over skimming

[luke33]

What kind of lights are you using? Did you recently change lighting? You mentioned a color shift because its under led now

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

no not recent have had them for about 5 years now most coral that is grown under halide and or t5 when switched to led usually shift color a bit

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

before

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

after

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

before

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

after

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

before

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

after

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

this took about 3 weeks total to lose there deep color if it was lighting it would of happened in a few days

 

[Graffiti Spot]

All of the following may help your situation...
Feeding some good frozen food and feed your fish more often , turning your lights down or raising them, adding some nitrate, pulling the gfo offline, and skiming dry. Your skim looks way to wet, it will fall over the collection cup if you skim dryer but it will just take a longer amount of time to build up. I would leave the carbon. High light and low nutrients will pale corals like this and it may take a while to happen too.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

When did you add ozone to the filtration?

 

[trido]

Did you say you run ozone too? If so, how long. I recently backed my use of ozone down on my SPS tank and within. A couple weeks all my corals are looking more vibrant and healthy.

 

[James Johnson]

The salt you are using works similar to carbon dosing, when combining that with heavy skimming and GFO you deplete your system of all nutrients. I have always had better luck with LPS keeping my nitrates at 5-10 and phosphates at 0.03-0.06 another solution would be to add more fish and feed the corals more but even acros like a little bit of nutrients in the water

 

[2Wheelsonly]

The salt you are using works similar to carbon dosing, when combining that with heavy skimming and GFO you deplete your system of all nutrients. I have always had better luck with LPS keeping my nitrates at 5-10 and phosphates at 0.03-0.06 another solution would be to add more fish and feed the corals more but even acros like a little bit of nutrients in the water

I was thinking the same thing, that salt has created a bacteria colony that in combination with your skimmer is taking nutrients out of your tank rapidly. This is why I think ULNS isn't good for beginners; everyone reads you want to keep nutrients out of the tank and deploy these aggressive methods but don't have the experience to feed corals a specific way to keep them alive. In my mind it's extremely difficult to maintain a stable healthy ULNS system. I'm not saying it doesn't work but I look at it as an extremely advanced method to reef keeping.

You mentioned you stopped using that salt, it will take a few weeks for your grown bacteria colony to dwindle. If you have an Apex controller I would skim every other day and also focus on feeding a lot more than you are. Be careful dumping the GFO, you don't want to shock your corals by letting po4 shoot up too high.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

The salt is not creating bacteria colonies unless the op is feeding them with a carbon source. So I don't think it was an issue.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

What salt mix are you folks claiming is acting to drive bacterial growth and make nutrients too low?

Remember, the mere presence of bacteria themselves do not reduce nutrients. They only do so when they are metabolizing organic matter and hence growing.

 

[sghera64]

Lack of aeration results in a larger day/night pH differential, and will raise or lower the overall pH depending on whether the tank has an excess or deficiency of CO2 relative to the air.

In my tank and home, using limewater, the tank typically had a deficiency of CO2, especially during the day.

@Randy Holmes-Farley , how did you know you had a CO2 deficiency? If it was simply pH and Alk, what combo on your Alk/pH charts is too low?

 

[KEVIN McDERMOTT]

I have habbit of buying stuff that is over rated for my tank lol so for the last few years I struggle with lps color especially hammers and frogspawn but all lps fade in color I really think my skimmer is just 2 strong and my water is to stripped of nutrients. my tank water volume is about 120 gallons my skimmer is rated for 400 its a reef octopus elite 200. my question is how do I keep skimming with keeping the colors good should I just skim for a few hours a day or just at night I'm lost on what to do I do feed the corals 2 times a week a mixture of mysis aminos polyp booster and reef roids all mixed together but it seems not enough to keep deep colors any input would help am willing to try anything

Don't use your skimmer all the time mite help you , give it a try.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

What salt mix are you folks claiming is acting to drive bacterial growth and make nutrients too low?

Remember, the mere presence of bacteria themselves do not reduce nutrients. They only do so when they are metabolizing organic matter and hence growing.

Aquaforest probiotic salt. Which only adds bacteria and forms of nutrients. Aquaforest claims the salt will help lower nutrients since it has the probiotic bacteria but without a carbon source I don't see nutrient levels dropping.. I bet the nutrients in the salt were really actually helping.

 

[Trueblue17]

all the lps at my LFS are all faded almost clear with no color and its because they are not using good enough lights, they only have a small regular T5 unit over their tanks . what kind of light do you have?