Please help me diagnose my tanks' problems

[bigdrew]

Any updates? I have an orange montipora digitata and a white sps with blue polyps (not sure of name) that won’t extend their polyps. They are near an ora birdsnest and two pocillopora which have great polyp extension. All corals are growing and look healthy/colorful. I’m hoping to learn from what you did to fix what’s going on in my tank.

 

[PranK]

Its been a bit crazy over the past few months and a lot has changed but I'm now seeing some really solid growth and good extension.

I stopped comparing the tanks. Although the water was the same, the flow and light spread was always going to be different. The frag tank is still doing much better than the display with growth, colour and PE.

So, based on what I thought were my water parameters I did the following;

I got a third 2nd hand MP40 and set the tank for Tidal Swell Mode. I also removed a little bit of rock to make water flow easier. Theres no dead spots at all now. While I didn't see a great improvement with just this change I do think it helped when the other changes were made.

I fed LOTS. Nitrate was between 0 and 1 (or so I thought) so I was giving heaps of frozen food and daily reef roids.

Phosphate stayed high so I kept the fuge on 24/7.

I know that Nitrate is actually required when trying to reduce Phosphates, i was really trying to get them higher and event started dosing Nitro from Continuum. It made sense to me that there was a lack of balance and a lack of food and thats why things looked poor. (it also made sense because the frag tank was doing well and it has far less water flow through it, ie more food staying in the water column).

I also stopped dosing NoPox at this point.

A few months ago I got a Hanna Nitrate checker. First one was dead so got a replacement one which kept reading 5+ nitrate (it is low range). So, I ran down to the pet shop and bought and API nitrate checker for a 3rd opinion. Well ..
API - undetectable
Nyos - 3ppm
Hanna - 5+ ppm

So, I took a sample to ARC in Sydney who have the Spin Touch to see which of my kits was right. What an eye opener this was!
Salinity was only 1.023
Nitrate was 13
Phosphate 0.9
Alk 7.7
Ca 400
Mg 1300
pH 7.4

Yikes. Not at all what I was expecting ...

So, my changes in the past 2 weeks since this revelation has been;
Slowly increasing salinity. Its over 1.024 now. This is a little more difficult because I have a big leak in my sump now which sucks, so trying to manage that also.
Kept NoPox off
Kept fuge on
Stopped feeding reefroids daily (in fact totally stopped at this point)
Kept up Red Sea AB+
Much smaller amount of frozen food.

I also set a pump in my weir and one of the bottom of the sump to go on twice a day for 15 mins. The idea is to stir up any detritus that settles. This is experimental and I'm just curious about doing this. Note that I do not have filter socks and tank drains into the big fuge with lots of critters.

So, as of today, over 2 weeks I'm seeing so many improvements. Polyps I've never seen before, growth I havent had in years and really good colour. I haven't tested since the shop test but I plan on going back there over the weekend for a follow up.

I was clearly chasing my tail and chasing numbers and that was failing my tank. I can't take all the blame as the test kits were all giving strange numbers but I'm more confident on reacting to my tank when it looks less than stellar rather than reacting to the numbers on tests.

 

[PranK]

Also was blown away by pH from the shop. I'm super ken to address that as I thought it was over 8 and I'm second guessing the Spin Touch a little here. I have heaps of gas exchange and I have a huge fuge with lots of caulerpa and chaeto.

I am considering dosing kalk to help keep things stable. Not as an alternative to 2 part but as a supplement.

 

[Biokabe]

Also was blown away by pH from the shop. I'm super ken to address that as I thought it was over 8 and I'm second guessing the Spin Touch a little here. I have heaps of gas exchange and I have a huge fuge with lots of caulerpa and chaeto.

I am considering dosing kalk to help keep things stable. Not as an alternative to 2 part but as a supplement.

Wow, those numbers were... seeing them, no wonder you were seeing the issues you were. =)

Definitely try to get the PH up. It might be more to do with the room the tank is in, and less to do with how you have your tank set up; my tank never got quite that low, but it would drop down into the high 7s during the winter at night. It was down to high ambient CO2, which I addressed by adding a CO2 scrubber to my skimmer. It now tops out at 8.3 and bottoms out at about 8.1, like clockwork. Like you, I have a fairly decent refugium that produces a ton of chaeto, but there was just too much CO2 in the house overall.

The nitrate wasn't bad, but your phosphates were absolutely at the level where they can cause the issues you were seeing. If your fish have appreciated the feeding levels, one way you can address that is with lanthanum chloride. Just need to dose in small amounts and possibly use a 5-micron sock for about a day after you dose it.