Coral trouble

[tjm9331]

Hi guys, hoping you can help me out.

I went away to the UK for 2 weeks on business, had my daughter feed the fish and add top off water. Everything was fine and all the corals looked great when I got back.

I performed a water change a few days after I got back and again everything was fine. The following Saturday I started feeding the corals reef roids, the corals seemed to love it. The following week I then had a Gatorade birds nest in the tank that ended up bleaching overnight I tested my tank and found that alk was around 6, I increased the alk to between 8/9 and chalked up the bleaching to low alk.

I again fed on Saturday the reef roids, and now my corals seem to be going down hill all of a sudden. my pocilipora has completely bleached, as of last night my digi was half bleached and my red monti cap is about 1/4 bleached and I noticed that one of my acans seemed to be melting.

My parameters as of last night are...

ph 8.1
alk 8dkh
Calc 400
Salinity 1.026
temp 77.3
Mag 1490
Nitrates 2-3
Phos 0.08

I've been using the same lights since I started the tank and before this past week everything was thriving and growing. I'm really not sure what is going on.

I know phosphates are a bit high but its traditionally run that high for a long time. The tank has been up and running at least a year and a half.

I am battling an aiptasia outbreak but I just use boiling RODI water to combat those.

I'm really at a loss as to whats happening to my corals, any thought you guys might have would be greatly appreciated

The only change has been the addition of target feeding reef roids

[mcgyvr]

An Alk swing will most certainly cause problems with SPS corals..
In general its been stated that you don't want to change alk by more than .5dKH over a 24 hour period..
Going from 6 to 8-9 can/will potentially cause problems..
Its hard to tell from your post how fast you changed that alk though..
Was that in one day that you corrected? or over 1 week or what?

Your other parameters (including nitrates/phosphates) are just fine though...

[tjm9331]

Originally Posted by mcgyvr

An Alk swing will most certainly cause problems with SPS corals..
In general its been stated that you don't want to change alk by more than .5dKH over a 24 hour period..
Going from 6 to 8-9 can/will potentially cause problems..
Its hard to tell from your post how fast you changed that alk though..
Was that in one day that you corrected? or over 1 week or what?

Your other parameters (including nitrates/phosphates) are just fine though...

it was unfortunately overnight, I panicked and realize now it was a mistake to increase that quickly.

I'm being told by a friend that it could also be the salt I'm using? about a month and a half ago I switched over to Fritz Pro red box which is the higher alk formula. My friend is telling me that its the Fritz that's killing my coral, is there any validity to this?

[Tripod1404]

Yes, swings in alk, especially from low to high will rapidly kill SPS corals. The alk spike can be from dosing or from a high alk salt on a low alk consuming tank. Unless you have large amounts of daily alk consumption (something like 7-10dKH equivalent of alk needed to be added), you dont need a high alk salt like fritz pro.

[mcgyvr]

Originally Posted by tjm9331

it was unfortunately overnight, I panicked and realize now it was a mistake to increase that quickly.

I'm being told by a friend that it could also be the salt I'm using? about a month and a half ago I switched over to Fritz Pro red box which is the higher alk formula. My friend is telling me that its the Fritz that's killing my coral, is there any validity to this?

To blanket state that one specific salt mix is killing your corals without clarification behind that statement would be wrong..

Any/all salt mixes can be used.. BUT there are differences between them..
Some higher in alk,etc...
Corals like stability.. Changing from any salt to another can cause instability and problems..

It could be higher in alk than what you currently salt mix BUT there are ways to adapt/adjust to that salt just fine too.. Maybe thats reducing dosing amounts as your water change water is helping to replenish the alkalinity level,etc...
One can easily maintain alk in the 8dkh range with a salt mix thats 13dkh.. You just can't do large water changes at one time..

Lately its been much easier to maintain ultra low/low nutrient levels and the belief (there seems to be truth to it) is that if your nutrient levels are higher your corals can tolerate/adapt to higher alk levels... And if lower then they can't..

But.. in this case.. A swing caused your problems nothing more.. Live and learn..

In general its "easiest" to choose a salt mix that mixes up as close as possible to the parameters you wish to maintain.. That way you can do massive water changes if needed and not cause any parameters to swing..

[Uncle99]

It’s not as much as the ranges ( and those posted are great) its the stability of those ranges.
A change in anything, but especially ALK, not good results, softies recover well, SPS, not so much. Keep your water in your posted ranges at all times

[tjm9331]

Thank you both for your input it is very much appreciated.

Before I left for the UK I was performing weekly water changes and this (I believe) was keeping everything stable.

When I came back after 2 weeks I did another water change but also added a few more pieces of coral. At the time I didn't think I was at the point, stock wise, where I needed to really start being vigilant about my parameters but obviously I was wrong.

I'm hoping once I get back to weekly water changes this will again keep things stable but I'm going to start testing weekly to make sure and if needed start a dosing regiment, most likely using my top off water and kalkwasser.

thanks for the help!

[outssider]

in this hobby you will sooner or later need to do some sort of dosing....might as well get that in your head...