SPS Color Issues

[Flippers4pups]

Time for an update. I lost the midas blenny. Not sure why. It was eating well. Didn't see it for the first feeding and found that it tucked itself into the rock. params were stale. I have been trying to get the alk to drop.I used to dose 18ml for the day I cut it back to 11ml and I am still locked in at 10.9dkh. I let it stay there for a 5 days and just monitored. I am likely going to reduce it a bit more. I did a fresh batch of alk[Randy's Recipe 1] and I am attributing the change to that. Next batch the baking soda will be measured out in grams and recorded to ensue consistency.

I almost have .25 ppm NO3. I have been feeding the tank well. I only do a 2 gallon water change. It is a very clean running system. Still have no PO4 from a faulty Hanna checker. I had to mail it back to them.

Over all not much more color but I did notice a difference. But polyp extension is much better. on acro started stn'ing but i think that was from to much flow and a slight alk jump from 10.7 to 11.2. It actually appears to be recovering.

My params:
cal 420
ph 8.3
salinity 1.026
alk 10.9
no3 .25
mag 1400
temp 79.5

last fluctuation was 19th thats when tha alk jumped and the no3 finally came up as a reading on the 23rd.

Oh and I raised my lights about 2". being that they are black box leds. Beacuse of that I watched the BRS video on them with their par readings and there is a thread on here about the lights. I did notice a difference in my lights specs verses the mars and others. I have remote . No but really The bloomspect one I have seems to have a better blue range and a less yellow white channel. The color in the tank looks great.
The lights are:
Channel 1: 18 x Cool white(10000-16000K), 6 x Neutral whites(6500-7500K), 2 x Green 520nm and 2 x Deep red 660nm
Channel 2: 14 x Royal Blue 450nm, 9 x Blue 470nm, 2 x Violet 420nm and 2 x UV 400nm
My unit's lenses are 90 degree rather than lights that have 60 degree. I would have liked to see 120 but I will take the 90 over 60. At the current height over the tank the center lights definitely spread over the tanks footprint.

I will put some pics up on the weekend.

Sounds like your on right track.

On the CBB's, I pulled almost all my lenses off and got better light blending. Food for thought.

 

[mshonk]

Sounds like your on right track.

On the CBB's, I pulled almost all my lenses off and got better light blending. Food for thought.

The light really seems to blend well. I am not too worried about that. I need to get my hands on a par meter.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Yes, it can help understand where your at.

 

[mshonk]

Maybe my replacement hanna checker will arrive at the same time as the trace colors test kit i picked up.

 

[mshonk]

So this is the acro the started stn'ing in the sump where I plan on keeping frags. Notice the polyp extension from an area where the tissue necrosis already occurred. In the past i havent ever had an acro stop necrosis let alone regrow and have polyp extension from an area that has no tissue on the surface.

 

[markalot]

So a few thoughts.

When Alk is too high, dangerously high, TURN OF DOSERS. You can't drop Alk too fast, and Alk going to low does not kill like a spike will.

Stop testing for nutrients, until you get over it success will be very slow.

Acros can look great weeks after a mishap at which time they can up and die. If you react to this you are 2 weeks too late and start the roller coaster that can end in giving up. Stability in everything is what you want. Completely stopping dosing does not, IMO, add to instability because once you have a parameter issue you are risking the acros shutting down and thr parameters getting more out of whack. When you lose control of a tank stop all inputs, test, let it readjust without doing anything (if too high), then restart at the level that supports stability.

GFO is a killer drug. Your corals don't need it and using it can rapidly kill everything. You can get a tank addicted to GFO (and the low PO4 that comes with it) but you have to stay on top of it or risk some pretty bad withdrawal. There are super colorful Acro tanks with super high PO4. The brown from high PO4 is actually quite rare, no really, and it's a thick meaty healthy brown with good poly extension. If you see that sickly thin colorless tan then you are either starving the corals or swinging KH or both.

Here is how I killed most of my corals when first starting.

1. Using GFO to drop PO4 rapidly and too low.
2. Slowly reducing dosing as KH climbed, resulting in a rapid KH rise as corals stopped growing.
3. Changing things every time a coral looked bad, including lighting.
4. Running PAR over 300 and not feeding regularly.

One final encouragement to run LOW KH. AFAIK this is only good for acro heavy tanks

In the last year I have accidentally let KH drop to as low as 5 without serious issues, and I have raised it rapidly back to 6.5, also without issues. The magic zone is near natural levels of 6.5 to 7.5 IMO and if I go much above 7 I sound the alarm and turn off the dosers until I understand what is going on. A spike from 5.1 to 6.5 does no har,. A spike from 8 to 9 has done massive harm. With this in mind I target my max values at natural levels or a hair above.

Sticking to this for over a year yielded this:

Which I finally hacked to bits because it was taking over the tank.

I run a mostly neglected SPS tank, though I make sure to keep the skimmer clean and all the pumps working. My parameters are constantly on the low side.

I'm not that good, which is why I like to show this. Neglect works better than attention, to a reasonable degree of course.

 

[mshonk]

For real on the alk drop vs the spike! Alk has always made me nervous. I definitely think that it is the least forgiving and I stopped with the GFO prior to posting this thread. Unfortunately just after I bought some.
Getting the alk to adjust has been my biggest issue.

 

[markalot]

For real on the alk drop vs the spike! Alk has always made me nervous. I definitely think that it is the least forgiving and I stopped with the GFO prior to posting this thread. Unfortunately just after I bought some.
Getting the alk to adjust has been my biggest issue.

For real, but with the caveat that every tank is different. First think about stability, is everything really stable? The more instability you have the more sensitive the acros will be to any single param swings. That said, I've never had major issues with Alk slowly sinking too low as long as I never raised it past 6.5 KH in a short time frame. The higher the alk the more stable you need to be IMO, which is why I suggest 7 KH or nearby as the perfect number.

As a tank ages and gets more stable, and remember we only measure a few things out of thousands, everything is more forgiving. I've also found that acros will tend to regulate their growth when alk drops too low. Just don't let it stay too low for too long or issues will crop up. Timeframe seems to be about a month for me, and it only goes that long if I'm too lazy to test weekly.

I like to test Alk weekly (more often during adjustments) and calcium monthly, and make sure the dosers are dosing an equal amount of both parts. I lost an acro when I put off testing calcium for 6 months and it dropped to 275. !! Lost my beautiful lemonade and parts of a lokani, but everything else showed no issues. Stupid mistake, but once again it had to drop really low for an extended period before bad things happened. The only reason two part can get out of balance is if a dosing pump is acting up (in my case) or if something is precipitating out.

While I'm editing to fix some horrific grammar let me add that not all acros react the same, as in the example above. That dang slimer never lost a beat even with calcium dangerously low. I also lost all but one head of an acan, which seems super sensitive to low calcium or Alk. I thought it was lack of food in the water but sure enough when calcium was fixed the acan started growing back. When Alk is low the acan doesn't recede but it's not happy, at all.

It's an acan, who cares but worth noting why I like to limit my advice to acropora. Montipora can suffer with low Alk as well, with the skin getting dangerously thin or dying off in low Alk (below 6.5) conditions. Obviously a good reef keeper would never let this happen.

 

[mshonk]

For real, but with the caveat that every tank is different. First think about stability, is everything really stable? The more instability you have the more sensitive the acros will be to any single param swings. That said, I've never had major issues with Alk slowly sinking too low as long as I never raised it past 6.5 KH in a short time frame. The higher the alk the more stable you need to be IMO, which is why I suggest 7 KH or nearby as the perfect number.

As a tank ages and gets more stable, and remember we only measure a few things out of thousands, everything is more forgiving. I've also found that acros will tend to regulate their growth when alk drops too low. Just don't let it stay too low for too long or issues will crop up. Timeframe seems to be about a month for me, and it only goes that long if I'm too lazy to test weekly.

I like to test Alk weekly (more often during adjustments) and calcium monthly, and make sure the dosers are dosing an equal amount of both parts. I lost an acro when I put off testing calcium for 6 months and it dropped to 275. !! Lost my beautiful lemonade and parts of a lokani, but everything else showed no issues. Stupid mistake, but once again it had to drop really low for an extended period before bad things happened. The only reason two part can get out of balance is if a dosing pump is acting up (in my case) or if something is precipitating out.

While I'm editing to fix some horrific grammar let me add that not all acros react the same, as in the example above. That dang slimer never lost a beat even with calcium dangerously low. I also lost all but one head of an acan, which seems super sensitive to low calcium or Alk. I thought it was lack of food in the water but sure enough when calcium was fixed the acan started growing back. When Alk is low the acan doesn't recede but it's not happy, at all.

It's an acan, who cares but worth noting why I like to limit my advice to acropora. Montipora can suffer with low Alk as well, with the skin getting dangerously thin or dying off in low Alk (below 6.5) conditions. Obviously a good reef keeper would never let this happen.

Well I turned off the alk and will be testing after two missed doses to determine how i want to proceed. As far as stability is concerned though I am pretty sure I am good. October is the last time I had a significant alk spike. Over two days it went up 1.3 dkh. In comparison to the .3 rise I had recently. I am still.going to walk it down to about 8. And go from there.

 

[mshonk]

ok so I turned it back on and recorded where I am at and reduced it 4ml over a day. from what I observed today it will decrease the alk .3 dkh over a day.
so next week I will be on point.

 

[markalot]

Well I turned off the alk and will be testing after two missed doses to determine how i want to proceed. As far as stability is concerned though I am pretty sure I am good. October is the last time I had a significant alk spike. Over two days it went up 1.3 dkh. In comparison to the .3 rise I had recently. I am still.going to walk it down to about 8. And go from there.

I don't agree with turning the doser back on yet.

If the spike was in October some of the damage will be showing up now, so resist the urge to react to anything new. You said: it went up 1.3 dkh and then walking it back down to 8 ... a spike of 1.3 if you are already above 8KH is pretty big and IME it's quite possible you will see more acro death in a week or two. What was the actual KH change the last time it spiked? If you're still near 10 then you're in for a long painful road, at least based on what I experienced.

Remember, acros can take weeks to show damage and then anywhere from 2 to 6 months to recover. One of mine literally took 8 months (might have been a full year) before changing from a rich brown to this.

I bought it just before nearly crashing the entire tank but it lived. Had the pale death brown for a while, then moved to a rich brown with polyp extension ... then just sat there forever.

Here is is soon after coming back to life, to give you an idea of what healthy brown looks like.

That brown area finally colored up a couple of months later. lol ... slow but steady if you really want to do this.

 

[mshonk]

I don't agree with turning the doser back on yet.

If the spike was in October some of the damage will be showing up now, so resist the urge to react to anything new. You said: it went up 1.3 dkh and then walking it back down to 8 ... a spike of 1.3 if you are already above 8KH is pretty big and IME it's quite possible you will see more acro death in a week or two. What was the actual KH change the last time it spiked? If you're still near 10 then you're in for a long painful road, at least based on what I experienced.

Remember, acros can take weeks to show damage and then anywhere from 2 to 6 months to recover. One of mine literally took 8 months (might have been a full year) before changing from a rich brown to this.

I bought it just before nearly crashing the entire tank but it lived. Had the pale death brown for a while, then moved to a rich brown with polyp extension ... then just sat there forever.

Here is is soon after coming back to life, to give you an idea of what healthy brown looks like.

That brown area finally colored up a couple of months later. lol ... slow but steady if you really want to do this.

I am reluctant to let the alk drop fast. A decrement of .3 a day seems like a good place to be for a slow walk down. Like I said I recorded the stable dosing values and adjusted the doses down to get the .3 drop. I have been steady at the 10.9 range for a month and a half. I am just now walking it down. E.g. yesterday iwas at 10.9 now I am at 10.5-10.6. I completely get what you are telling me but my conscientious side says let the alk down slowly. Without a 100% gaurentee that a faster drop will be ok I cant bring myself to do it. Beleive me I'd rather get it there fast but you know the right attitude in the hobby is patience, slow, steady, and stable.

 

[mshonk]

Littlw hard to read but params back to 10/4. I have been steady testing to get this tank dialed in.

 

[markalot]

In the end you have to do what you have to do. Just be aware that at 10KH things may happen faster than you can react to and if the acro health continues to decline you could very well be looking at another spike because you are assuming alk usage is stable and it may be dropping. Better buy a backup Alk test kit now.

 

[mshonk]

In the end you have to do what you have to do. Just be aware that at 10KH things may happen faster than you can react to and if the acro health continues to decline you could very well be looking at another spike because you are assuming alk usage is stable and it may be dropping. Better buy a backup Alk test kit now.

Already have a backup! I always keep a spare kit for alk and calcium. . And verify the last test of the old against the first test of the new. Plus I verified the results between the two alk kits.

I only turned the dosing pumps off for two 2ml doses. The alk consumption has been consistant. I really only decreased the amount as opposed to turning it off.

You definitely gave some great advice and have the results to prove it. Though the regrowth I have seen have been at that high level and its been there for a while so I would assume that the acros are acclimated to the high level.

 

[mshonk]

I don't agree with turning the doser back on yet.

If the spike was in October some of the damage will be showing up now, so resist the urge to react to anything new. You said: it went up 1.3 dkh and then walking it back down to 8 ... a spike of 1.3 if you are already above 8KH is pretty big and IME it's quite possible you will see more acro death in a week or two. What was the actual KH change the last time it spiked? If you're still near 10 then you're in for a long painful road, at least based on what I experienced.

Remember, acros can take weeks to show damage and then anywhere from 2 to 6 months to recover. One of mine literally took 8 months (might have been a full year) before changing from a rich brown to this.

I bought it just before nearly crashing the entire tank but it lived. Had the pale death brown for a while, then moved to a rich brown with polyp extension ... then just sat there forever.

Here is is soon after coming back to life, to give you an idea of what healthy brown looks like.

That brown area finally colored up a couple of months later. lol ... slow but steady if you really want to do this.

Well I am happy that you have been chiming in. After dropping the dosage of alk and seeing go lower the first day I thought I was good -.3dkh. I tested 2 days ago and the alk only dropped half of what it was, -1.5dkh, then I tested yesterday, and it leveled off again. I noticed the other day the calcium gently rose and forgot to test it yesterday but over 3 days it came up 15ppm to 440.

So long story short I turned both the alk and cal off for now. I only had a small drop in alk over 12 hours -.3dkh.
Should have listened about keeping the pumps off.

Any who any recommendations on what to do when I turn the pumps back on?
Turn them back on to where they were when it was stable and consistent or dial back a bit? Or something else entirely?

 

[Scorpius]

Lower alkalinity below 8 dkh is the way to go with heavy Acropora tanks. I kid you not the 2ml of water I use for my Salifert Alk test can be some of the most unnerving 2ml of water on the face of the planet. lol


My alkalinity tends to rise when the house is closed up and I too will turn off the dosing pump for 8-12 hrs. Falling alkalinity is better than rising alkalinity.

 

[markalot]

Well I am happy that you have been chiming in. After dropping the dosage of alk and seeing go lower the first day I thought I was good -.3dkh. I tested 2 days ago and the alk only dropped half of what it was, -1.5dkh, then I tested yesterday, and it leveled off again. I noticed the other day the calcium gently rose and forgot to test it yesterday but over 3 days it came up 15ppm to 440.

So long story short I turned both the alk and cal off for now. I only had a small drop in alk over 12 hours -.3dkh.
Should have listened about keeping the pumps off.

Any who any recommendations on what to do when I turn the pumps back on?
Turn them back on to where they were when it was stable and consistent or dial back a bit? Or something else entirely?

Well, that's the tricky bit. At this point test at the same time daily for a few days and see what's happening. These hobby kits along with testing errors can create a variance we have to work around. IMO I would not turn the dosers back on until Alk drops below 7. By that time you have a daily usage, generally, so target an underdose to keep it steady or slowly falling. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can keep it fairly steady over a week and as health improves you will slowly crank it back up.

I like 7KH, I normally run at 6.5 KH. If you prefer 7.5 or 8 I think that works as well. I get nervous at 7.5 and turn everything off at 8, but it's mostly paranoia due to past experience.

Calcium kits are just not that accurate so I would back off the testing and base all your dosing on the Alk readings. The dosers can be inaccurate so definitely test, but maybe only once a week slacking off to monthly when things settle down.

 

[mshonk]

Well, that's the tricky bit. At this point test at the same time daily for a few days and see what's happening. These hobby kits along with testing errors can create a variance we have to work around. IMO I would not turn the dosers back on until Alk drops below 7. By that time you have a daily usage, generally, so target an underdose to keep it steady or slowly falling. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can keep it fairly steady over a week and as health improves you will slowly crank it back up.

I like 7KH, I normally run at 6.5 KH. If you prefer 7.5 or 8 I think that works as well. I get nervous at 7.5 and turn everything off at 8, but it's mostly paranoia due to past experience.

Thanks, I realized that the daily consumption
will be obvious in a few days just after posting. Then I can break out a reef calculator.

 

[mshonk]

Finally below 9 dkh today and my calcium is staying on point. My NO3 is going to likely need to be dosed. Can't get a reading above .25ppm but that will get sorted out after the alk and calcium are level. I also know I am right about where I need to be on feeding. Fish are happy and so are the corals My Cali tort appears to be getting some color back as well as better polyp extension. It has't been extending like this for months. Plus there is a tiny bit of hair algae that popped up but hasn't gotten worse. My zoas aren't the happiest though. I have only a few kinds and I keep them together off to the side. They open during the first part of the day completely then some close about halfway into the photo period. Then they all open back up the next day. I am putting it on light intensity and/or tank cleanliness. I bought a seneye reef and will be getting it next week. I figured why not. Why rent a meter every time I want to check my lights and even if its not entirely accurate it will still give me a better idea on my black box lights and I can use it when I want as well as when I go on vacation I can get the packets and set it up to notify me when anything is out of wack. I will likely post the results when I get them. Oh and Hanna confirmed that my check was broken and is sending a new one!