SPS Dying

[JCRove06]

Ok, my parameters haven’t changed...everything is on auto top off/feeder/etc. I don’t see any sign of pests...but my Sps Coral are starting to die. This happened before, I dipped the coral and it went away for a very long time. Someone said it was tissue necrosis, to try dipping but ultimately there wasn’t much you could do but frag and try to save some coral on the side.

I’d like to not lose my live rock which is almost completely encrusted with mystic sunset. Any advice on how to battle this is very much appreciated!!!

 

[Jason Truong]

Temp swings?

 

[Cory]

I can only recommend checking all your equipment thoroughly for rusting, or chewed/pulled out electrical cables. Check any magnets in frag racks and other magnetic devices like pumps or algae scrapers for swelling. Check your test kits are accurate. Check your alkalinity kit, 1.135 grams of sodium bicarbonate in 1 gallon ro/di water = 10dkh. Check for amperage/stray volatage in the tank.

Make sure no3 and po4 are not zero. Growth and health depend on it. Get an icp test if you can. Good luck.

 

[JCRove06]

I can only recommend checking all your equipment thoroughly for rusting, or chewed/pulled out electrical cables. Check any magnets in frag racks and other magnetic devices like pumps or algae scrapers for swelling. Check your test kits are accurate. Check your alkalinity kit, 1.135 grams of sodium bicarbonate in 1 gallon ro/di water = 10dkh. Check for amperage/stray volatage in the tank.

Make sure no3 and po4 are not zero. Growth and health depend on it. Get an icp test if you can. Good luck.

What’s an ICP test?

 

[robbyg]

What’s an ICP test?

A company that will test your water for you. You need to sign up online and they will ship you vials that you then add water samples into and then ship it back to them. Once they test the water you will get notified via email and you can log in and see the results on the web.

Companies to look at are
Triton, ATI and a few other.

 

[Albertan22]

What’s an ICP test?

A highly accurate water test done by a laboratory. You can buy a kit to take the sample then mail it away to the lab and wait for the results via email or web portal.

 

[Cory]

I agree with everyone. An icp test basically super heats your water sample you send to them and the colors it gives off tell them how much copper is in the water for example. They measure of a lot of other elements in your tank. So if you do it, you can say hey, why is tin so high? Maybe that's killing my corals. Or wow my calcium is actually very low when my kit reads normal.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

Get an ATI water test. It will test your tank and ro/di. What are you parameters? Specifically salinity, temp, alk, po4, no3, ca, and MG? Inspect all equipment for rust or corrosion. Any stray voltage?

 

[JCRove06]

So from these responses I’m gathering that Tissue Necrosis isn’t caused by an uncontrollable bacteria we don’t know much about, but rather due to something being off in water quality? Thanks

 

[Cory]

Usually sps issues are related to water parameters being bad yes. Not unless you are dosing a carbon source would i suspect bacterial. I once had a birdsnest die rtn completely in one day from a stran of hair alge get tangled in it. The sugars in hair algae killed it imo.

 

[Uncle99]

SPS super sensitive to flux in heat and nutrients, I can’t see your numbers, so hard to give any other input.

 

[loui]

I was having an issue with one of my tank and was at my wits end. I ended up finding my skimmer propeller was rusted (ICP test didn't show heavy metal contamination) After replacing the skimmer all together some nasty yellow stuff started being pulled out and now the tank is back on track.

 

[JCRove06]

I’m going to try a coral RX dip. I did a treatment a while back and it helped. I think I did it with coral Rx vs the iodine treatment I just applied with limited success. I’ll update post after I find time to do it. ‍