Sps death, hope this helps you out

[Onajoyride]

I was in the hobby 10 years ago and killed more corals than anyone I know. Before I got back in a did 17 metric tons of research to avoid the previous struggles which drove me away to begin with. I built a system that I thought was going to set me up for success. Now my new tank was struggling to keep sps alive even after careful tracking and keeping parameters stable. I was perplexed as to why I was struggling. I did large water changes and still struggled.

The problem....
I had put a non reef rated flow meter coming out of my UV and it never occurred to me this could be an issue as it was all plastic from what I could tell. It wasnt!

The fix....
I did an ICP test and realized the day I sent it off that I used that flow meter and it was leeching heavy metals. I promptly replumbed the section of pipe and ordered triton detox. I received the test results and bam, heavy metals detected. Dosed detox and the test corals in the tank have began to rebound.

The moral of the story is if your parameters are stable and you are struggling start at one point in your tank and trace the water route while examining EVERYTHING the water touches. Clean and inspect everything!

 

[dankaqua]

I was in the hobby 10 years ago and killed more corals than anyone I know. Before I got back in a did 17 metric tons of research to avoid the previous struggles which drove me away to begin with. I built a system that I thought was going to set me up for success. Now my new tank was struggling to keep sps alive even after careful tracking and keeping parameters stable. I was perplexed as to why I was struggling. I did large water changes and still struggled.

The problem....
I had put a non reef rated flow meter coming out of my UV and it never occurred to me this could be an issue as it was all plastic from what I could tell. It wasnt!

The fix....
I did an ICP test and realized the day I sent it off that I used that flow meter and it was leeching heavy metals. I promptly replumbed the section of pipe and ordered triton detox. I received the test results and bam, heavy metals detected. Dosed detox and the test corals in the tank have began to rebound.

The moral of the story is if your parameters are stable and you are struggling start at one point in your tank and trace the water route while examining EVERYTHING the water touches. Clean and inspect everything!

I think this is one of the best stories I have run across on R2R which points toward ICP testing when things-that-should-be-going-right are going wrong...

Great post and hope you will put your new system in a build thread!

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[Cory]

Cool thanks for sharing. Do you have a picture of it?

 

[Onajoyride]

No but here is the link for what I used.



There was a metal ring on the incoming flow and the shaft it spun on was rusting when I took it apart. Since running the triton detox the reef is recovering very very well and is thriving. I plan on doing another test in a month to verify all the fixes I employed were effective. By the looks of it they were.