going nuts

1mg

1mg

New member
so im going nuts and ready to through in the towel. my perameters are always good, the only thing high is calcium. the ony things serviving are the frags smitty hooked me up with. yesterday i picked up a beautiful and large frogspawn. and now it is dying, but the torch from smitty is hanging on. my zoas dont open, but one or two heads. i have even started dosing the vit c. i just took of the optics on my leds because how close they are to the water and at all the lfs leds are still high up. the are dimmed as low as they go. the skimmer is skimming like made. as far as every thing on paper it should be awsome. i had a cyano bloom and i just licked it, but still problems. im ripping my hair out. plz help.
 
Eww! U licked cyano???

Seriously thou, u sound like u just need to stand back and let your tank go on cruise control for a few weeks. High calcium levels are not inherently bad. U need to just catch a fresh breath of air and not worry about your tank being "perfect". It will all work itself out over time.
 
Agree with fishbeard just let your tank settle down. Sometimes you just have to let nature take it's course we have to remember nothing happens over night in this hobby don't rush what you can't have right away. Alot of successful tank are years into there maturity have have been established with great water parameters. When was your last water change?
 
All good things come to those who wait
Make sure your not cooking the corals under the LEDs.
To much light could be hurting them
 
thanks for the advice. about 5 days ago i changed 5gal. with rock that would be over 10%.
 
give us all your parameters, temp, cal, alk, mg, nitrate, p04, how long has it been setup, type of skimmer, SG, and stop using Vit C. on a tank that small i would suggest a 2 bucket water change, 5 or 7 gallons each depending on which bucket you use. make sure there isnt a penny or anything that may contaminate your system.
 
I had my calcium to 700 one time oops but didnt kill anything cant be good for pumps though. If u had cyno and just got rid of it something is out of whack . How old is tank , temp , salt, salenity etc need more info . We all go through this . Give info and somebody will have the answer
 
Vitamin C can be a great carbon source, but in a smaller tank it is a lot easier to overdose (which can cause lower oxygen levels due to the increase in bacteria). I would stop the Vitamin C for the time being until you can isolate your problem. In regards to the LEDs, how long have you had them? If the corals were doing fine under them for some time, it is probably not a lighting issue. If you just got the LEDs, they are known to deliver a lot of par and can give light shock to corals at first, go slow with ramping them up and placing corals higher in the tank. We need the following (as was stated above) in order to best help you:

  • Temp:
  • Salinity:
  • Calcium:
  • Alk:
  • Mag:
  • Ammonia:
  • Nitrite:
  • Nitrate:
  • Phosphates:

Other things to check for would be someone spraying chemicals (windex, febreeze, scented candles, etc) in the area. Are you using RO/DI water or tap? Try running some carbon to help clean up any possible chemicals that are in the tank water (rinse the carbon first). And like was said above, take a step back and breathe.
 
i will check all perameters, i just did a couple days ago, so everyone knows exacty what they are now. i have to wait till my wife gets home to check. i have the baby. every thing was not ok, that is why i started the vit c. i am using puff's guide lines on the dosing. i have had the leds the whole time, it was not till i had been visiting lfs that i noticed that they had them higher up, so with the 60 degree optics i had on i think it might be light shock, so i took off the optics and dimmed them all the way. the tank just didnt look that bright so i didnt think that was the problem till now. the vit c is also helping great with the skimming. my shimmer is diy but works awsome, you can visably see it working. im using ro water but phosephates are nill. i will check and post all perameters as soon as she gets home. thanks for the help
 
Light shock happens when you first introduce a coral to a new lighting system or intensity of light. If the LEDs have been over your tank for awhile and the corals have been open then the way you will notice if they are getting too much light is they will start to bleach / lose color. If this wasn't the case then I would return your LED back to where it was, as dramatically reducing the light to the coral is not good for the corals either. I used the guide for VC on my 265 gallon tank and still haven't reached 5ppm because anytime I do come close to that number I get a bacteria bloom, which dramatically reduce oxygen levels in the tank, which is bad news for fish and coral. I would suggest as has been said above to stop the VC dosing for a bit, it isn't a magic cure, and try to isolate the issue at hand, then slowly start dosing VC again and see what happens.

1mg said:
i will check all perameters, i just did a couple days ago, so everyone knows exacty what they are now. i have to wait till my wife gets home to check. i have the baby. every thing was not ok, that is why i started the vit c. i am using puff's guide lines on the dosing. i have had the leds the whole time, it was not till i had been visiting lfs that i noticed that they had them higher up, so with the 60 degree optics i had on i think it might be light shock, so i took off the optics and dimmed them all the way. the tank just didnt look that bright so i didnt think that was the problem till now. the vit c is also helping great with the skimming. my shimmer is diy but works awsome, you can visably see it working. im using ro water but phosephates are nill. i will check and post all perameters as soon as she gets home. thanks for the help
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ok i will stop the vit c. i found the colprit but dont knoe why it just spiked. ka 179 which is a sudden jump from 125 phosphate is 0 ph has droped to 7.8 from 8.2 the other day. ammonia has suddenly spiked to .25 along with nitrite at 1ppm nitrate is 0 calcium has been staying around 1200ppm but i dont see build up and it isn't snowing in my tank. i had only been checking nitrate not nitrite because i know nitrate is the by product. nitrate had been about 20ppm for a week but has now dropped. yesterday when i got the frogspawn i got a 6 line and a small damsel. i also had recentry disturbed the sand and rock work looking for a xenia that blew away. i dont know if this is the reason for the ammonia and nitrite or if it was the new fish. it had been 0. also the alk spike is weird. i normaly add calcium carbonate to raise ph but with the alk spike what should i do. i opend the windows but it raised my temp tp 81 with the heat wave we have been having. it was 78 but went up over the last couple days. now im freaking out because it was literaly 3 or 4 days at most scince i checked the perameters.
 
im gana do as much off a water change as i can because im almost out of salt. but i need the cause of the spikes
 
1200ppm calcium? .25 ammonia? what test kits are you using? if either of these true you have troubles. whats the age of the tank?
 
3 or 4 months. the calcium has been that wayand after a lot of research the calcium isn't such an issue unless it looks like it is snowing. the ammonia is a major problem. i dont get how the the spike in ammonia and nitrites happend when the nitrate just went down unless it was from disturbing the sand or cyano covering the rocks befor i got that taken care of
 
not really true on calcium, with it that high you are going to have alk balance and uptake issues, stoney corals will start to suffer above 550ppm, the dramatic swing is likely what pissed off your recent acquisitions, if the tank it came from was normal seawater levels you would have had to do a crazy slow acclimation to cover that gap.
 
1mg said:
3 or 4 months. the calcium has been that wayand after a lot of research the calcium isn't such an issue unless it looks like it is snowing. the ammonia is a major problem. i dont get how the the spike in ammonia and nitrites happend when the nitrate just went down unless it was from disturbing the sand or cyano covering the rocks befor i got that taken care of
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Sweetie, that calcium is higher by twice the level it should be. I don't see how it's not already percipitating.

wtf.gif
 
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