My Coral keep dieing what am I doing wrong?

[DecadentCommand]

Hi All,

I'm new to salt water, and I'm suffering the learning curve. I have a candy coral which looks to be dieing (pick below) and a challice which is turning pretty much black (is this a bad sign?). The rest of my coral doesn't look happy (but fish are doing great).

These are my parameters:

Salinity: 1.025
Temperature: 80.4
PH: 7.34
Alkalinity: 8.0 dkh
Calcium 417 ppm

I own a 32 gallon biocube. And all my coral is placed in the substrate of the tank.

Could you give me guidance on what I'm doing wrong so I can help the coral? Would it help if I listed all the coral I have (but honestly I don't know the name of it all).

Thanks,

 

[DarthSimon]

Is your ph 7.34 or 8.34? Typo?

Also what kind of lighting do you have? Flow?

Hi All,

I'm new to salt water, and I'm suffering the learning curve. I have a candy coral which looks to be dieing (pick below) and a challice which is turning pretty much black (is this a bad sign?). The rest of my coral doesn't look happy (but fish are doing great).

These are my parameters:

Salinity: 1.025
Temperature: 80.4
PH: 7.34
Alkalinity: 8.0 dkh
Calcium 417 ppm

I own a 32 gallon biocube. And all my coral is placed in the substrate of the tank.

Could you give me guidance on what I'm doing wrong so I can help the coral? Would it help if I listed all the coral I have (but honestly I don't know the name of it all).

Thanks,

 

[DecadentCommand]

Well. It's a reading from a digital reader I've only used once. But so far it's the best measurement I have. It is not a typo.

Isn't it good to be close to neutral?

 

[lapin]

7.34 is a bit low.
Flow and lighting are important. What are you using?

 

[DecadentCommand]

For flow I have a single MP10 blowing across the center of the tank... It's at about 30% strength, just adds a bit of movement to the tank. Bit isn't directly pointed at any piece of coral.

Lighting is just the standard LED"s that come with the Coralife Biocube. I don't think you can control intensity only time the white and moon LED's are on.

 

[Westoncase]

80.4 degrees is a lil bit warm. Idk if that’s the cause but I would try to bring the temp down to 77 ish

 

[motortrendz]

Didn't see a nitrate reading... temp is a little high but not critical by any means. Phosphate reading? How long has the tank been running? Ph is low, that could be a low o2, high carbon dioxide levels in the tank.

 

[DecadentCommand]

I don't have a test kit for nitrate right now. My kit is really old and i don't trust it.

I'm going to make a trip to my LFS and get an airstone and maybe some kalkwasser to try to fix the PH (I have to drive an hour and a half so I'm going to stock up on this incase I need it during the week).

I know my Temp is high, I'm cracking the lid but I can't afford a chiller for my tank so I'm trying to get it down via more circulation.

I"ll update you guys in a week. Once I get my PH in range and try my best to fix the temp I'm hoping things turn around for the positive if it's not too late.

 

[motortrendz]

Ph should be the last fix... check your nitrates... dont chase ph. Ph is an outcome of something being off. Buffering the ph with kalk can send your alkalinity through the roof... get your o2 level up somehow. Do you have a skimmer in the back of that thing? If not move the mp up so it agitates the surface and crack the lid a bit. That should bring ph up enough to be ok. But that wont affect your corals dying. That's probably a nutrient condition...

Is it a new tank? You didn't answer that? Tjay could be part of your problem too.

 

[LesPoissons]

No offense but it sounds like you got a new tank and jumped right into corals without really being prepared for it. No worries, we can help, just need more info.
1. Definitely get test kits for nitrate, ph, phos, alk, calcium and magnesium if you dont have them.
2. Are you using rodi water?
3. What are you using to test the salinity?
4. What else is in the tank?
5. What are you feeding corals and how often?
6. What is the rest of the filtration set up?
7. How old is the tank?

Get a fan that can clip safely to the side of the tank, angle your flow for more surface agitation and probably get another power head. If you dont have any fish that will jump, take the lid off entirely. (Are you using an auto top off?)

 

[Hemmdog]

Most likely not the problem but you have the mp10 on a program right and not just constant(green) correct? The stock lights are super weak, put all the coral as high as possible and see if there’s any improvement. Your numbers seem fine. I’m not sure how the pH is that low, open a window and get some good circulation in your tank room, especially overnight.

 

[PatW]

For a long time, keeping corals was considered an impossibility in the hobby. So having some failures is not a disgrace.

Corals build their skeletons from calcium carbonate. To make it, they take Ca and ALK from the water. If you have growing corals, you need to replace Ca and ALK either by dosing or water changes. Also Mg levels are important but upi will forego a discussion on that.

In order to grow, corals need nitrates and phosphates but not much. Some corals like more other. Acropora corals like low nutrients or phosphates around .03 ppm and nitrates around 3 ppm. There is a range for both nutrients and people run things at different levels. None SPS, small polyp corals, corals tend to like higher nutrient levels.

Corals need flow. I would bump up the flow on your powerhead. Also look into running one of the variable programs.

Light. Hard corals are generally photosynthetic. Actually the coral animals are not photosynthetic. They have algae in them that photosynthesize called zooxanthellae. So these corals need light to grow. And the lights need to be powerful and of the appropriate spectrum.

Also corals love stability. They do not like changes is light, flow, nutrients or water chemistry.

Keeping corals is challenging. You can see from my simplified version that you have to keep three chemical parameters stable, provide two nutrients right, have the right light intensity and spectrum and the right flow. Also your salinity and temperature should be stable. So that is 10 variables to get right. It will not happen by accident.

But once you get things going it is amazing. You too can have an underseas garden.