SPS driving me crazy

[96silvia]

Ok I am really getting frustrated... I just lost my palmer's mille colony. I have no idea what is going on with my tank. Is it just me or does that happen to others too?
This has happened to me at least 4 times. my tank is doing good and then out of nowhere I start loosing acros due to rtn or bleaching starting at the bottom of the frags and colonies.
it doesn't affect all of my sps just certain ones. The weird thing is I lost my Oregon tort colony but I had a frag the same height in the tank under same flow and that survived. the same thing happened to my red planet acro and some frags they were right next to each other one died and one was fine.

through this whole thing I have hawkins echinata and a blueberry surprise that has had no problems. my zoas are doing awesome too.

I really want to get into sps, but at this rate it doesn't look like I am doing very well. Am I the only one that has this problem?

I have checked for pest and see no sign. (I dip everything before it comes in my tank)

so far I have lost
green slimer frag
palmers mille colony
red planet colony
snow cone prostrada colony
joe the coral frag
Jared's acid trip mille frag
Ultimate frags bonsai frag
unknown green milli frag
Oregon tort colony
California tort frag
Frag farmer's red robin stag frag


my tank is 180 gal tank up for over 2 years it was established before that.
flow: 2 jebao wp40's
lighting: 2 full spectrum led lights with timer each light has 50 leds. they are at 35% at peak.
last water change 2 weeks ago.

Live stock
black saddleback clown pair
royal gramma
earmuff wrasse
powder brown Tang
red goby
black & white damsel
blue linkia

coral beauty angel pair
my parameters:
nitrite 0
nitrate .02
po4 0
alk 9
cal 440
mag 1440
salinity 1.026

dosing 2 part.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

["Acro Sheen"]

First off sorry to hear about this! Anyone who has ever kept sos has gone through this at one point or another. Based on what you have written I'm sure you are aware of the many different things that can cause this to happen and the sad thing is lots of times you never figure out what caused it. My first thought was pests but you said you ruled that out so my next guess would be a temp or alk swing of any nature will cause things like this sometimes even the smallest ones. A few other thoughts are double check your test kits by having someone else test your water, possible something foreign may have gotten into your tank, check your TDS on new water, check you holding continers, lastly not sure how you dose but check your system for flaws. Sorry I can't be of more help and I hope you get this figured out good luck! Will be tagging along!

 

[gar732]

What is your dosing schedule like? Consistency is the key to success when it come to sps IMO.

 

[96silvia]

Thanks for the input. I have such a big tank, that I have been lucky, I think. The more water the more stable. I haven't noticed a change in the water temp. My tank is in my basement. I have 2 heaters running in the sump. I haven't seen any fluctuation so far I feed in the morning and at night I will be more careful and double check the temp. I have dosing pumps that dose both the alk and cal 120ml a day to keep up. I forgot to mention my TDS is 2. I would think if its a slight change that that would affect all of the sps that is in my system, but maybe I am wrong. I just don't get why I haven't lost the most sensitive Hawkins but I can lose red planet and green slimer that are suppose to be hardy.

 

[TJ's Reef]

From your list of Acros affected and from the ones I'm personally familiar with these tend to be ones that are easily affected in a negative way by Alk swings. So this would be my first direction to explore, do you have a record of Alk for past several months or ??? Secondly I most often suggest for people to turn the intensity down on their LED's but in this case think you are running them a little low. What exact LED fixtures are you running ? Try bumping them up a bit, if a typical Blue/White 2-channel something in the nature of 50-60% Blue channel and 25-35% Whites. Most all these Corals are also High-Light demanding where as the Hawkins echinata is a Deepwater lower light level Acro. Hope this helps you out a bit.

Cheers, Todd

 

[Rob&Gab]

check for red bugs and flat worms. not saying you have any, But have they RTN? STN? or did this happen over a period of time. ?

 

[96silvia]

I also forgot to mention I am running a reef octopus 3000 extreme I have turned it down, is there a possibility I was starving my coral?

 

[96silvia]

Todd, Thanks for the advice. The led fixtures I bought are from Brandon at Zoanthids.com they are full spectrum they have red green and uv on the white channel then blues are seperate. most of my sps are at the top 1/3 of the tank. the lights sit about 5 inches from the water line with the corals sitting right underneath. I could bump up the white. That is what is at 35% right now I think the blues are 45%. I just record it on my smart phone when I do a water test. so its not that accurate. Rob I pulled the dying mille out of the tank and looked at it the other night just because I wanted to verify there were no pests or eggs at all. I dip all of my stuff in coral rx. I have thought about using bear but haven't done it yet. it is definitely RTN. it only takes 2-3 days for the coral to be stripped of its flesh when this happens most of the time its happened by the time I have gotten home from work on the second day.

 

[Rob&Gab]

oh boy oh boy i mean inless your test kit is wrong? i dont see anything really wrong why it would do that. uhmm also how big were your pieces? it only takes overnight for something to be striped to its bare skeleton, also make sure your not burning your acros. How long have you had all of these in your system for? ive gotten lucky when we did a ALK swing from 7 to 9 in one day only lost 1 piece. temp swing as well dropped to 67 a few days ago back up to 80 in 1 day nothing bad happened.


But any before and after pictures of your SPS? maybe we can see something your not seeing? or at least feed out imaginations.

 

[96silvia]

the palmer's mille was a medium colony tallest branch was 4 inches with multiple 3 inch branches. it took 2 days as soon as the base started going I recognized it. and fragged it into 5 different frags and put it low in the tank everything but 1 branch rtn'd this morning the last frag had mostly rtn'd . most of the sps has been in my tank for months before this happens. the palmers was in my tank 4 months before it did this. here is a pic of the colony this from the guy who sold it to me. I got the mini colony in the very back.

I will post a frag of the rtn'd colony when I get home.

 

[that Reef Guy]

I thought that Bali Green Slimer was Bullet Proof and Unkillable.

 

[sirreal]

Is it just me or is that cyno on the bottom right? If you have cyno I would have someone else check your water quality. You say you have 0 P04. What test kits are you using? Hard to believe you have A tds of 2, 0 Po4 and cyno. do you use somekind of P04 remover? Sorry for your loose. They were nice size colonys.

 

[FLipp]

more water changes maybe?

 

[watchguy123]

Welcome to the world of sps. You have to check everything all the time, be paranoid, recheck, have someone else verify your checks. And then stuff still dies. You aim to control the factors we know about it, lighting, flow, nutrient export, alK, CA, Mag, Nitrate, PO4, temp, feeding, pests. You try to keep them stable. But there are more parameters to track, we just don't know what they are. So you try to be diligent, cautious, meticulous and keenly observant. And make sure your wife is okay with your SPS budget because it grows and grows.

Oh by the way. Its always alk, check everything else but its always alk. If you can keep alkalinity stable, then you are undoubtedly doing everything else right. I am not being flippant about alk, if you are measuring and observing your alK routinely then you are most likely measuring and observing all the other factors as well.

 

[Dowtish]

It can be salintiy as well. Just had a friend freak out for 3 weeks wondering what it could be, and found out his refractometer was off by quite a bit. Water was 1.032

 

[Greenstreet.1]

How stable is your alk?

 

[96silvia]

Is it just me or is that cyno on the bottom right? If you have cyno I would have someone else check your water quality. You say you have 0 P04. What test kits are you using? Hard to believe you have A tds of 2, 0 Po4 and cyno. do you use somekind of P04 remover? Sorry for your loose. They were nice size colonys.

this is not my tank this is the tank that it came from. that is a rock that had bright red algae growing on it. My skimmer has been taking all of the extra material out of the tank so I haven't used phosband in about 6 months.. That Reef Guy I thought the same thing..lol it was the only thing that survived after I fragged it though

 

[96silvia]

GreenStreet.1 Like I said in my op My tank is 180 gal so its really stable, the parameters don't change that much at all. I have a lot of zoas in my tank so I dose a little more alk than calcium. but the difference is minute. salinity was the first thing I thought of. so I tested my refractometor with ro water. It was perfect 0.

 

[Greenstreet.1]

Ok so you are saying you don't have alk swings ?