What causes this?

[DayFive]

My tank is acting funny. The first thing I noticed is my xenia shrunk about half its size and is a little darker in color. Then a new frag I got (hema...something hard coral) started from the bottom up turning white and in 5 days was dead. Another one of my hard corals started doing basically the same thing but stopped about one inch from the bottom of the colony. Now it seems to be holding steady. My calcium is high and I did a big water change right b4 this started (35%). Any incite on what would cause this?

Josh

[DayFive]

Here are my water parameters as of today (all in ppm)
Calc 580
KH 161.1 (9dKH)
Nitrate 0
PH 8.0 ( I like this higher need to get more buffer)
Phosphate 0

[Clown-N-Around]

What is your temperature? I have had hard corals bleach and xenia unhappy from a temperature rise.

Your calcium is a little high compared to your dKh, sudden changes could cause bleaching and xenia unhappiness, but the levels you have are not so far out of range that I think they would cause them on their own.

[DayFive]

Temp at 75 most of the time. The highest I have seen it is 78.

[DayFive]

Oh ya salt at 1.023

[Frankenpora]

What are you using to suplement your trace elements?
Many salts lack good amounts of magnesium and I believe Iodine could cause the xenia issue, but I have had xenia do very similar things for no apparent reason. Just a thought.

Also how long had the other coral been in the tank?
Is it Maricultured by chance?
What lighting are you using?

I have had similar problems, mainly with maricultured sps.
I suppose you could have acro eating crabs...
http://www.pbase.com/clippo/image/92110781

[DayFive]

I use reef plus by seachem as directed on the bottle. I also was feeding my corals DT plankton. It stared to stink when I opened the bottle towards the end of its exp date. The bottle says right on it that it will stink and not to worry about it but I pitched it anyway and will go to some kind of marine snow.

The frag that died was from Vike over at frontrange aquatics. It was a piece of a big coral that he had to break up because of gorilla crabs. He said it was from his wholesaler but didn’t mention if it was maricultured.

The other coral has been in my tank since November and doing well but not growing very fast. I think that is due to my cheap 150w MH bulbs. I have 2 MH 150 HQI DE 20ks and 220 w of VHO one bulb blue one daylight.

I haven’t seen any acro crabs but it is possible I will keep an eye out.

Josh

[Frankenpora]

Yeah you can tell when DT's goes bad...
I would pop back over and see if the main colony or other
frags are doing the same thing or not, and test your magnesium.

[DayFive]

I think I will do that. Thanks for the help!

Josh

[jonthefb]

what do you have for a setup? Deep sand bed? how much? Live Rock? How much? How long has the tank been set up for? What kind of filtration are you using? How often are you doing water changes? What kind of salt are you using? Exactly what species of coral are we talking about? What brand of lights/ballast are you using? How old are the light bulbs in your fixture? What is your salinity? How about ammonia and nitrite?

lots of questions that need to be answered so we can provide help

several things that i see from your posting.

1. Your calcium and alkalinity are out of balance. You need to stop dosing your calcium supplement and only dose your alkalinity one until you get your alkalinity up around 12 DKH. Then you need to continue testing both Ca and Alk and adjust your dosing accordingly. Also as jeremy pointed out, what is your magnesium testing at? and what are you using for calcium/alk supplement?

2. Your temperature is considerably low. i dont know of many people who keep their reef tanks at 75 degrees. Most try to shoot for around 78-80, and i personally like to recommend 82-84. (the average temperature of reefs around the world right now is 82 degrees) work on getting your tank temp up, and make sure that it is stable. You do not want the tank temp to fluctuate more than 2-3 degrees in a day. Check the tank temp in the middle of the day when it is warmest out, vs. in the middle of the night when it is coldest, and make sure that your not moving more than 2-3 degrees.

cheers~!
jon

[miwoodar]

1. Your calcium and alkalinity are out of balance. You need to stop dosing your calcium supplement and only dose your alkalinity one until you get your alkalinity up around 12 DKH. Then you need to continue testing both Ca and Alk and adjust your dosing accordingly. Also as jeremy pointed out, what is your magnesium testing at? and what are you using for calcium/alk supplement?

+1. Agreed, calcium and alkalinity are not perfect. I don't know if I would raise the alkalinity though. If it were me, I would maintain the alkalinity where it is (9 dKH is good or even a little high IMHO) while the calcium drops over time. If you bump your alk to 12 while you have a calcium level of 580 ppm, you are seriously risking a precipitation event. While such an event wouldn't be fatal, you'll just end up having to adjust your way back out of it if it occurred. Also, you would have to clean the precipitate off of all of your pumps and heaters.

Here's a good article on the subject of adjusting the ca and alk relationship...
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

And I always throw this in...
http://jdieck1.home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chemcalc.html

[miwoodar]

^^^Correction...

Jon - actually, after reviewing that article, pushing the alkalinity up as you advised might be the best solution to the imbalance. I wish the graphs included a line to help understand where the typical snow storm threshold actually is.

Adding alkalinity very slowly will greatly reduce the possibility of a getting a snow storm.

[Clown-N-Around]

FWIW - I shoot for 11 dKh and keep my temp at around 81 (80-83).

I agree with Mike and Jon that HOW you fix your Calcium/Alkalinity imbalance is going to be key. As I said originally, the actual values that you have right now wouldn't hurt anything short term, but any big fluctuation could.

So, if you could post the method(s) you currently use for calcium and alkalinity adjustments, we can help you figure out how to change that (slowly) to get it going in the right direction.

[jonthefb]

no worries mike! i always recommend customers keeping their alk around 10-12 DKH for the sole purpose for helping to precipitate phosphates out of solution, and therefore helping to keep nuisance algae under control.

In all of my years of reefkeeping, i have never encountered a precipitation event, even when running alk at a DKH of near 14!

cheers~!
jon

[miwoodar]

I had an event about two years ago and it scared the junk out of me. The water was so cloudy that I couldn't even see an inch into the water column - and that is NOT an exageration. I was running high calcium (~575) and high dKH (?, high but not rediculously so) at the time and accidently dumped a few gallons of saturated kalk into the sump when I had intended to put only about a gallon in. Everything lived but my pumps were literally caked in ppt. It ppt'd so much that I ended up spending the next week bumping my calcium and alkalinity back up to NSW levels. I ordered my first ATO immediately afterwards and will never run a tank without one again.

I'm currently running my tank at 8 dKH and 450 ppm Ca2+. I get localized ppt where my kalkwasser is introduced to the system that I manually remove from time to time.

[DayFive]

-about 2 inch sand bed
-55 lbs of LR
-setup for little more than a year
-wet dry filtration
-monthly water changes (20%)
-kent salt
-Hamilton duel 150 watt fixture with cheap bulbs soon to be replaced with Ushio also 220 w of VHO one blue one daylight Aro e ballast(all one year old and soon to be replaced)
-not sure on the corals they didn’t know at the LFS
-salinity 1.023
-ammonia and nitrite 0 ppm
-only thing I add is reef plus vitamins and reef buffer that raises the alk and ph

I took your advise Frankenpora and checked at frontrange aquatics and they said that their frags died too. Being the standup store that they are they gave me a credit for the coral and I will get some rainbow monti when I get my tank stable. If you haven’t been in there you got to go it is like a frag swap every day AWESOME LFS!!

Jon I will slowly raise the temp first and then slowly raise my alk. Thanks for the advise.

Here are some pics

xenia b4
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/156059rctwo.jpg
xenia after
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/156059rcthree.jpg
unknown coral
][IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/156059rcfour.jpg
part of my tank
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/156059rc.jpg

[fishfanatic06]

If my alk goes above 9 or 10 i start to get slow tissue necrosis on my sps.

[DayFive]

What is your calcium usually?

[DayFive]

That sounds like a crazy and stressful event Mike glad it worked out in the end.

[Frankenpora]

Good to know.
Has your other coral stabalized or is it still receding?
Looks Like an acropora to me.( a bit more touchy than some )
I did'nt notice alot of hard coral in your tank, So you may
be doing to much with the buffering and such, unless there
are more SPS,LPS that I can't see, If your salt is good.
I am not sure about the Kent salt, Someone else will know
better on that. If you are just getting into SPS I would get
some Montipora, Maybe Hydnophora, to start(( I know the
hydno is debatable as to SPS, LPS )) sorry had to throw that
in for my fellow reef geeks. Anyway sometimes less is more.
;)
Hey, if I was to do only one change to your system it
would definatly be going to a refugium from wet/dry.

[DayFive]

Other coral seems to be doing fine.

I have been tossing around the idea of a refugium. My sump is pretty small though and I think I would have to get a new one. It is less than 10 g. I have a 65w pc setup that I could use for light. Do you know of any do it yourself instructions for converting a wet dry to a refugium.

Josh

[Frankenpora]

They are pretty straight forward.
I don't have a drawing right now, but I am sure that any LFS worth there salt... he he
would go over it with you, there are a couple tricks.
You will probably get some posts following mine on
this and if you don't get help in short order I can show you
how to do it if your in Greeley.

[DayFive]

Cool! I need to head down there anyways to check out Jon's store.

I was just going to take out the bio balls replace it with LR rubble and clurpa and hang a light above it. I’m sure it is a bit more complicated than that but I just haven’t researched it yet.

Josh

[Frankenpora]

Not much more complicated than that.
But I would go new or use another sump , because it will take 24 hours for the silicone to dry.
But IMO if you did exaclty what you said, and kept the sand
and other stuff from getting sucked into the pump you would
still outperform the wet dry. Just my opinion.

[Fish Friendly]

I am in the process of changing my wet dry also and was to ld to only take out a hand full every day or two of the bio balls then i will proceed to better the enviorment for my reef and fish

[Crit21]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11897723#post11897723 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by DayFive
My calcium is high and I did a big water change right b4 this started (35%). Any incite on what would cause this?

Josh

Sounds like cause and effect. Was the new water at the same temp and pH as the tank water? Did you let the new salt water sit overnight before adding it to the tank, or did you mix it and add it right away?

[jonthefb]

I am in total agreeance that the wet dry you are running is no doubt a hinderance to your tank progression.

Instead of taking a handful of bioballs out every day, take them all out, re work your wet dry (putting sand down, moving the drain/return, etc) and then put the bio balls back in the sump, but place them in nylon pantihose that is either hung over the side of the sump, or sen on the new sand bed bottom. this will allow all of the denitrifying bacteria that you have established the opportunity to reproduce and innoculate the new sand. This will also allow sycon sponges, copeopods, amphipods, isopods, etc that may be currently colonizing your bio-balls, the opportunity to get out and about in the new wet dry!

cheers~!
jon

[sscherin]

You could always do an Add on refuge..
Mine is just a 5 gallon tub drilled for a return line..
I raised it up on a stand to get ithe return pipe then the sump and feed it with a small power head.

CPR also makes a nice HOB refuge you could hang on the sump.

This is how I did my new refuge.. cost about $10
http://www.pontiacs.org/pics/projects/65tank/IMGP5659.JPG

[Fish Friendly]

wow i dont think i am that good yet

[DayFive]

Wow that is awesome for 10 bucks. I will keep looking into it and I defiantly like what Jon said with the bio balls so I can keep all the goodies my tank has produced. I will take pics of the conversion.

The salt mixed for about 3 days b4 going into the tank. The temp was about the same as the tank maybe 1 or 2 deg higher. I think I will take my water into the LFS and have them test it and make sure my API test kit isn’t wacked.

Thanks to all for the advice and wisdom.

Josh