Parameters good - still losing everything

[RandyC]

Love the new tank/new reefer theory discussion.

I lean towards new reefer issues bc I see myself doing it all the time. Like many on here, I read and watched so much that I know (in an academic sense) a great deal.

Reefing theory and practice are a lot different though, plus each system is different. Like Morpheus says, "There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

Assuming the new reefer will make most every mistake at least once, the tank has to have progressed far enough to have presented them with those opportunities to make and learn from particular mistakes. It's hard to over or under compensate for alkalinity demand until the tank moves that way. Hard to evaluate coral placement until you've seen enough growth to visualize the pattern.

You don't hear a lot about 12 year vets setting up their third tank struggling with "new tank" issues all that much. Is it because
1) they've learned true patience
2) they're using well-aged rock
3) they're not making rookie mistakes

I'd chalk it up to #3. Starting a new tank with bone-dry rock without seeding from an old tank and putting acros in after the rock has cycled is entirely possible. It's a matter of experience dealing with the uglies that pop up and not doing too much or too little to correct whatever that issue may be. The other problem is knowing where to look for the issue when things just start randomly biting the dust - something that you learn from making your own boneheaded mistakes or just having good research skills.

 

[JoeD_]

I'd chalk it up to #3. Starting a new tank with bone-dry rock without seeding from an old tank and putting acros in after the rock has cycled is entirely possible. It's a matter of experience dealing with the uglies that pop up and not doing too much or too little to correct whatever that issue may be. The other problem is knowing where to look for the issue when things just start randomly biting the dust - something that you learn from making your own boneheaded mistakes or just having good research skills.

Exactly!!! In my tank, I already had a lighting issue, but I knew it was a lighting issue right away -- boom fixed. An inexperienced hobbyist may not have known and torched their corals. Thent he forums would've said "new tank, not mature enough," when reality, it had nothing to do with tank maturity

 

[reacclimating 2 the hobby]

As I've mentioned everyone has an opinion and different things work for some and won't for others. I can come in and say I've seen tanks work from 25ppt to 40ppt all day and this worked for me and not them and doing this will always work, but we all know that isn't the case.

Reading and studying on the hobby is a lot different then having a tank... education vs experience... there is a big difference.

Assuming people chalk everything up to "new tank, yada yada" is far from fair since most of the post in this thread are suggestions, and IMO, none of them are that bad of places to start looking for a fix. If you want to throw SPS in with white rock, so be it, its not coming out of my pocket. Six months with a tank hardly makes you not an inexperienced hobbyist, I've had tanks for over a decade and still consider myself inexperienced.

Good luck to the OP, I hope you figure it out! Please start build threads!

 

[JoeD_]

As I've mentioned everyone has an opinion and different things work for some and won't for others. I can come in and say I've seen tanks work from 25ppt to 40ppt all day and this worked for me and not them and doing this will always work, but we all know that isn't the case.

Reading and studying on the hobby is a lot different then having a tank... education vs experience... there is a big difference.

Assuming people chalk everything up to "new tank, yada yada" is far from fair since most of the post in this thread are suggestions, and IMO, none of them are that bad of places to start looking for a fix. If you want to throw SPS in with white rock, so be it, its not coming out of my pocket. Six months with a tank hardly makes you not an inexperienced hobbyist, I've had tanks for over a decade and still consider myself inexperienced.

Good luck to the OP, I hope you figure it out! Please start build threads!

ive had other tanks before for a few years, this is just one Ive had getting back in the hobby. Im not saying im experienced either. I just think saying "oh, it's new tank syndrome," its just an easy out for not really being able to solve this issue. Who really knows what the OP's issue is, hard to figure osmething out by what someones own words. But there are a lot of myths, IMO/IME in the hobby that just seems to keep perpetuating... GHA and nutrients, garlic for marine ich, you need a year old tank to have acros, are just a few off top of my head. I am not the pioneer by any means, but I remember being one of the first in the camp about ULNS causing more issues than actually having detectable nutrients.. But, you'll still hear people say low lvels of phos/nitrates are too high in SPS tanks.............

 

[RomoFL]

Let’s wait for OP to add more flow and also address his salt mix procedure.

 

[donomite]

First step - Ill check on salt mixture. Ill make up a 5 gallon for a water change and run parameters on that vs tank. Ill then run parameters on tank after water change.

Ill grab another mp10 - My concern here is that I had very good growth with existing flow initially. Not sure that this would somehow change over time.

Lights - My slider is currently at 54% AB+ schedule for 10 hrs. I have had it as low as 26% on slider. I checked PAR so I have an idea of what im throwing at corals and it should work for whats in tank.

I am also losing an LPS thats starting to recede and turn white. I need to post a full tank shot. I hope to do this this week or weekend.

I am leaning towards size of tank and lack of maturity - and lack of my knowledge as well. Smaller tanks cant afford swings and there maybe something I missed. I did had an alk swing but again, I thought they were in a safe window.

Should I dose ALK and CA to bring Alk after water change to 11-12? It cant hurt at this point and may tell us something? Ill check my log from when I cycled tank - i kept almost daily readings for a few months and see what ALK was. I wasnt using a hanna at the time, but it should give us an idea.

Thanks for all inputs. I appreciate taking the time for input and advice.

 

[JoeD_]

First step - Ill check on salt mixture. Ill make up a 5 gallon for a water change and run parameters on that vs tank. Ill then run parameters on tank after water change.

Ill grab another mp10 - My concern here is that I had very good growth with existing flow initially. Not sure that this would somehow change over time.

Lights - My slider is currently at 54% AB+ schedule for 10 hrs. I have had it as low as 26% on slider. I checked PAR so I have an idea of what im throwing at corals and it should work for whats in tank.

I am also losing an LPS thats starting to recede and turn white. I need to post a full tank shot. I hope to do this this week or weekend.

I am leaning towards size of tank and lack of maturity - and lack of my knowledge as well. Smaller tanks cant afford swings and there maybe something I missed. I did had an alk swing but again, I thought they were in a safe window.

Should I dose ALK and CA to bring Alk after water change to 11-12? It cant hurt at this point and may tell us something? Ill check my log from when I cycled tank - i kept almost daily readings for a few months and see what ALK was. I wasnt using a hanna at the time, but it should give us an idea.

Thanks for all inputs. I appreciate taking the time for input and advice.

-Pumps DO lose power over time if they are not cleaned because of gunk/calcium/algae etc build up... Not saying that's the case with you, but yes, you will lose flow if you don't maintain pumps.

-As I said before it's all about stability... I check my alk every 2-3 days. I keep it in a tight window. How often were you checking your parameters?

 

[Darth.Daddy12]

I’m no where near the experience level of many others here but from what I’ve seen not reading everything and just glancing over this thread as I’m about to leave the house..

You are messing with too many things at one time chasing a problem wo knowing what it is which is accelerating the rate of the issue. I seen above it was mentioned to check your salt mix vs tank perameters.. that’s a good start.

I don’t know that you need more flow yet.. that’s a clear issue from cyno as Cyano doesn’t like high flow areas but to me that’s a down the road issue.. right now you need stability. Your nitrates are imop through the roof compared to your pho’s which is a big product of the Cyano.. keep the Cyano off the love stick with a turkey blaster and let it go.. it will help to eat up the nutrients.

I’d set my lighting to 50% AB spec and stop messing with it till the rest is resolved. I’d also move it to 6h max setting with 1h rise and 1h set making 8 hours total. (This might even be what AB spec calls for if I remember right or might be 8h with 1-1 but I’d def reduce light. Even if keeping 10h total and going to added rise and set times.

You also need to do daily or bi daily 10% changes assuming your salt testing is good and get those nitrates down to 25-30 as a good starting point.

Next I’d be investing in a decent fuge setup. You clearly are feeding a lot in a small tank and cheto will eat that up fast even with a Walmart grow light. I feed 1 full cube every day in a 10g nano and have never gone over 5ppm running a hob aquaclear with a golfball sized piece of cheto and 8h light from a $15 Amazon grow light.

Long as your chasing everything you’ll never find anything though. You have to start somewhere and the salt is a good start followed by lighting coupled with nutrient reduction.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

32ppt is a specific gravity of 1.0241. in my opinion, I'd have to strongly disagree that this would be cause for serious alarm for keeping SPS. I've seen great SPS tanks range from 1.023 to 1.028.

Agree though that the two week swing would not be that great without significant precipitation occurring or some kind of testing error.

Ok, I should have checked to see what ppt related to SG, my bad! My guess is that the OP is closer to 1.018-1.020 SG given his other parameters and salt mix.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

First step - Ill check on salt mixture. Ill make up a 5 gallon for a water change and run parameters on that vs tank. Ill then run parameters on tank after water change.

Ill grab another mp10 - My concern here is that I had very good growth with existing flow initially. Not sure that this would somehow change over time.

Lights - My slider is currently at 54% AB+ schedule for 10 hrs. I have had it as low as 26% on slider. I checked PAR so I have an idea of what im throwing at corals and it should work for whats in tank.

I am also losing an LPS thats starting to recede and turn white. I need to post a full tank shot. I hope to do this this week or weekend.

I am leaning towards size of tank and lack of maturity - and lack of my knowledge as well. Smaller tanks cant afford swings and there maybe something I missed. I did had an alk swing but again, I thought they were in a safe window.

Should I dose ALK and CA to bring Alk after water change to 11-12? It cant hurt at this point and may tell us something? Ill check my log from when I cycled tank - i kept almost daily readings for a few months and see what ALK was. I wasnt using a hanna at the time, but it should give us an idea.

Thanks for all inputs. I appreciate taking the time for input and advice.

When you mix the salt, make sure that you mix it for at least 30 minutes, but longer is better. RedSea recommends 30 min - 2 hours of vigorous mixing. After that, test for Alk and Calc. If you aren't in the 11.5 -12 dKh and 460 ppm range, then you aren't mixing to 35 ppt. At that point, I would start questioning the results from your refractometer. If it tests in that range, and your refractometer says 35 ppt, then you know it isn't the water you are using for water changes.

If you haven't been mixing your salt for that long, then you could be having precipitation problems.

 

[Darth.Daddy12]

Ok after spending little more time reading over everything in your initial post and analyzing it more closely..

Your nitrates and pho’s are both off the charts which is what’s hurting your sps wo doubt. Lps is debatable.. the reason you’re not testing high pho’s is cause of all the algae eating it up. I’d be willing to bet that your realistically at 1ppm pho’s wo that algae. You’ll never get an accurate pho’s reading in a tank full of algae.

You’re clearly having either salt mix issues or salinity issues and your calc and mag are a little low..

Your tank is very new still and yet you’ve already changed lighting many times.. started and stoped 2 part one time you admit so at least twice..

You’re trying to play chemist in a system that works better when left alone..

You need to reduce the lighting to 6hr max with 1 hour sun rise and 1 hour sun set with AB spec but at 40% intensity. This will keep corals with enough light to live while starting to deprive the algae so they aren’t sucking up nutrients faster then the corals can get them. 30-40% is even Radion own recommendation for new tanks if I remember and yours even at 6 months cycled is new.

I’d quick ship some calibration solution for the refractometer asap. I know many say to use rodi and calibrate off 0 reading but this is not a way to success. You need a known solution of 35ppm or close. Calibrating to 0 allows for a lot of error at our desired levels. The closer you calibrate to the level you want the more accurate the readings you’ll have and this applies to all testing devices. For example I use a digital PH tester.. I can calibrate it to 6.89 4.06 or 9.14 I calibrate it to 9.14 and 6.89 only so I can get the most accurate reading for a reef tanks wanted perimeters.

The key to success in any tank is stability.. everything will slowly adjust to any environment over time but you keep changing everything.

At this point you don’t know if your salt mix is good, testing equipment is good, or many other things.. tbh the best thing you can do since you don’t know exactly what is going on is daily small water changes to try and keep stability while cutting feeding amounts by 50% and feeding times to once a week. (With reduced lighting this won’t hurt corals and fish can go weeks between feedings) this will help cut back input so you can export nutrients slowly preventing a drastic swing in your system.

Personally until I found the issue with testing/salt mix I’d be using premix from LFS. It’s not that expensive for smaller tanks. You’re tank I like 40-45g that’s 4g every other day... that’s $40 or so a week which is the cost of having to replace one frag or fish. I know petcos premix imagination brand is pretty reliable and safe lower ranges for everything that matters. (Well balanced and consistent for 8.0 PH water.) calc and all won’t mater cause you’ll be doing water changes faster then your tank will be using..

As for how your number got to where they are which is a little unbalanced.. idk if it’s the salt mix or are you doing water changes wo full freshwater top offs or something if the diets cause your numbers are a little out of balance but you were also doing some off and on dosing so who knows..

You basically right now need to just slow down and keep stability while reducing nutrients and lowering lighting which will slow the growth and needs for the corals from needing higher amounts of things. You’ll hardly every kill corals with low light only high light. They may not be thriving in low light but they will be living. Corals are plants.. the more light you give the more nutrition they need.

If you’re not already running a carbon source you need to just to make sure any possible toxins are being removed while corals are being stressed out. I personally would run one of the chempure products over regular carbon as ime it does more longer as regular carbon is normally used up to 80-90% in first few days and chemepure seems to maintain a higher level longer.. regular carbon will work but I’d use maybe 1/4 cup and replace every 2 weeks.

No mater what you do you have let your system run away from you for a while then tried to catch up. You need to go back to basics.. water changes as much as they suck are the single best and fastest way to resolve most issues while not making drastic changes to your system.

There is always one thing that works when things are going a stray and that’s water changes.. it’s the best stability device in the fish keeping world.

You likely won’t save 50% of your sps at this time but you can likely save 80-90% of your Lps if not all. You’ll never keep sps with the parameters you’re running. You need stability and lower nutrients. You are a good 10x over what most sps tanks are running for nutrients. You need a good fuge.. throw in some crushed corals as a base 2” thick and add some cheto and any red spectrum grow lights you choose. Get some clean cheto and watch the algae die off and the tank nutrients drop. I’d even consider running my fuge lighting for 16h while running an 8h tank schedule. Algae only need a few hours rest and can’t take a lot more lighting especially with that high of nutrients. Once you hit 5ppm nitrates and 0.1-0.2 pho’s with little to no algea in the display you can dial back the fuge lighting and increase the display time period.

As for lighting periods.. I’d increase lighting time way before increasing intensity. Think of seasons.. longer light in summer less in winter.. once that is mastered then cut time a little and increase intensity a little.. continue this process over time till you get to that 12/12 balance. Realistically this should take 1-2 years in a dry system setup which yours was. This is why some still pay a premium for seasoned wet rock cause we can speed these things up. We still have to stick to reduced intensities but we can come out the gate day one with 12/12 lighting most times.

Take is slow.. you’re in panick mode and most of what you’re doing is hurting more then helping.. find a stable balance with know water chemistry, reduce lighting period and intensity, get a good fuge started and the rest will work itself out but this will be a 6m process. No overnight fix is going to replace 6 months of bad deeds.

 

[Darth.Daddy12]

One more thing.. what temp swings are you seeing? I prefer open top tanks but most of my salt systems have lids cause I like to run 68* ac at night with fans everywhere.. wo a kid I see 2-3 point temp swings with a lid I’m right at or under 1. Cuts my par a little bit well worth the stability in temp as that can have the fastest chage in stability to a tank above all else especially with sps. One day I’ll get better heaters but till then I can use plain jain heaters with a plexi lid and keep under 1* temp swings night to day..

Also being a dead setup have you added pods yet? Copapds are great and reducing water in a system. As much algae as you have I’d even buy consider specific anthropoid and copapod strains to specifically deal with waste and algae respectively. Don’t bother with phytoplankton or anything like that. Your tank has plenty to feed them for a long time..

 

[motortrendz]

So I know your problem... same problem I had... (well, maybe anyway!) you washed your filter socks in the washing machine... I did that too and kept loosing everything. Stop. Washing machines tend to still have soaps and perfumes in them sometimes rust. I noticed when I'd put a clean sock in the skimmer would go a little nuts for a few min bit not overflowing. Didn't think much of it till I was going insane trying to figure out y no coral lived ... I started handwashing the socks, soaking them in bleach and air drying them in the sun. Never had a problem again.

 

[Darth.Daddy12]

So I know your problem... same problem I had... (well, maybe anyway!) you washed your filter socks in the washing machine... I did that too and kept loosing everything. Stop. Washing machines tend to still have soaps and perfumes in them sometimes rust. I noticed when I'd put a clean sock in the skimmer would go a little nuts for a few min bit not overflowing. Didn't think much of it till I was going insane trying to figure out y no coral lived ... I started handwashing the socks, soaking them in bleach and air drying them in the sun. Never had a problem again.

I actually meant to mention that in my post as there is likely still some bleach residue on them.. I got caught up in other basic things..

Take your socks and put them in a bowl of water with decholinafor for 24h to make sure. After that I’d stop washing my socks that way and start using a hose instead turning them inside out while cleaning.

That said that doesn’t solve all issues.. if that were the sole issue his fish would be dying from the bleach killing his BB and getting ammonia spikes.

 

[motortrendz]

I actually meant to mention that in my post as there is likely still some bleach residue on them.. I got caught up in other basic things..

Take your socks and put them in a bowl of water with decholinafor for 24h to make sure. After that I’d stop washing my socks that way and start using a hose instead turning them inside out while cleaning.

That said that doesn’t solve all issues.. if that were the sole issue his fish would be dying from the bleach killing his BB and getting ammonia spikes.

Agreed, I never lost fish only coral with my issue. Noticed it more with high efficiency washers (front loaders) but honestly after a while of cleaning filter socks 3x a week by hand I got away from them and use sponge filter blocks now that I can write se wring and reinstall. Works like a charm. His nitrates are high also. But I've definitely seen worse.

 

[Darth.Daddy12]

Agreed, I never lost fish only coral with my issue. Noticed it more with high efficiency washers (front loaders) but honestly after a while of cleaning filter socks 3x a week by hand I got away from them and use sponge filter blocks now that I can write se wring and reinstall. Works like a charm. His nitrates are high also. But I've definitely seen worse.

I do the same.. not even sponge filters I stick to bonded filter pads or poly fill stuffing cause it’s cheap and does the same as a 200mocron sock wo the issue of cleaning. $10 for a 20lb bag of poly at Wally World and just toss and replace ever few days like removing and replacing a filter sock.. helps using cheto though too as it too will act like a mechanical filter catching a lot of gunk which the pods willl then eat..

 

[donomite]

I was wondering about the socks in the washing machine. I’ll add that to the mix as well. No temp swings. I have heater on controller.

 

[motortrendz]

I do the same.. not even sponge filters I stick to bonded filter pads or poly fill stuffing cause it’s cheap and does the same as a 200mocron sock wo the issue of cleaning. $10 for a 20lb bag of poly at Wally World and just toss and replace ever few days like removing and replacing a filter sock.. helps using cheto though too as it too will act like a mechanical filter catching a lot of gunk which the pods willl then eat..

I use my the sponge which is a fine mesh micron sponge. Instead of just throwing out the poly filter I just wringe and wring. And throw it back in. My skimmer is 4x rated for my tank. And I dont flow alot through my sump su the skimmer really cleans the water well. The sponge just polishes the water before it hits the return chamber

 

[donomite]

I’m highly suspect on socks. Will bleach and rinse and let air dry. Just for the heck of it. Just got home from long day so will calibrate refractometer tomorrow. Made up some water tonight. Will add salt and circulate and test tomorrow night. Will do another water change on Sunday. See what I can salvage. I appreciate all comments. You guys are awesome.

 

[donomite]

I use my the sponge which is a fine mesh micron sponge. Instead of just throwing out the poly filter I just wringe and wring. And throw it back in. My skimmer is 4x rated for my tank. And I dont flow alot through my sump su the skimmer really cleans the water well. The sponge just polishes the water before it hits the return chamber

Got a link or picture?