Please help, LPS dying slowly

[MellowReefer]

I can't seem to keep most LPS healthy much longer than 1.5 years. They look great at first, even seem to grow a little, and then start retracting and lose heads one by one. I have lost frogspawn, torch, hammer, and plate corals. They all looked great for at least 6 months, except for a plate coral that died within a few months.

Currently I have this frogspawn that I got about 1.5 years ago and you can see two heads are receding and I'm worried it will die like the others.

http://i1132.photobucket.com/albums/m563/lisarichter8/IMG_22211_zpsa8fb1f72.jpg

Also this trumpet purchased about a year ago:

http://i1132.photobucket.com/albums/m563/lisarichter8/IMG_22221_zps970f5e6c.jpg

[MellowReefer]

Parameters:

Salinity 1.025
Temp 78-79
Cal 440
Alk 9 (recently raised from 8.5)
Mag 1430
Nitrate 0
Phosphate 0 (Hanna)

I do about 10% water change every week and use carbon and gfo that I change once a month. For a long time I didn't use carbon or gfo and phosphate was 0.15 and I wanted to get rid of some algae so I started using it and now phosphate usually reads 0 on the hanna checker. I also have a refugium where chaeto grows very quickly.

[MellowReefer]

Also I recently added T5 lights back to my setup, for a long time I was just using Ecoxotic LED modules and thought the corals were dying because they were missing part of the light spectrum. The LEDs are just the standard blue and white. I added the ATI blue plus and coral plus bulbs in the T5 fixture.
http://i1132.photobucket.com/albums/m563/lisarichter8/IMG_22251_zpsb06b1abd.jpg

[MellowReefer]

A FTS to see how bright the lights are overall:

http://i1132.photobucket.com/albums/m563/lisarichter8/IMG_22241_zps710c6347.jpg

[MellowReefer]

Also wanted to mention I don't think it's a contaminate or anything in my tank, as I have had this SPS grow out of a rock from nothing (I first noticed it about 6 months ago when it was only 1 cm) and it seems to grow very quickly and I thought SPS are supposed to be more difficult than LPS

http://i1132.photobucket.com/albums/m563/lisarichter8/IMG_22271_zpsf50ec6d9.jpg

[Reefocd]

And birds nest are first to go in my tank, go figure ....

[IAShane]

How much do you feed the tank?

I grow lots of LPS. In my experience, the more I feed the happier they are.

Your Nitrate and Phosphate being 0 and the lack of algae in your tank kind of suggests you need to feed more. You have a tang and a foxface, a little algae growing here and there would be appreciated by them.

[discocarp]

I agree with feeding. It is hard to tell from the picture, but those pieces both look overly pale to me. While multiple things can cause that, the most common with LPS imo is not enough food.

[kurt_n]

Just a guess, but I'd go with a lighting issue for the same reason discocarp mentioned... everything looks too pale (bleached). In addition, there doesn't appear to be much coralline algae - to me, another sign of a lighting problem. At first, I thought it was too much light, but then reread and saw you were using those Ecoexotic panels. Doesn't really seem like people have had good luck with those, at least from the stuff I've read online.

When did you add those T5 lights back into the system? You could be right about the lack of full spectrum, and it might just take a while for the LPS to bounce back with the additional bulbs.

But just my opinion.

Oh... birdsnests are weird. If they're happy, they'll grow like a weed. My wife always said that she was pretty sure she would be able to see ours grow if she sat there and watched it long enough. But it doesn't take much to make them unhappy and then they're the first to die. I've had one do perfectly fine, but then lost it due to a mishap. Replaced it with another in the same exact place, and it never really did much and just withered and died.

[MellowReefer]

Thanks for the responses. Since my parameters have all been fairly stable, I was thinking it was lighting. I added the T5s just 3.5 months ago. I started another thread recently about LED lights http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=22789710#post22789710 and some people said their LPS were fine under similar LED (not full spectrum) but others had success with the AI Hydra lights which I am considering (what's another $1400 in this money pit?)

[MellowReefer]

I have 11 fish and I feed them twice a day, one cube of different frozen each time (I do rinse with RO water first) and also some spirulina pellets or nori flakes every day. I tried feeding the corals some small pellets for a few months but it didn't seem to help so I haven't done that in a while.

I tried to lower phosphate because of a major algae issue on the sandbed, which I'm not sure you can see from the photos, but it isn't helping and I spend an hour every week sifting out the algae from the sand. I sent a pic to John at Reefcleaners and he said it looks like turf algae which can be impossible to eradicate. So I might as well give up on keeping phosphate really low I guess? I don't mind some algae on the rocks. I thought it was good for LPS to have low phosphate? How high is too high and do you just remove the GFO until it gets too high again and then just run it until it gets to 0.05 and remove again?

[SaltyWalter]

I defiantly think this is low nutrients. LPS love that 'dirty water'. My best LPS growth was in a tank a couple yea ago that stayed around 15ppm nitrate. Phosphate stayed 0.5-0.8. I did have a couple sps in there too, just certain species of acros did ok, others did not.

As for your feeding, I was tossing in about 2 cubes total. (I used several different foods, not just mysis and brine, so I would cut a cube in half or even quarters) I also would mix in reef nutrition foods to the soak, or feed reef chill, coral frenzy, zoaplan & phytoplan from TLF before I would feed the frozen stuff. This was all in a 30 gallon system, AquaC remora and a aqua clear with chemipure lol So don't fear to feed those LPS!

Edit: also, about half the time I was spot feeding with all pumps and filters off, the other half was just skimmer turned off and flow still on.

[MellowReefer]

I'm going to try feeding Coral Frenzy a few times a week. Also maybe take the carbon and gfo out for a month and see what happens. I'd rather have to deal with algae then lose another coral, if too low nutrients is the problem. Considering the AI Hydra lights, otherwise maybe I'll toss the Ecoxotic lights except a few blues and get more T5. But now that I've gotten used to the shimmer of LED it's hard to go back to all T5.

[kurt_n]

Not to confuse the issue... but I will! :)

I know it's often said LPS like "dirty" tanks, and there are plenty of people that successfully keep LPS with less than pristine tanks. But there are also plenty of people that successfully keep LPS with low nutrient tanks.

Over the last 7 years, my tank has normally been in the undetectable to 1.0ppm nitrate range. Phosphates have been undetectable always. I run carbon and Purigen 24/7 and change it every month, and occassionally run GFO. From time to time, my nitrates would jump up to something in the 3.0 to 5.0 range... but never over 5.0. I do have some hair algae that I'm sure is consuming the nitrates/phosphates, but it's not "problem" algae - it's on a rock that I can remove and scrub when it gets too long, and it seems to stay on that rock!

With that said, I'd consider my tank successful. All my LPS and some easy to maintain SPS are growing just fine and healthy. My Turbinaria and Duncan get fragged often, and my Platygyra is about to take over one entire rock in my tank.

Just sayin... you can have a clean tank *and* happy corals. I'd just hate for you to purposefully make your tank "dirty" just to find out that's not the issue. No one likes to lose corals, but I'd sure try and eliminate everything else before throwing excess nutrients in the tank.

[EnderTurtle]

What is your water source RO RODI are you changing your filters on your RO filter?

[discocarp]

My tank is very clean but I still feed most of the LPS.

[IAShane]

Same here. I don't like the "dirty tank" saying either. I don't keep a dirty tank, but I keep a well fed tank.

I've gone periods where I don't change my maintenance schedule but back off of feedings and I can tell it when looking at my corals. I'm not saying instantly double feedings, but I think you should try to up the feedings a little bit at a time.

[MellowReefer]

Not to confuse the issue... but I will! :)

Don't worry, I was confused long before today :lol:

So you've had some of your LPS for as long as 7 years? What type of lights do you have? Do you have frogspawn, torch, and/or hammer corals?

[MellowReefer]

What is your water source RO RODI are you changing your filters on your RO filter?

I've always had the four-stage SpectraPure RODI with no issues at all, it's always 0 TDS until shortly after the color-change DI filter is used up and then I change them all (every 5-6 months) and I recently measured the output on the RO filter and it was still over 98% but its been two years so I will change that RO on the next change.

[kurt_n]

Don't worry, I was confused long before today :lol:

So you've had some of your LPS for as long as 7 years? What type of lights do you have? Do you have frogspawn, torch, and/or hammer corals?

Tank has been up for nearly 8 years. Oldest coral is probably 7 years in my tank... who knows how old it was before it got to me! Up until a month ago, I just ran 2x 96W PC bulbs, but changed them every 6 months - one 10,000k and one 420 actinic. 10 hour photoperiod. Just last month I switched to 2x 36inch BML fixtures. After a bit of fine tuning, things seem to be happy and back to growing again. I dimmed the BML fixtures to give me more or less the same amount of light as the PC bulbs, since those were working well for me.

One of my original corals was a torch, but it grew too quick and became hostile to everything in my tank. It didn't help I put it right in the center of the tank where it could reach everything with its sweepers. It was only in my tank for maybe 1-2 years before I sold it back to the LFS for more than I paid for it! :)

Never done frogspawn, but did try a hammer once. Poor placement and clumsiness on my part killed it after some salt creep fell off my tank rim and right onto the tissue. Didn't realize it until it was too late, and it never recovered.

Current corals are a Duncan, Tubrinaria, Lobophyllia, a couple Acan colonies, Platygyra, Lythophyllon, Blastomussa, some mushrooms, blue snowflake polyps *everywhere* and a Montiipora digitata. Here's a photo from January 2013. The Birdsnest on the upper left is where the Monti is now and the thing on the top of the right rock (can't remember what is was) RTNed on me shortly after I got it. The Duncan and Turbinaria are constantly getting pruned, so their size varies from time to time!

<a href="http://s237.photobucket.com/user/K_Nelson_photos/media/jan2013.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff156/K_Nelson_photos/jan2013.jpg" border="0" alt="January 2013 photo jan2013.jpg"/></a>

[Fishmommy]

both tanks pictured in this thread are lovely!

[kurt_n]

I should probably say... I definitely feed my LPS. It is a well fed tank, but I try to keep the nitrates as low as possible. I don't have any real schedule for feeding the corals, but when I'm feeding frozen (Mysis or Rod's), if the fish don't seem hungry, I spot feed the left overs to the Duncan and Acans. That probably happens once a week, at the most. I feed the fish directly over the Lobo (with pumps off), so it gets whatever the fish don't eat. I used to feed the Platygyra, but stopped several years ago. It didn't seem to care, as it's on its way to taking over that rock.

So yeah... spot feeding of the LPS can never hurt. But I wouldn't go about trying to get poorer quality water.

I don't have any experience with those Ecoexotic strips, but I know when I was researching what LEDs to get I looked at them. It didn't seem like they really had the oomph to even do LPS at any depth of the tank. That and the lack of a broader spectrum made me rule those out early. I wonder if you just don't have enough light with those. You might have enough to keep them just barely hanging on, but not enough for them to thrive. Do you have access to a PAR meter, or have you talked to anyone else that runs those lights?

[MellowReefer]

Thanks for sharing Kurt, you have a beautiful tank. That's what I want, your corals look awesome and you have nice coralline algee. I don't know if it's my lights or something else missing, but I can only seem to grow coralline on the walls (where I have to scrape it off) :( I was hoping by getting my phosphates down the green algae on the rocks would be gone and coralline could grow.

I'm not going to try to make my water dirty, I think for now I will keep running the carbon and gfo and just start feeding the corals a few times a week with the new coral food I just got. Maybe not strive for 0.00 phosphate by using less gfo and waiting longer to change it out. I have never gotten a nitrate reading in this tank, and I think it's because I used this stuff a few years ago called "natural nitrate reducer" (an IO product) and it gets stuck in your rocks and apparently works forever at consuming the nitrate. Not sure if it's that or the seachem matrix rocks (biomedia) I have that are supposed to lower nitrates. But I've tried several nitrate tests and always get 0.

When I bought the Ecoxotic lights, I didn't know how much I didn't know about lighting. I just read the reviews online, but probably the people posting reviews are only giving their initial impression of how they look and short term results, not long term health of corals. No, I don't know anyone with a par meter. I am going to do more research on the Hydra lights before I pull the trigger, but so far from what I've read they sound great, and I like the idea of having the programmable lights (with sunrise, sunset, etc). I'm sick of all the wires and timers that I have with this hodgepodge of lights.

[MellowReefer]

Here's a video of my tank when everything was doing well. Makes me so sad to watch. This was about 10 months ago. Haven't taken any videos lately :( You can see the corals that died, a really nice torch, frogspawn, hammer and LT plate.

http://s1132.photobucket.com/user/lisarichter8/media/HDV_0132_zps99e86c09.mp4.html

[MellowReefer]

http://s1132.photobucket.com/user/lisarichter8/media/HDV_0132_zps99e86c09.mp4.html

http://s1132.photobucket.com/user/lisarichter8/media/HDV_0132_zps99e86c09.mp4.html

[EnderTurtle]

Duno if this is related but my hammer coral seems to not be doing well anymore after i got the chaeto algae from you.

Hes not dead but hes not inflated. Going to keep him in the shade.

[justthewife]

Are all your fish reef safe that you have in there? Someone may be nipping at the corals (just a thought). Also what came to mind is flow. What kind of flow do you have in the tank? From the hammers I have, the flow needs to be random flow.

[knukles55]

you know I run leds on my tank my lps started losing some color than I started reading about feeding pellets to your lps and I tried the expirement 2 weeks go by and my polyp extension got rediculous on my acans :) my fish and my corals love spectrum pellets lol

[MellowReefer]

Duno if this is related but my hammer coral seems to not be doing well anymore after i got the chaeto algae from you.

Hes not dead but hes not inflated. Going to keep him in the shade.

Hi there! No, whatever my problem is, I don't think it's contagious from some chaeto. Plus remember my corals only start to die after looking great for at least a year.

I hope yours gets better.

[MellowReefer]

Are all your fish reef safe that you have in there? Someone may be nipping at the corals (just a thought). Also what came to mind is flow. What kind of flow do you have in the tank? From the hammers I have, the flow needs to be random flow.

No I don't have any fish that are questionable at all. Well, some people say foxface, but they are usually going after zoas, but anyway mine has never been seen nipping any corals.

I have low-moderate flow, just gently moving them, but I don't have the type of powerheads with random setting, just the cheap regular koralias.

[MellowReefer]

you know I run leds on my tank my lps started losing some color than I started reading about feeding pellets to your lps and I tried the expirement 2 weeks go by and my polyp extension got rediculous on my acans :) my fish and my corals love spectrum pellets lol

Thanks for the tip, I just started with coral frenzy today and since I have spectrum pellets I'm going to try those a few times a week also.