also seems like a while back you had a lot going in with your system, parameter swings and you playing catch up could have just overdone it even though you meant the best can be stressful. As long as things are stable now they should recover, whenever I have upset "LPS" I try to feed them more (yet i always feed everything a lot) to help recover so I'll suggest target feeding the remaining polyps.

 

[steallife904]

Lights could have made it worse but this was all going on before I changed the lights. Been going through issues since October after ALK overdose. Even when tank was thriving I never had a reading for nitrate and phosphate, they have always been 0 no matter what I did. I will try uping the food then next few days and see. I am also not sure if I should leave lights % power where it is now or move it up more??? I would think if anything the power dropped from last leds to these since I wanted to start it slow, maybe its to low now???

Is it possible that the tank is still stressed from the ALK overdose back in October? Even though I dropped it back over time?

 

[drawman]

Lights could have made it worse but this was all going on before I changed the lights. Been going through issues since October after ALK overdose. Even when tank was thriving I never had a reading for nitrate and phosphate, they have always been 0 no matter what I did. I will try uping the food then next few days and see. I am also not sure if I should leave lights % power where it is now or move it up more??? I would think if anything the power dropped from last leds to these since I wanted to start it slow, maybe its to low now???

Is it possible that the tank is still stressed from the ALK overdose back in October? Even though I dropped it back over time?

Certainly it's tough to diagnose without knowing everything but an alk overdose in a low nutrient tank can certainly be tough on any coral. Things may take their time to rebound. I wouldn't go wild increasing the power on the lights. Do you have a lux or par meter you can use to see where you are at? If it were me I would try to get some detectable nutrients they may have bottomed out on you.

 

[steallife904]

I do not have a par meter. I will start with feeding more or possible try Neophos to get nutrient/phosphate into the water.

I may also go ahead and do a large (40-50%ish) water change since I usually only do 5-10 gallons a week. (150 gallon tank). Maybe there is something in the water I don't know about????????????????

 

[JFJ]

I do not have a par meter. I will start with feeding more or possible try Neophos to get nutrient/phosphate into the water.

I may also go ahead and do a large (40-50%ish) water change since I usually only do 5-10 gallons a week. (150 gallon tank). Maybe there is something in the water I don't know about????????????????

Did you manage to get to the bottom of this issue and did your tank recoup? If so how did you resolve it?