unable to keep sps.

[johnnyb]

I dont want anyone to think Im not going to try and do what I you all are suggesting. I was waiting for the company to come out last night and have him do my testing before changing anything but he no call no showed so am moving ahead. I was talking with one of the fish store people I have gotten most of my stuff from for years. I took him my water and he tested and confirmed my chemistry is where it should be. I told him many had suggested changing the alk and he said to wait. He believes with what I feed and my bio load vs chemistry that the alk wouldnt cause the rapid death I am seeing. He believes it is my lights are too bright. He asked me to turn my lights down to 25 percent for a month and see how it goes. I expressed doubt because i was always told they would bleach not die from the lights being to bright. He says the ai hydras are to powerful to have turned up above 40 percent. So he gave me 3 frags of monti cap and asked me to put them all in pretty much the same flow ares but at different heights from the light so one is at the top on is middle and on is sand level. I turned my lights down and will see what happens over the next few weeks. I should have a pretty good idea in the next 4 days or so because I have put 5 or 6 caps in my tank previously and none have survived more than 4 days. if these die i will be lowering alk as so many have suggested in the thread.

 

[dz6t]

Drop your light to 25%?
All my AI hydra are at 100% full blast and all SPS love it.
Are they Hydra 52 or 26 or original Hydra?

 

[johnnyb]

i have 1 52 and 2 26's

 

[dz6t]

Monti cap can tolerate low light and can survive. But that may not answer your question.
You should use acro as a test subject.

 

[dz6t]

Hydra 26 and 52 at 25% barely can keep any coral alive at a 12 inch depth.

 

[frank180reef]

Your not dosing right? How would your alk be stable at ten?

My two cents is that it isn't the lights

 

[nemodan]

This is to show you that sometime simplicity and consistency is what is neede.

Dong can testify that my tank crashed it went from a great tank to a disaster. Without entering in details I will post my thread fir you to read.

After the crash, with the survival acros and other sps I mounted the pictured refugium. Dong sold me that 20 G tank. It has been several months now (4-6, I can't remember but is in my thread) I have the fuge and the dosing pumps keeping ocean alk levels. I touch wood, but today this is my tank 65 G (50 G real)



And this is the fuge 20G


No extra,equipment beside dosing pumps and a controller.

Alk 6.5-7 dkh
Ca 400 ppm
Phos 0 ppm
Nitrate 0 ppm
Mg, no idea.

Reef crystal

~20 G water changes per week.

When I had the crash the Phosp where very high as well as the Nitrates. Every thing I tried to reduce them was making it worst. I almost killed all the tank. Then I decided to slow down, use biology to reduce nutrients and.....wait. there was anything else I can do.

Those are the survival Acros and SPS coloring again and slowly growing.

This is my thread for full details and LOTS of pictures of the disaster, as well as when I got the Tank Of The Month (TOTM) at Reef Sanctuary.

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?members/danreef.70816/

Cheers ..... and you will succeed too! !!!!

 

[johnnyb]

Yes exactly we chose the monti cap because it will give me my fastest answer. The caps have died in 3 days. If I lower my light and place the caps and they die in three days I know the light isn't my issu

as I had said before my alk was at 7.2 2 months ago i slowly dosed my ph to 8.3 and my alk to 10.2 at the stores request after the first frags died under those conditions. Since dosing to get my chemistry where it is I have not had to dose the levels have stayed consistent.

My levels have been consistent there have been no fluctuation so simple consistency isnt all you need. I can give you 10 reefers all having great success with 10 different chemistry make ups and they will all say the others are wrong. I am trying to find out what my system needs to grow the corals I want. Maybe its the lights are too much maybe its the lights are too low. Maybe the alk isnt where it needs to be... I dont know. I am not going to try and adjust 10 things at the same time because maybe 9 of them are perfect and 1 is causing my problems.

 

[nemodan]

Nope...adjust 1 at a time. But do not expect to see in 2 weeks results. It takes longer.

Cheers..... my last posting on this thread. As I said, all the best and i am sure you will succeed! !!!

 

[dz6t]

I had said before my alk was at 7.2 2 months ago i slowly dosed my ph to 8.3 and my alk to 10.2 at the stores request after the first frags died under those conditions. Since dosing to get my chemistry where it is I have not had to dose the levels have stayed consistent.
.

So after you dosed to adjust pH and Alk, the rest of the SPS died?

 

[johnnyb]

I had my soft stuff anemones, hammers, leathers for years. When I wanted to add the hard corals I put in a few acros, a bonzai, a red planet they died in about a week. I went to the fish store and asked them to test my water my water was around 7.8 ph and 7.5 alk....this was coming back from the neglect period after I got rid of my algae and phosphate issues that had occurred during that time. My nitrate was 0 my phosphate was 0 my nitrite and ammonia was negligible. I told him what happened he tested my water and he said raise your ph and your alk to 8.4 and 10.2. I dosed slowly and brought the numbers up to where they currently are. I bought more corals and added them in a matter of days they died. i havent had to dose during that time. i have fed the fish done water changes and added the coral nutrients thats all. everyone has said if the numbers are steady at either range They may die slowly or not grow but not the rapid death I am experiencing. the soft stuff is all fine with no change looking great at both pre dosing levels and post dosing levels. just hard corals die. Oh and last night i noticed 2 hollywood stunners have also begun to die.

 

[johnnyb]

You know what after reading my response I want to apologize. I didnt type it to come off the way it did. after seeing this response and rereading what I wrote it seems as if I may have come off ungrateful or snippy. I am sorry. I think subconsciously my aggravation with this issue and the money I have been losing trying to do something that everyone else makes seem so easy came out in that response. Im not knew to this hobby and have had lots of great tanks this problem is killing me! but i do want to apologize for how that came off I am sorry and I do appreciate your input

 

[reefstarter]

Have you had water tested for copper?

 

[JohnK]

You know what after reading my response I want to apologize. I didnt type it to come off the way it did. after seeing this response and rereading what I wrote it seems as if I may have come off ungrateful or snippy. I am sorry. I think subconsciously my aggravation with this issue and the money I have been losing trying to do something that everyone else makes seem so easy came out in that response. Im not knew to this hobby and have had lots of great tanks this problem is killing me! but i do want to apologize for how that came off I am sorry and I do appreciate your input

I think you'll have to try harder if you want to offend anyone here

It does sound like you may be dealing with some unknown and possibly not easily tested for contaminants. Possibly years worth of accumulated toxins excreted by leathers exct.

 

[johnnyb]

Yes I have a test kit for copper non shows. I used to have quarintine tank and dosed copper so I had the kit to test.i also had a local fish store test for it and am using a poly filter now all show no signs of copper.

 

[johnnyb]

That is possible I do run carbon and have been doing frequent water changes to see if that would help but to no avail.

 

[dz6t]

Are you running a zeolite reactor?

 

[dz6t]

How do you raised pH?

 

[reefstarter]

As for the carbon , how often do you change it ? I would suggest at least every week . if not more to aggressively remove any toxins if any . and since I am thouroghly stumped here an Idea popped in my head that maybe there is a bad strain of bacteria in the system . there are product out there that remove bacteria from your system . I have never used any of these and would/t know if suggesting the use or not is good or bad . and I am also curious how you raised your PH short of using kalkwasser I don't know how safe other products would be which is what I think dong is driving at with his question

 

[frank180reef]

Why raise ph? They say to never chase ph......

Have you had your Alk and calc tested at a second source

Makes no sense that it is that high and doesn't drop