Dennis Cartier
Valuable Member
I am currently going through an interesting time with my frag tank. I had been practicing my husbandry on this tank in an effort to maintain nutrient levels in a zone for growth. Things were going well in this regard, for the first time, I was capable of keeping SPS and getting decent growth from them. Then I hit the wall, and things seemed to stall. Like most things with tanks, I only can only piece together the events that I missed, after the fact. I knew something was wrong with my water, but just what it was specifically, eluded me.
At the point where things started going bad, my nutrient level all looked fine (NO3=2, PO4=0.08, Alk=8.0 dkh). One thing that puzzled me was that coraline never took off in this tank. It would start, and then fade away, with no apparent reason.
I added a couple of T5's to my AP700, and that seemed to give the corals a bit of a boost, soon after, they again fell into stagnant growth.
Even though my nutrients are far from ULNS, I decided to start supplementing with Reef Energy, which I have had good results with in the past. Again, growth resumed.
About this time, I discovered I had nudi's, so I added Flat Worm Stop and Coral Booster to try to help my monti's to outgrow the nudis. Things were growing pretty well at this point.
The first sign of things to come was a large cyphastrea colony bleaching and RTN'ing. At the time, I was not overly concerned and thought it was only this colony that had an issue. However I should have taken more notice of it, as cyphastrea are tough corals, and this particular colony had been grown from a nickel sized frag and been through multiple tanks.
At this point, I was not even thinking there was a problem. Things were still growing as long as I fed a steady diet of Reef Energy and Coral Booster/FWS. I sent off a Triton test just to get a better understanding of my levels. When the ICP results came back, most things were inline with norms. My Mg was a bit high (1584 mg/L), ditto with Ca (476 mg/L), Sr was a bit low (6.45 mg/L) and Iodine was elevated (176 ug/L). My metals were all zero as well (Ni, Mo, V, Co, Cr, Mn, Fe). The Iodine was a bit of a concern, and I was at the time dosing part of my alk using Aqua Forest Component 2 which contains Iodine. The rest of my alk was being supplied by Kalk. I was doing this to try to offset out of balance alk depletion caused by a sulfur reactor I had in the system.
Around this point, one of the 3 BTA's that was in the tank started to go downhill. It started to lose colour and became very streaky with clear parts of its body. The tentacles became stubby and their numbers started to decline. I was concerned that this BTA was going to perish if I did not act. I upped its feeding to see if it was a nutrition deficiency. That seemed to help a bit, but only stopped the downward slide.
My plan was to do some big water changes to try to lower the Iodine a bit incase that was contributing to the issues. But first I needed to deal with the sulfur reactor causing the out of balance consumption. So I removed the sulfur reactor. The removal of the reactor caused my nutrients to begin to rise.
I started dosing MicroE at this point to see if the issues with the nem could be caused by a lack of trace elements. Within a few days, the nem started to regain its colour. Hmm, so something in the trace additive helped.
By this point my NO3 was sitting at 10 ppm and PO4 was rising fast (peaked at .255 pm). Even with these levels, I noticed that all the algae in the tank had disappeared. Very little algae on the glass. I didn't even have to scrap anymore. This got my attention. Normally elevated nitrate and phosphate would be a huge reason for algae outbreaks, and I was seeing the opposite. Rising nutrients and declining algae.
I was away on vacation and just returned this weekend. While I was away, the Reef Energy was not dosed. I did not want to push my luck with the tank sitter. Besides, the nutrients are sky high compared to previous levels. Upon my return, I noticed a coupe SPS had individual polyps that had bleached, and 2 other large cyphastrea colonies were showing signs like the first one, polyps bleaching and patches of bleaching. I also noticed large colonies of pallys (which I wish would die!!) were loosing colour, going grey instead of the electric green that they are normally.
Hmm, the same symptoms as the first cyphastrea colony, but with high nutrients instead of low. No algae outbreak, pally's losing colour. The pally's were the thing that gave me the clue I needed. They had done this in the past, and it was from too low of iron (or no iron as it were). In those cases, I dosed a bit of Iron and they would return to their former invasive glory.
I had been planning to add a fuge to try my hand at using chaeto for export. I had an H380 on hand to light it. Yesterday I completed the fuge and added a small ball of chaeto. While doing this, I added 20 G of water volume to fill the fuge. This morning I dosed 1 ml of Kent Iron and Manganese. I figured if I want the chaeto to grow, I had better make sure that the tank was not iron deficient.
When I got home tonight, I noticed that about 20% of the pally's had green returning to their centers. Yesterday it was only about 10% that had visible green. Polyp extension was also better on my Montis, Stellata, Stylophora, and LPS. Overall things appear to be improving. I have decided to use the ability to keep chaeto growing as a good indicator that things are not depleted. As long as my water can support macro algae, then it should be able to support corals. So far the little ball of chaeto is sitting on the bottom of the large fuge, fingers crossed that it will acclimate and start to grow.
Dennis
At the point where things started going bad, my nutrient level all looked fine (NO3=2, PO4=0.08, Alk=8.0 dkh). One thing that puzzled me was that coraline never took off in this tank. It would start, and then fade away, with no apparent reason.
I added a couple of T5's to my AP700, and that seemed to give the corals a bit of a boost, soon after, they again fell into stagnant growth.
Even though my nutrients are far from ULNS, I decided to start supplementing with Reef Energy, which I have had good results with in the past. Again, growth resumed.
About this time, I discovered I had nudi's, so I added Flat Worm Stop and Coral Booster to try to help my monti's to outgrow the nudis. Things were growing pretty well at this point.
The first sign of things to come was a large cyphastrea colony bleaching and RTN'ing. At the time, I was not overly concerned and thought it was only this colony that had an issue. However I should have taken more notice of it, as cyphastrea are tough corals, and this particular colony had been grown from a nickel sized frag and been through multiple tanks.
At this point, I was not even thinking there was a problem. Things were still growing as long as I fed a steady diet of Reef Energy and Coral Booster/FWS. I sent off a Triton test just to get a better understanding of my levels. When the ICP results came back, most things were inline with norms. My Mg was a bit high (1584 mg/L), ditto with Ca (476 mg/L), Sr was a bit low (6.45 mg/L) and Iodine was elevated (176 ug/L). My metals were all zero as well (Ni, Mo, V, Co, Cr, Mn, Fe). The Iodine was a bit of a concern, and I was at the time dosing part of my alk using Aqua Forest Component 2 which contains Iodine. The rest of my alk was being supplied by Kalk. I was doing this to try to offset out of balance alk depletion caused by a sulfur reactor I had in the system.
Around this point, one of the 3 BTA's that was in the tank started to go downhill. It started to lose colour and became very streaky with clear parts of its body. The tentacles became stubby and their numbers started to decline. I was concerned that this BTA was going to perish if I did not act. I upped its feeding to see if it was a nutrition deficiency. That seemed to help a bit, but only stopped the downward slide.
My plan was to do some big water changes to try to lower the Iodine a bit incase that was contributing to the issues. But first I needed to deal with the sulfur reactor causing the out of balance consumption. So I removed the sulfur reactor. The removal of the reactor caused my nutrients to begin to rise.
I started dosing MicroE at this point to see if the issues with the nem could be caused by a lack of trace elements. Within a few days, the nem started to regain its colour. Hmm, so something in the trace additive helped.
By this point my NO3 was sitting at 10 ppm and PO4 was rising fast (peaked at .255 pm). Even with these levels, I noticed that all the algae in the tank had disappeared. Very little algae on the glass. I didn't even have to scrap anymore. This got my attention. Normally elevated nitrate and phosphate would be a huge reason for algae outbreaks, and I was seeing the opposite. Rising nutrients and declining algae.
I was away on vacation and just returned this weekend. While I was away, the Reef Energy was not dosed. I did not want to push my luck with the tank sitter. Besides, the nutrients are sky high compared to previous levels. Upon my return, I noticed a coupe SPS had individual polyps that had bleached, and 2 other large cyphastrea colonies were showing signs like the first one, polyps bleaching and patches of bleaching. I also noticed large colonies of pallys (which I wish would die!!) were loosing colour, going grey instead of the electric green that they are normally.
Hmm, the same symptoms as the first cyphastrea colony, but with high nutrients instead of low. No algae outbreak, pally's losing colour. The pally's were the thing that gave me the clue I needed. They had done this in the past, and it was from too low of iron (or no iron as it were). In those cases, I dosed a bit of Iron and they would return to their former invasive glory.
I had been planning to add a fuge to try my hand at using chaeto for export. I had an H380 on hand to light it. Yesterday I completed the fuge and added a small ball of chaeto. While doing this, I added 20 G of water volume to fill the fuge. This morning I dosed 1 ml of Kent Iron and Manganese. I figured if I want the chaeto to grow, I had better make sure that the tank was not iron deficient.
When I got home tonight, I noticed that about 20% of the pally's had green returning to their centers. Yesterday it was only about 10% that had visible green. Polyp extension was also better on my Montis, Stellata, Stylophora, and LPS. Overall things appear to be improving. I have decided to use the ability to keep chaeto growing as a good indicator that things are not depleted. As long as my water can support macro algae, then it should be able to support corals. So far the little ball of chaeto is sitting on the bottom of the large fuge, fingers crossed that it will acclimate and start to grow.
Dennis
Last edited:
). I may even think about scraping soon!
