This STN or Bleaching?

[pjdiddy]

Little update.

Removed my fuge and dosed nitrates, and everything that STN'd/bleached is starting to regain their health. Double checked Kh and everything and they are all consistent so they are not the culprit.

I am pretty sure that the sudden reduction of Nutrients and light changes is what stressed my SPS. Apparently SPS particularly Acros likes stability and not a big fan of sudden changes.

 

[Stickboy15]

Do you know what kind of par its getting?

 

[jda]

I would blame the light changes more than the building block changes, but both could have been an issue. N and P and not true nutrients and do not fuel nor feed coral - they are necessary to build new tissue and grow. I think that the light might have had more of an effect since this truly does feed the coral through the sugars released by the zoox, which is paramount even if coral is not growing. In any case, you are right to look for stability.

 

[rkpetersen]

I have them on a Aquatic Life Hybrid 8 inches high. You think adding the fuge stressed them out? Or the 10% intensity increase did it?

An increase of 50% to 60% is a 20% increase in light output from before to after. Might have been enough to cause trouble.

If before that there was a 40% to 50% change, that's an increase of 25%.

 

[Reefahholic]

Tested my Nitrate and Phospate through Redsea test kit and it came up my Phospate is 0.08 and Nitrate is 0.

Could the fuge being online just a week sucked up all my Nitrate and it being zero affected my SPSs?

I think the Zero Nitrate did it.

 

[Reefahholic]

As of now I turned off my skimmer. Planning on either feed heavily for the next few days or dose stump remover.

Agreed. Also.. look into dosing a cleaner product.

https://www.loudwolf.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=158

 

[Reefahholic]

Turning off your skimmer for a few days is probably a good idea. I've considered putting mine on a timer so that it only comes on for several hours each day - or something like that. Currently I turn it off a few nights each week when I feed phytofeast.

I'd say the refugium probably had an effect. You may not need a fuge at all depending on the size of your skimmer and the number/amount of growing corals in the tank. I designed my sump with a refugium area and bought a nice kessil H80 light to grow Chaetomorpha. Not only did the chaeto not grow, it outright died - and instead I have to dose nitrate and phosphate to the system. My Fuge has become an overflow area for extra corals, haha.

I honestly don't know where all my nutrients go. My system is a 40 gallon breeder SPS tank with ~10 gallons in the sump. I have 10 fish in the 40G tank that I feed well every day and I also dose the Nitrate and Phosphate. I understand that organically bound nitrogen an phosphorus can be skimmed out. But inorganic NO3- and PO4-3 ions aren't skimmable. The only options to account for their disappearance are consumption by corals and other livestock. I could be having some denitrification occurring in the rock and sand (>1" deep) but that only affects the Nitrate.

I think your corals are healthy and consuming most of the available nutrients.

Denitrification at 1-1.5” would very minimal. Typically 4”+ DSB’s are the heavy hitters with denitrification.

 

[Reefahholic]

You won't get an algae "bloom", the worst case is you'll have slightly increased algae growth in the aquarium. There is no level of nutrients, no matter how low, that will block the growth of algae and still allow coral to grow. If you can't grow algae you can't grow coral - algae are better than coral at sucking the tiniest amounts of nutrients from the water column.

It's not that either dosing or running a certain skimmer schedule is recommended. It's that many hobbiests have found that sps/acropora do best when there is a small but still measurable amount of nitrate and phosphate in the water.

Some accomplish this by part time skimming or none at all, others by heavy feeding, others by dosing.

I use the stump remover from Lowe's. It's potassium nitrate power and you'll need to dissolve some in rodi water to make a standard solution for dosing to your tank. I can help you with the math on that if you need.

Activate by AquaVitro is the phosphate supplement I use. Dosing instructions per volume of tank water are given on the back of the bottle.

I've dosed 5ppm nitrate and 0.05ppm phosphate to my tank all at once several times and nobody had any problems - there's no need to go terribly slow with this like with large alkalinity changes.

I'd suggest that for the first attempt you put your skimmer on a timer and run it 2/3 or 1/2 time each day. Let that go for a week or two and measure your levels - that alone may do the trick. If that doesn't raise your nutrient levels then try dosing.

I’d switch to:

https://www.loudwolf.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=158

If the tank is mature they can handle a lot higher dose of NaNO3 or KNO3 vs a young tank.

Example:
If the tank is under 6 months just dosing more than 1 ppm NO3 can give you a lot of issues. However, if your tank is 3 years old...you’ll likely be able to increase by 3-5ppm at one time.

 

[Reefahholic]

Little update.

Removed my fuge and dosed nitrates, and everything that STN'd/bleached is starting to regain their health. Double checked Kh and everything and they are all consistent so they are not the culprit.

I am pretty sure that the sudden reduction of Nutrients and light changes is what stressed my SPS. Apparently SPS particularly Acros likes stability and not a big fan of sudden changes.

Ha...I knew it.

Acro’s like stability?? No!!! HeHe...

 

[Flippers4pups]

Did the OP dip for pests? The first picture posted looks like pest damage.

 

[ScottB]

I think this was mentioned earlier (maybe even by me) but when I dosed NO3 (with Loudwolf) it had a tendency to zero out my PO4 fast. In my experience, that is not as disruptive as stripping nitrate, but worth tracking and keeping some PO4 dose on hand.

 

[pjdiddy]

I did dipped what I can dip with Bayer and did not see any pest. Regarding PAR, I do not have any access to one, I'll check maybe few of LFS if they rent one.

SPS seems recovering and gaining their color back on the faded area. Zero casualty so far. I checked my Nitrate just now and it is 8ppm. Is this a good number to maintain? Also no algae bloom. I'll check my phospate later today and I will report back.

 

[pjdiddy]

An increase of 50% to 60% is a 20% increase in light output from before to after. Might have been enough to cause trouble.

If before that there was a 40% to 50% change, that's an increase of 25%.

I think the change in light also contributed to the stress. I also failed to mentioned that I lowered my fixture 1", which is probably too much of change in PAR.

 

[pjdiddy]

Just did a test just now. Nitrate is 12ppm and Phospate is 0.16ppm.

 

[ScottB]

Nitrate at 12 is OK.
Phosphate at .16ppm is on the high side IMO. My desired range is .03 - .08

If I recall correctly, higher phosphate levels reduce SPS coral's ability to lay down skeleton.

Good to hear you did not lose anything.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Not sure phosphates hinder the ability of sps to develop skeleton, that was the idea pushed for a while but I think it was based off an experiment done with a specific type of sps. I still tell people the lower the better though.