Stn help

[Camaro Show Corals]

hi everybody I need a litttle help with some stn so I have a nice green efflo mini colony that I bought larger and now is about the size of my hand and have had no issues with it for about the month and a half I’ve had it and today I wake up to about a golf ball sized stn section so I dipped it and cut a few branches but I need help with this stn on why

About the tank it’s a 4 year old established biocube 29 I’ve had the tank for 6 months I bought it up and running
And all the other acros and corals are looking good have about about 75% sps and the rest lps and a few zoas and a wwc og bounce. I have a radion xr15 runing sps ab+ at 60% with a 50% acclimation timer
I have a santa.6 algae scrubber and the biocube skimmer and I do 5 gallons a week water change using Red Sea blue bucket I used to use the coral pro salt but could keep acros to save my life with high alk and only 2 fish so I switched to blue a few months ago.
Prams
Alk 9.2
Calc 445
Mag 1340
Po4 0.04
I’ve been feeding a lot this week to see if I can get more nutrients because I had a high po4 and I got that down but changing my rodi out and now I can’t get po4 at all so this the highest it’s been.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

The bottom is where I snipped 4 branches I also got a battle box 3 weeks ago and lost 3 of them with one being yesterday and the first 2 the first week so prob duds also whenever I have some stn it’s always at night and I wake up to it I also have the 2016 apex and the dos I dose brs 2 part 7ml of alk and 6ml of calc

 

[OnPointCorals Verified Sponsor]

Didn’t I read In another one of your posts that you been having your alk swinging around? That would be the why.

Also temp swings this time of year can do it.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

And I have it down to 1ml evey 3-4 hours spred through the day

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

That was a while back I got apex and dosing pump alk has been steady

 

[OnPointCorals Verified Sponsor]

That was a while back I got apex and dosing pump alk has been steady

I find STN from Alk swings don’t surface until a week or more from when the swing happened. Sucks.

It’s good now you got the Alk under tighter control.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

And it’s after 1am because that’s about when I go to bed in the summer and I always check the tank with a flash light and everything looks good

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

I also have 3 fish a orange spotted goby a long nose hawkfish and I just got a six line wrasse this week

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Also now it’s has me nervous because I’m leaving for vacation for 2 weeks with my dad looking over the tank and he has no clue about saltwater so he’s going on my instructions

 

[Mr. Roboto]

The bottom is where I snipped 4 branches I also got a battle box 3 weeks ago and lost 3 of them with one being yesterday and the first 2 the first week so prob duds also whenever I have some stn it’s always at night and I wake up to it I also have the 2016 apex and the dos I dose brs 2 part 7ml of alk and 6ml of calc

I will go out on a limb here and say that you dont get duds.... My guess is you have something that is out of line. How are you charting things day to day?

Temp
PH
Alk
Calc
Mag
Nitrate
Phosphate
Salinity
Temp of top off water

What does your curve look like when plotted out for Alk? Spikey or a good wave? Its going to sound remedial but you really need to go back to the basics. Cover every base.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

I test everyday salinity is 1.025
Temp stays at 77 with apex ph is 8.1
Nitrate is 4ppm

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

My ato is a tunze 3155 and I keep a 5 gal bucket of rodi and it’s just room temp

 

[Mr. Roboto]

I test everyday salinity is 1.025
Temp stays at 77 with apex ph is 8.1
Nitrate is 4ppm

I get that but how do you chart it?

Do you keep a log?

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Yes I keep a long on my phone and so does apex

 

[DSC reef]

I don't think it's the vendors corals your having a problem with like battle corals or world wide. You've been having issues with your tank for some time now. I'd suggest sending a sample off to get tested by ATI, or Triton. The tank is 4 years old but you've only had it for 6 months so maybe there's something going on that you cant test for. Your problems now and what you've been posting previously point to chemistry IMO.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Yeah I had issues at the beginning then got them figured out and had a few good months with no stn and then this issue

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

The issues before was the High alk and not enough nutrition so I got that fixed and the issue was the po4 and I got that fixed so now low po4 and zero tds in water

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

The first acro from battelcorals I lost was 4 days after I got it and then the rest were this week Sunday then yesterday and then today

 

[Mr. Roboto]

You are defiantly missing something though. I suggest a checklist and start going through everything thoroughly. Its always the stuff that we think we know that is the problem like test kits out of date but we dont know it and that sort of thing.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Definitely will do that would some carbon take whatever is in the water out of there was?