Pale, dying corals and algae

[ReefSlice]

I have been battling this tank for about a year now as I scrape together enough money to finally set up my 150. The tank is about 3 years old, however it went fish only for the first 2 and has only had coral for the last 11 months. Ever since I added corals, I battled pale color and no growth, as well as stn on a lot of pieces, whether it be LPS or SPS. Zoa's struggle to hold on and don't grow, SPS tissue is thin and pale, and PE is very low on most. Some frags look ok for months and then suddenly die or bleach never to recover. To combat this I started dosing phosphate (always read 0.00 on hanna no matter how much I fed). I continued this for a few months keeping po4 at .02-.04 with no improvements to my corals. What did happen was algae and other poor water quality indicators (hydroids, vermetid snails) exploded in growth. I stopped dosing and have finally gotten rid of the hydroids, however I feel now that I am back at square one, perhaps worse, as now I read 0 phosphate, have bleached, dying corals, and I have cyano as well as hair algae growing around the tank, mostly on the glass and overflow. Corals that I purchased 11 months ago to today are either stagnant with no growth and pale color or slowly withering away. The tank is a 40b with a 15g sump, BM3.5 skimmer, using 2 kessil a350w's on 100% blue 55% white (have tried slowly increasing over a few weeks as well as decreasing to no avail), stock is just 2 clowns and 15 blue leg hermits, 12 astrea snails, and parameters are kh: 8.2, cal: 400, mag: 1400, sg: 1.025, temp: 80, nitrates: 3-5, po4: 0.00-0.04. Can anyone help here? I'm ready to just sell it all off and start new on the new tank, as something is clearly wrong with this tank that I've never encountered in my 10 years of reef keeping. I've tried not doing water changes for a few weeks, doing large water changes every week, nothing seems to help. Alk and calcium are kept stable with manual dosing (only 3 ml/day) however not even coralline grows well in this tank. What could possibly be so off here?

 

[mta_morrow]

Can you provide a FTS and tell us what kind of lighting you are using?

 

[divewsharks]

How high are the lights above the tank? What intensity are they at?

 

[ReefSlice]

The tank has 2 kessil a350w's on 55% white and 100% blue. I've run them as low as 30/60 for a few months with no difference in corals or coralline. I will take a FTS when the lights come on.

 

[dean.reef]

Did use live rock or dry rock?

 

[ReefSlice]

I used 50% dry Marco rock and 50% established Marco rock from my successful 3 year old 90g reef at the time. All of the corralline that was once on the rock from the 90g faded away, most of my rock looks pretty lifeless other than tons of pods and tube worms.
Lights are about 10-11" off the water.

 

[ReefSlice]

Here's some pictures... Notice how all the lps in the second picture are withering away. The dying chalice on the bottom there I've had for a year, it never grew in size and suddenly last week started to stn. The war Coral behind it I've tried every placement possible in the tank and it just looks very upset, I've had that for 11 months with no growth at all. The birdsnest in the FTS has good PE and color, however it has had a few stn episodes throughout its 11 month life in my tank, and has only grown a few tiny nubs on very short growth spurts. All the other frags are at least 6 months old, most older, and haven't shown a single bit of growth, just 1 or 2 polyps on my rainbow palys thats about it. The tricolor and the monti have encrusted the plugs over the course of 6 months, but id still consider their growth very minimal, with maybe 1/2" of growth on the edges of the monti and just encrusting and some tiny nubs on the tricolor.

 

[dean.reef]

Just seems somethings a bit off,I was gonna say add some live rock to try put a bit of diversity of bacteria in your tank,is that algea on the back brown?dino or cyano,also what’s your filtration?personly if it was my tank I would add a few kg of live rock maybe a bag of live sand and add a few t5 to supplement the kessils,good luck [emoji106]

 

[ReefSlice]

Looks brown because of the orange filter, it's red cyano with hair algae mixed in, which only grows on the overflow and glass really. Filtration is the BM3.5 skimmer and I am running carbon right now but not always. I do 15-30% water changes every two weeks, sometimes more frequently. The corals will start to look good for a few days out of nowhere and maybe even grow a tip or two, and then back to being dormant and deflated. Can't seem to figure out what it is.

 

[oceaninabox12345]

Hey friend! Youll find adding some live sand would probably help

 

[Mebbid]

What is your water change schedule?
Are you making your own ro/di?

 

[DaveNJ]

I run a bare bottom 40b with a fluval canister, Chinese black box, with mostly sps, and lps.

He said his number are stable. I would suggest a Triton test.

 

[ReefSlice]

I make my own water using red sea blue bucket and 0 TDS water from a 5 stage RO/DI. Most of the time I stick to about 15-30% water changes every other week. The algae has receded quite a bit despite starting up neophos dosing again, the overflow and back wall are completely clean at the moment and no cyano really other than a tiny bit on the frag rack. I also have been dosing 6 ml of acropower every 4 days for the last 2 weeks now. I feel like my zoas had a positive reaction in regards to color, but hard corals all remain exactly the same, low PE and pale tissue with almost no growth.

 

[Skep18]

Wow. That's crazy going that long like this. Followed as I'm interested in the outcome.

 

[ReefSlice]

Still no change in coral at all, in fact I had a bunch of frags randomly STN on me despite nothing changing in the tank in the last 2 weeks. Getting ready to sell the whole lot off and start off fresh on my new 150 gallon, it's hard dedicating so much time to a tank that just withers away day after day. On top of it, I randomly had a huge vermetid snail explosion, to the point where they're all over every single rock now. Taking the chance of transferring these over to the new tank is a big no no for me, so I think I will save what I can in terms of coral and acid wash the rock. I do have an ATI ICP test in the mail, will post back if anything jumps out at me on the results.

 

[ReefSlice]

Really hoping you guys can help me out with these test results. I need to know if tin or barium at these levels could be the problem here. Zinc also came up at 8.34 μg/l .The nitrates are high because I've been ignorantly dumping nutrients in to raise phosphate (which is at .02 via ATI) without paying attention to nitrate. I will revert back to dosing po4 only and do a large water change to correct that, as it usually sits at 3-5 ppm. Notice though that although my nitrates are this high, my corals are still pale and dying with low PE. Also is the iodine and manganese dosing necessary? Im afraid to dose such tiny amounts if they aren't necessary.
Still waiting to get my ro/di analysis, and I will look for possible rust.

 

[DaveNJ]

I don’t think the barium is a concern. It could be leaching from your salt mix or PO4 remover

 

[DaveNJ]

Tin can come from an item that is rusting....powerhead, heater, nail inside your stand.

 

[ZaneTer]

I have had tin concentrations at MUCH higher values without killing corals:

 

[ReefSlice]

That's what I figured, I can't see how this low of a reading could be causing the problems this tank has, but I had to ask. I also don't use PO4 remover so the barium must be from my salt. I was kind of hoping I'd find something bigger here, at least I'd find an answer! I am glad I caught my NO3 however. Seems to be just over 20 today on my nyos kit.