My LPS corals are starting to struggle

gemipit · Jan 30, 2022

Hello reefing fam. I’m am nearly a year into my first tank and so far ive had pretty good success with my tank and corals. Of course I’ve lost a few but mostly because of being a rookie and trying to figure all of this out. A couple weeks ago I had a spike in my nitrates and phosphates which caused me to do multiple 40% water changes and in doing so I’ve gotten my levels back to a normal state. Nothing died or looked bad during this time but now a couple weeks later I’m losing corals that were very healthy and full and beautiful prior to this swing. I am just wondering why could be making these corals get sick or start to die not at this point.

So as of now I have a war paint Scoly that is milky in the center and isn’t putting out it’s feeders. I’ve moved to lower light and less flow area recently but no progress. I have an Acan that has been nothing but amazing that is all but dead now with skeletal remains and a little flesh. And a torch that has an outside edge that is starting to show some skeleton in a small part of the edge and isn’t really extracting it’s tentacles like it once did.

Here are my levels to date

I have a 50 gal tank.

DhK - 8.94
Ca - 424
Mag - 1457
Salt - 1.025
PH - 7.79
Temp - 77
N03 - 8.3
P04 - .17

any help would be much appreciated. Losing any coral sucks but I’d hate to lose the Scoly and torch if I can help it.

Reefer5640 · Jan 30, 2022

The swing could be to blame. I would also investigate what your other parameters were and what they are now. Doing big water changes like that can be dangerous if your salt has different levels than where your tank usually sits. For example. If you usually keep your Alk-10, Ca-475, and Mag-1500. Then you do large water changes back to back with something like instant ocean purple bag which has lower levels of Alk and Ca you will drop your levels across the board which can be just as dangerous. A couple other things to mention. Do you have an ATO? If not, are you religious about topping off your water? Slacking on that can cause havoc. I would consider doing an ICP test as well. It could be a contaminant in the water. I had an issue a few years back where I did some large water changes and ended up breaking one of my heaters. It was a backup heater so it rarely turned on. It was in a spot in my sump where I couldn’t really see it. It ended up causing stray voltage and leeched a bunch of contaminants into the tank. Have you dosed and meds to battle algae or something? Have you made any changes in reefing gear at that time like a new pump or lights or anything? Anyway just some thoughts to help you brain storm some possible scenarios.

muzikalmatt · Jan 30, 2022

Some great insight above by @Reefer5640 . The thing about any swing or drastic change to our tanks is that we may not see the ramifications of that swing for a week or more. You may just now be seeing the results of that swing manifest in your corals' health. Sometimes our reactions to a perceived issue can be worse than just letting things stabilize slowly over time. How high were your nutrients when you did the 40% water changes?

gemipit · Jan 30, 2022

Reefer5640 said:
The swing could be to blame. I would also investigate what your other parameters were and what they are now. Doing big water changes like that can be dangerous if your salt has different levels than where your tank usually sits. For example. If you usually keep your Alk-10, Ca-475, and Mag-1500. Then you do large water changes back to back with something like instant ocean purple bag which has lower levels of Alk and Ca you will drop your levels across the board which can be just as dangerous. A couple other things to mention. Do you have an ATO? If not, are you religious about topping off your water? Slacking on that can cause havoc. I would consider doing an ICP test as well. It could be a contaminant in the water. I had an issue a few years back where I did some large water changes and ended up breaking one of my heaters. It was a backup heater so it rarely turned on. It was in a spot in my sump where I couldn’t really see it. It ended up causing stray voltage and leeched a bunch of contaminants into the tank. Have you dosed and meds to battle algae or something? Have you made any changes in reefing gear at that time like a new pump or lights or anything? Anyway just some thoughts to help you brain storm some possible scenarios.

Thanks for that great reply. To try and answer all of your questions I’ll start at the top. The swing was pretty large (imo) in P04 from .08ish stable to .9 and N03 in the 5.0-8.0 range to 28.5. I use instant ocean and it has a Dkh of 10. I normally keep my tank in the 9.0 range so water changes brought it to upper 9’s. So nothing to big. The cal normally at 340-450 and it didn’t change much with Mag being 1450ish it lowered to mid 1300’s during spike. I do have an ATO so no need to worry there. I think I’m going to go ahead and do an ICP regardless just to see where I’m at a year later. I’ve always dosed AB+ but nothing ever changed especially that much. I have dosed some MB7 prior to the swing for some algae but not high doses. I have everything under control now but have been wondering if it is a bacteria issue or something else.

gemipit · Jan 30, 2022

muzikalmatt said:
Some great insight above by @Reefer5640 . The thing about any swing or drastic change to our tanks is that we may not see the ramifications of that swing for a week or more. You may just now be seeing the results of that swing manifest in your corals' health. Sometimes our reactions to a perceived issue can be worse than just letting things stabilize slowly over time. How high were your nutrients when you did the 40% water changes?

They were
P04 - 0.9 (normally .05-.1)
N03 - 28.4 (normally 5.0-10)