Transitioning from FOWLR to Reef

[RandyT5]

Shut down a 40 gallon breeder, and moved the coral into my FOWLR tank, as the fish had been removed due to ich. I had been pretty lax on checking parameters, mostly salinity, and doing water changes. Now that all the coral is in there (LPS duncans, galaxea, zoas, it will not open up. I have been focusing on water parameters and my nitrates were through the roof in the 90 gallon, and phosphate was also very high. I have checked my well water for nitrates and alk, nitrates come in at 0.25 and alk is 12.5-13 with a water softener. RODI is coming this weekend. I also am getting a lot of green hair algea on my sand as well.

90 gallon oceanic
20 gallon sump
Bubble magus curve 5
Refugium with live rock and chaeto with a grow light, growing fast.
2 Hydor 1000gph powerheads blowing the same direction to create a gyre, but not pointing at anything directly
48 inch reefbreeders Photon v2 blues/uv/royals at 45% whites at 15% for 12 hours mounted 8 inches over tank about 30,000 lux at the water surface ( turned down a bit because the one torch head bleaching scared me)

Water stuffs:
1.025 - 1.026
Ph 8.0
KH 13.5
PO4 - 0.02 - 0.04
Po3 - 13ppm
Ammonia 0
Mag 1450
Cal 375

I know my well water is hard, 13dkh. So every time I top off, it adds to the already high alkalinity. I am going to do a few partial water changes using distilled water.

I am dosing vodka, about 10ml / day to help bring the nitrates down, and I just harvested 2, 1 gallon bags of chaeto from the refugium.


So after all of that I guess my question is, do you think the high nitrates / alkalinity is making the coral unhappy? And what else can I do to fix nitrates? Just wait and let the chaeto and dosing vodka do its job?
Went from this:

To this: This is after fish removed, and coral from my 40 I shut down moved into the 90.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Were you using well water on the 90 with the corals in it as well?

 

[RandyT5]

Were you using well water on the 90 with the corals in it as well?

Yes, sorry for the confusion, rewrote that about 10 times to try to get it so that everyone would understand haha. Both tanks have been using the same water source and same salt, just instant ocean regular salt.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Yes, sorry for the confusion, rewrote that about 10 times to try to get it so that everyone would understand haha.

So you were using the same water for both tanks, but when you transitioned them from one tank to the other, they got all upset. How long have they been that way?

 

[RandyT5]

So you were using the same water for both tanks, but when you transitioned them from one tank to the other, they got all upset. How long have they been that way?

Yeah! The only thing thats significantly different is the lighting. The 40 breeder had chinese black box LED's above it, about a foot above the water, I have the photon V2 over the 90, and i have it turned down a bit to help with acclimation. They have been in there for 2 months about, really unhappy the last month. Also, the 40 and 90 were running at the same time. Maybe it's lighting?

 

[Crabs McJones]

Yeah! The only thing thats significantly different is the lighting. The 40 breeder had chinese black box LED's above it, about a foot above the water, I have the photon V2 over the 90, and i have it turned down a bit to help with acclimation. They have been in there for 2 months about, really unhappy the last month. Also, the 40 and 90 were running at the same time. Maybe it's lighting?

Possibly. Lets ask #reefsquad maybe someone may have a better idea

 

[Brew12]

I feel the high alkalinity is likely the problem, although it could be trace elements (like copper) from the well water. The larger tank will evaporate more water, requiring more make up water, and you will end up concentrating any metals/minerals faster than in the 40g. You also likely perform larger water changes, in terms of percentage, on the smaller system.

I also wouldn't lower nutrients any more than you have. Higher alkalinity systems seem to need higher nutrients to protect the coral. I would want at least 20ppm NO3 and a 0.05ppm PO4 or higher in your situation. Especially in a LPS/Softie dominant system as yours looks to be.

 

[RandyT5]

I feel the high alkalinity is likely the problem, although it could be trace elements (like copper) from the well water. The larger tank will evaporate more water, requiring more make up water, and you will end up concentrating any metals/minerals faster than in the 40g. You also likely perform larger water changes, in terms of percentage, on the smaller system.

I also wouldn't lower nutrients any more than you have. Higher alkalinity systems seem to need higher nutrients to protect the coral. I would want at least 20ppm NO3 and a 0.05ppm PO4 or higher in your situation. Especially in a LPS/Softie dominant system as yours looks to be.

Never even thought about that. We did have the well water tested, I should look back and check the metal levels. I remember it being very small, but lke you said, if I keep adding to it with top off then it will add up. I will be installing an RO/DI system this weekend, should I just do normal water changes with it? If the alk comes down, then the nutrients can also come down a bit too?

 

[RandyT5]

Heres the sheet for the well water