Losing SPS

C

Chad_Pedersen

Premium member
I started carbon dosing and adjusting phosphates over the past month or two as my NO3 have been between 25-50ppm and PO4 around .1-.2. However, within the last two weeks I’m literally losing SPS daily. These are all frags and some I’ve had for months.

Is carbon dosing my issue? NO3 is still locked on 25ppm while dosing 50ml of vinegar/day. My phosphates did bounce around a little bit between .02 and as high as .4 with GFO. But for the past 2 weeks PO4 has been between .02 and .1.

I’m going to stay the course with carbon dosing since I’d like to get NO3 down and get back to mostly SPS. Just frustrating seeing a new frag each day RTN. I have 1 gig, haddoni and a mag anemone that are all doing well. The few LPS that I have are fine as well.

Alk has swung a bit between 7.5 and 8.5 but I have tried to keep any swing less than 1 dkh.

Is it my swings in alk and/or PO4? I’m guessing that’s it, or I’ve got some bacteria in there that’s going after acros.

Or I just quit chasing numbers messing with NO3 and PO4 and let it ride. Didn’t have issues but I could grow SPS before all this.

Also, I have an ICP test on the way to see if something else is going on.

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I never really had success with dosing vinegar or vodka because it seemed to piss off my acros, but I swear by biopellets (even though some people have had tank crashes from them).

When your nutrients are that elevated, I do think it can kill your acros. You said your PO4 is .02-.4. That’s a huge range and I doubt your test kit even goes that high. If you meant .02-.04, you’re in the sweet spot.

I don’t think a 1 DKH swing will do much or else I’d have a tank of dead acros.

I’m not sure if the size of your tank, but water changes kill most evils (I assume you’re using RODI). I’d do some 30% water changes for 3-4 days in a row. When my corals look bad, I do water changes. When my corals look happy, I go six or so weeks between water changes.
 
Sorry to hear about the losses. Cleaning out my 90 I saw a pile of acro frags and plugs that when I started, I just kept throwing behind rock work. Live and learn...

can you tell us more about the tank? how old is it? have you checked on all the parameters? have you made any other adjustments recently?
 
My guess is on the PO4 swing. Going from .2 to .02 is a big swing. Any big swing in parameters is bad for acros.
 
I’m with Sawdonkey, not a fan of dosing vinegar or vodka. Water changes are your best friend. Careful with gfo also, too much can burn sps then cause them to rtn.
 
Thanks all I’m guessing it’s the swing in parameters and the carbon dosing. PO4 was tested with a Hanna ULR.

CA ranges from 430-450
Salinity dead on at 1.026, use an auto top off.

Tank is a 180 gallon set up nearly 10 months. I have a 40g as the sump and run vertex reactors for GAC and GFO. Use an eshopps S-300 for skimmer.

Running giesseman 72” spectra with three 250w radium bulbs. The four T5 bulbs in use are three ATI blue plus and one purple plus.

Using RODI for water changes. Dosing BRS two part for CA and ALK, 100ml and 80ml respectively.

When I started the carbon dosing is when my PO4 started elevating and then I’d try and drop it with GFO. Guessing too much instability.

I’ve pulled the doser for carbon offline. Over the past 2-3 months messing with NoPox and then trying vinegar I’ve had nothing g but headaches. Prior too, I could put in almost any frag and it would live. Not look like pics of some people’s tanks, so I started to get envious and go down the path of chasing numbers rather than be patient and let the frags mature.

Going to stick with water changes, reduce feedings to reduce NO3. Will use GFO minimally to get PO4 back in line when needed.

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FWIW, I had serious issues when I used GFO several years ago. I lost quite a few sps. I stopped using it, and everything is fine again.
 
Chad_Pedersen said:
I started carbon dosing and adjusting phosphates over the past month or two as my NO3 have been between 25-50ppm and PO4 around .1-.2. However, within the last two weeks I’m literally losing SPS daily. These are all frags and some I’ve had for months.

Is carbon dosing my issue? NO3 is still locked on 25ppm while dosing 50ml of vinegar/day. My phosphates did bounce around a little bit between .02 and as high as .4 with GFO. But for the past 2 weeks PO4 has been between .02 and .1.

I’m going to stay the course with carbon dosing since I’d like to get NO3 down and get back to mostly SPS. Just frustrating seeing a new frag each day RTN. I have 1 gig, haddoni and a mag anemone that are all doing well. The few LPS that I have are fine as well.

Alk has swung a bit between 7.5 and 8.5 but I have tried to keep any swing less than 1 dkh.

Is it my swings in alk and/or PO4? I’m guessing that’s it, or I’ve got some bacteria in there that’s going after acros.

Or I just quit chasing numbers messing with NO3 and PO4 and let it ride. Didn’t have issues but I could grow SPS before all this.

Also, I have an ICP test on the way to see if something else is going on.

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Dosing Carbon (Vinegar or Voska) is dangerous for new sps frags. 50ml/day is too much for me. If you want to dose it, do it very little or you could mix with RO/DI water like 200ml-300ml per gallon of water then dosing 20ml for 3 time a day.
 
Keep in mind you need Po4 in order to remove nitrates with carbon. My suggestion is to start with significantly smaller amounts.
 
The PO4 is coming from somewhere. It’s unlikely that it’s leaching from your rock after 10 months. It’s likely your fish food. Limit it.

I’m also not a fan of running carbon in a reactor. It makes your water look great, but my acros always act strange with it. If you want to polish your water, just run it for a day or two and turn off the reactor.
 
Sawdonkey said:
The PO4 is coming from somewhere. It’s unlikely that it’s leaching from your rock after 10 months. It’s likely your fish food. Limit it.

I’m also not a fan of running carbon in a reactor. It makes your water look great, but my acros always act strange with it. If you want to polish your water, just run it for a day or two and turn off the reactor.
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I’ve lightened my fish load and have cut back on feedings. Got rid of a Hawaiian trigger that I saw bite at some stalks, a matted filefish that wasn’t doing his job on aiptasia, and a quoyi parrotfish that I suspect was nipping...if he wasn’t nipping he at least was always knocking over my frags all the time biting the rock.

I know I tend to feed a little heavy. Also have done a few rounds of water changes about 25 gallons. Will retest here in a few days and see if my nitrates are coming down. I’m seeing better PE and no more RTN. Also raised my Mag as it was around 1185.


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Also sent an ICP test out on Saturday. Hoping to hear back in a week if I’ve got anything else in my water. Tried using a heavy magnet to see if I inadvertently dropped a screw in the tank when installing my light mount, but found nothing. Will post back with results.


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Just to follow up on this, ICP test didn’t reveal anything other than elevated nutrients and salinity being a little low. Since the losses I’ve stopped running GFO and carbon dosing and did some big water changes over a few days to lower nitrates.

Have kept alk and ca stable and added a bunch of SPS frags and all seem well. Think my issues were tied to the alk and PO4 swings.

Still have some elevated nutrients, NO3 seems to hover between 10-25 ppm and PO4 right around 0.1-0.14. I’ve cut my fish load in half and been more careful with feeding so hoping that combined with water changes will get the nutrients lower.


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My 2 Cents .. SPS are sensitive to swings .. but the statement that they cant be happy in high nutrients i think is a myth .. if you have a high nutrient tank you just need to have enough lights that support it ( with 750Watts of MH you seem to have it ) .. so dont worry about the levels too much and try to keep em stable as much as possible.

High nutrients should go with higher alk and higher lighting to get better colors and happy sps
Low nutrients should go with lower alk and medium light

if you combine lower nutrients and higher alk all you will have are dead sps
if you combine higher nutrients with lower alk you will have no growth .. if you dont have enough light with higher nutrients you have brown turds that slowly wither away
 
tinman said:
My 2 Cents .. SPS are sensitive to swings .. but the statement that they cant be happy in high nutrients i think is a myth .. if you have a high nutrient tank you just need to have enough lights that support it ( with 750Watts of MH you seem to have it ) .. so dont worry about the levels too much and try to keep em stable as much as possible.

High nutrients should go with higher alk and higher lighting to get better colors and happy sps
Low nutrients should go with lower alk and medium light

if you combine lower nutrients and higher alk all you will have are dead sps
if you combine higher nutrients with lower alk you will have no growth .. if you dont have enough light with higher nutrients you have brown turds that slowly wither away
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What’s your thoughts on alk levels. I’m at 8.5 and was going to stay 8.0-8.5. Too low with my nutrient level?


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Chad_Pedersen said:
What’s your thoughts on alk levels. I’m at 8.5 and was going to stay 8.0-8.5. Too low with my nutrient level?


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no its good.. low alk is not your problem IMO .. your problem i think is swings in Nutrients ..
 
Many ppl ( me included) make changes to their systems expecting they are going to run into problems in future and that is what causes the crashes most of the times .. Corals are stronger than we think ..they have been here on earth before we popped in and will be there long after we are gone ( human kind i meant by we) :) so keep it simple dont add unnecessary stuff to the tanks.
 
tinman said:
Many ppl ( me included) make changes to their systems expecting they are going to run into problems in future and that is what causes the crashes most of the times .. Corals are stronger than we think ..they have been here on earth before we popped in and will be there long after we are gone ( human kind i meant by we) :) so keep it simple dont add unnecessary stuff to the tanks.
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Agree with you 100%. It’s exactly how I started this mess lol. My nitrates were likely higher than 25ppm as I wasn’t actively tracking that it PO4 too closely. But everything was stable. I could pick up practically any SPS frag and throw in my tank and it would do fine and I’d see noticeable growth.

Then I started down this path of lowering nutrients and trying to get some of the coloring you see on these tanks and that’s when my issues started.


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Chad_Pedersen said:
Then I started down this path of lowering nutrients and trying to get some of the coloring you see on these tanks and that’s when my issues started.
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there is nothing wrong with wanting to improving colors .. but changes have to be done slowly like over 2 -3 months ..
 
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