Question for the pros!

Vapour1ze

Vapour1ze

New member
Hi all, so my tank is now about 6 months old. I have a lot of SPS, LPS, zoos, etc. Colors look good. Growth is good. I have 10 fish. All is going good. I notice some sps with some faded color. I rarely feed corals. Maybe 5 times out of the 6 months I have used coral frenzy. But not often at all. <br />
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Now, today I did my daily testing but tested for nitrates, first time in a long time. I show 0 on Salifert kit. I tested for Phosphate with a hanna. Shows 0.00 strange? Not sure. I run a biopellet reactor, carbon, and a huge chunk of chaeto algae in sump. About 170 gallons total volume. 40 frag tank, 40 sump, 93 display. <br />
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I am happy with colors and growth etc. I have no algae, and I don't even have coralline. Fish are healthy. Polyp extension is nice. But colors are a bit faded and I just had two sps die on me for no reason. Just slowly started disintegrating. <br />
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I'm thinking this all is led from undetectable nitrates and phosphates. Should I start feeding corals regularly? Should I start Dosing something? I'm already Dosing alk and CA. Looking for a bit of an idea. <br />
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Levels. <br />
Salinity 1.026<br />
Alk 9.2<br />
Ca 430<br />
Nitrate nitrite ammonia 0<br />
Mag 1340<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks <br />
LUKE<br/>
 
Most likely the bp stripping water to clean most peiple crashed there tanks with bp . Theres a fine line between perfect and death with em
 
Also its not super high but alk is usually needed to be no higher then 8 if the tank is low nutrients
 
Thanks. So you think I should discontinue the biopellets? Hmmm idk my success so far is pretty good. I'll wait before I discontinue the use of biopellets.
 
Vapour1ze said:
Thanks. So you think I should discontinue the biopellets? Hmmm idk my success so far is pretty good. I'll wait before I discontinue the use of biopellets.
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Not saying anything really just pointing out things i think is worth looking into faded corals can be caused by the issues i pointed out imo with bio pellets the only reason u havent burned all the coral is because if haveing the ten fish can almost guarentee if u remive half of them the tank would run to clean to keep sps like i said fine line between perfect and to much with bp u can try overfeeding and get phospahtes up a little see if colors get better
 
I'll do that. I feed heavy already. Strange. But since I've. Added a few fish recently. Colors have gotten better. Wow. Lol
 
Vapour1ze said:
Red sea coral pro salt mixes at 10. I maintain 9.
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I hear ya like i said if your tank is running to clean and alk is over 8 ive heard it can fade or even burn the corals i run mine at 9 /10 but in no way running a ulns tank maybe some one else will chime in with dif idea
 
are you testing your Alk and Ca daily? are your levels consistent or do they fluctuate 1dkh or more?
 
thats good.......
have you changed anything lately?....ie: salt brand, lighting (intensity or bulbs) or added something new to your routine?
 
No its always been a bit of a battle. I've increased intensity on lights and it looks a bit better. I changed to red sea coral pro from reef crystals. And noticed much better results as well. It's getting better daily.
 
I find that unless you make changes gradually, you can negatively affect your corals and it sometimes takes a while to see the affects...if you changed salts without slowly transitioning from the old to the new or increasing the intensity of your LEDs to quickly, you will not see the affects right away but rather over days or weeks......just my experiences over my many years....
 
This sound like my situation. I bought some fish and they weren't eating. So I kept feeding about 3x a day and most of the food didn't get eaten and just get stuck in the rocks. Anyways, this went on for a couple weeks until the fish have gotten used to my tank. During this few weeks, most of my sps that was fading, were coloring up nicely. I tested my nitrate and it was at 10. Phosphate was at .03. Now that my fishy are healthy or eating normally, I cut back to feeding once a day. However, sps is returning back to the pale/ fading state and both my no3 and phos are 0.
Currently trying to put on some numbers with no3 and phos back in the tank.
I only have 2 clown and a bunch of sps in a 20g. So any nutrients will be consume quickly by corals.
 
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