Bpb Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Help!!! I've got a tank change coming up. This stuff is supposed to happen AFTER a tank change. I'm getting STN/RTN all over the bases of many sps. Affected colonies are my big purple monti cap, tricolor valida acro, lime in he sky acro, northern lights nasuta. You can see white spots and death spreading from all those encrusted bases. Tests as of yesterday Salinity 1.026 Temp: 80 Ph: 7.7-8.2 Alk: 8.4 Calcium: 420 ppm Magnesium: 1250 Phosphate: 0.00 Hanna Nitrate: 0 API. 2 year old tank. I run a skimmer, biopellets, gfo, and carbon with t5 ATI bulbs and lots of flow. Haven't added anything new in months. I know my nutrients are too low. I feed a ton. Still have a bit of algae. Mostly bubble and bryopsis. It's not plague levels though. I've also been doing small daily water swaps with my new saltwater I'm using for the new tank. Display parameters haven't moved an inch in the process though. Seriously considering yanking my biopellets for now. What should I do?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Reefer Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Could be pathogenic bacteria = do big water changes bugs = dip some coral and see Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 Get that magnesium up higher, might help stem the tide a bit. The 0.00 phosphate is problematic as well. I dont know that I would take the BPs offline totally, maybe just turn down the tumble? Also probably not a bad idea to retest today to see if maybe any of your tests where out of whack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 4, 2014 Author Share Posted June 4, 2014 I will definitely test again in the morning. Only reason why don't have test from today is because I never test at this hour. I know whatever alkalinity reading I get now won't be consistent with what I typically get that my 8 AM test time. I have been reading 8.4 DKH for the past several months every single time I test. I know the test is good too because I get the other readings on other water. I just have my two-part dialed in that way. Magnesium will definitely come up. I am not so sure if large water changes would be good, because I've actually been doing more frequent water changes trying to equalize my new water with the old water for the tank change. I wonder if that might have something to do with it. I will also specify, that it has been nearly 3 months since I last changed out my GFO, so this stuff that is in the tank is very old. Yet my phosphate remains at zero. I don't know if I should remove this media entirely and just not run it for a while or what. I don't like the idea of changing several things at once because then I don't know what the culprit will be, but I think I will start with reducing the tumble of the bio pellets, and hold off on water changes for a few days. I am also going to go chop shop on a lot of these acro colonies in an effort to save them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juiceman Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 What has your ALK been running prior to this test? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 4, 2014 Author Share Posted June 4, 2014 8.4. Hasn't wavered from that in several months. Took me a bit of time to dial in the 2 part on the apex. But jn the process it never swung more than 1 degree. That's was months ago though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juiceman Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 then if you truly have 0 phosphates, that could be your issue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 4, 2014 Author Share Posted June 4, 2014 Would raising the phosphate somehow widen my margin of error on parameter adjustments? I agree it's troublesome. The Hanna checker has a +\-0.04 ppm accuracy, so it's feasable it could be 0.04 ppm, but all I can go odd of are the numbers I've given. I think I'll dump the gfo canister tomorrow morning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 How much are you using ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 4, 2014 Author Share Posted June 4, 2014 13 tablespoons for 55 gallons Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bogdan Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 I have done it before trying to fight the algae. GFO + Biopelets + Skimmer = starved SPSes reacted with R/STN. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 4, 2014 Author Share Posted June 4, 2014 Bogdan what steps did you take to correct it? I'm moderately concerned that what algae I do have may explode if i cut back on nutrient export too much Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bogdan Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 In my case the biopelets reactor became too efficient if I my say that. I stopped the GFO completely and reduced the biopelets volume. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 The biopellets realistically only remove NO3. I would cut back on GFO and leave the pellets as is. I could be wrong but I've never heard of zero NO3 ever causing a problem unless you're trying to grow algae. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 4, 2014 Author Share Posted June 4, 2014 I mean I do have some algae. Bubble, bryopsis, and some red turf. But that garbage can all grow in sterile water I'm convinced and doesn't require high nutrients to flourish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 Definitely get that mg way up, especially to fight bryopsis. If its not alk or temp or salinity, its gotta be nutrients, chemical warfare, or disease. Maybe a good time to add some carbon to remove the chemical warfare option, not much you can do about disease, and nutrients you can mitigate by reduction in BPs and temporary cessation of GFO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 5, 2014 Author Share Posted June 5, 2014 Thanks guys. All ideas that ran across my mind. Needed confirmation. Pulled gfo for now. I don't intend to cut my feeding a whole lot since the bp will continue running. When I upgrade tanks I won't be doubling my pellets along with my doubled water volume. Magnesium will come way up once I'm certain the new water matches the old water alk. Oddly enough the bryopsis really favors artificial surfaces. It clings to my heater, temp probe, overflow box, powerheads, powerhead cables, and return nozzle. Completely stays away from rock and corals. 100% on plastic surfaces only. Strange. The mandarin and leopard wrass love it since it's always loaded with pods. They both sit and pick at it all day. Thanks again I'll keep the thread posted on my observations. Just replaced my rox carbon last week. I'll stay up on that since I have leathers and sps growing in close proximity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sascha D. Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 The draw of Bio Pellets is to harbor denitrifying bacteria to export NO3, however the increased bacteria also recycle organics. It may be too efficient when coupled with GFO in some tanks, which will reduce the phosphates to zero. If you have algae, then you have phosphates. If you didn't have phosphates then the algae would starve, which is one of the plus's to ferric oxide. So if you have phosphates and you take the reactor offline, then it may cause a spike and result in more problems. Can you dial down the flow through the reactors to test whether it gets better or not? I guess it's hard to say because if the media is old then it may not be efficient anyway. Why are you feeding so much? Fish or corals benefit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 5, 2014 Author Share Posted June 5, 2014 Both. Flow through the gfo reactor wasn't exactly fast. Media tumbled on the top layer as it should an the effluent was probably a lid a half pinky sized stream. Probably 15-20 gph if I had to guess *edit: also, contrary to a lot of people in the hobby, I'm not concerned with a little algae. It's natural and largely unavoidable in some sense. It makes up a massive part of the food chain in the natural reef so I don't make it my number one goal to fight algae. I try to focus instead on making corals happy, rather than making algae unhappy. Do I wish I had no bubble algae? Sure, is it worth scrapping my stock entirely over? No. Anyhow. I greatly reduced the flow through my biopellet reactor. It was wide open on flow and I turned the ball valve down to about half to where it actually tumbles similar to the same rate the gfo did. Rather than a violent churn. My sps colors are *ok but not great. A lot of sps frags I've sold to people either die because the new owners were Ill equipped to care for them, or they end up looking tenfold better than they did in my tank, and it's with people running far simpler setups than me. Just figured I may be over doing it on something. Pale colors I could deal with to a point. Bit RTN/STN I have to address or risk losing them all. I've been feeding about three big pinches of NLS Thera+ pellets daily a couple few times, plus brs reef chili 3-4 days a week target fed to sps, plus elos amino acid and carbohydrates 3-4 days a week, PLUS a cube of mysis/reef frenzy/rods food/pellets/amino acid mix I blended up and froze in a big block (3-4 days a week). Fairly heavy feeding regiment. But my sps colors have the pale pastel look which would indicate they're fairly hungry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FarmerTy Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 Hey Bpb, Sorry I haven't gotten to get on here until now. Been a very busy day! Sorry for the trouble you are having with the upgrade. If I may add some insight and observation from my own experience in upgrading with a sensitive SPS population, and also the more recent experiment of adding phosphate to my phosphate-limited system to help drive down excess nitrates, hopefully some of it may help with your situation. 1) I'm sure your SPS may have looked more pastel/pale if you are truly reading a PO4 of 0. I forget if you have the phosporus meter or the phosphate meter. I would highly recommend getting a 2nd opinion the next time you get into town to confirm your readings. Judging by your observation of the pastel colors, I would probably guess that it was truly reading correctly. 2) I would leave the biopellets as they are, as long as you haven't changed them or added more in the recent couple of weeks. If you have added more, than possibly reducing it back to the level you had before would be a good idea. But I wouldn't recommend taking them offline, as I went down the same path trying to chase the reason for my SPS STN'ing and took my biopellets completely offline, which only added to the downfall of a lot of my SPS when my nitrates shot sky high! It sounds like we both feed our tanks a lot and taking the biopellets offline will have your nitrates shooting up in no time! 3) I would take your GFO offline and monitor your PO4 levels to see if you eventually see the concentrations increasing. I would at least test once every other day, maybe even once a day. 4) The fresh bag of carbon is a good idea. An interesting theory, but perhaps you didn't rinse the carbon well enough and carbon dust got all over everything when you replaced it a couple of weeks ago? 5) I would stop the new water transfusions. Something is not adding up correctly and as I understand, the only thing you are doing different are these water transfusions. My best guess is some parameter in your new water is not truly what it seems. Either some reading is off and you are adding a lot higher/lower salinity or a lot higher/lower alk. 6) My 2nd guess is to check your RO/DI system. Make sure your prefilters aren't old, that your RO membrane is not past its prime, and the TDS is reading 0 on your effluent from the DI. I would also question if the DI is exhausted and maybe needs to be replaced. Prefilters are recommended to be changed at least every 6-12 months and your RO membrane every 3-5 years. DI depends on the city water but I replace mine about 1/year. I don't do water changes though so it may last longer since I'm only making topoff water. 7) Last guess, but you did just build out your canopy to hold your MHs. I would check the graphs for temperature and possibly pH and see if anything looks funny? Maybe the new canopy is causing things to overheat a bit in the system? I would imagine you have checks/balances programmed into your Apex to warn you but just in case? Also, maybe some VOCs from the paint/lacquer you used to seal the stand/canopy? Hope some of the ideas help bud. Again, I would just discontinue the water transfusions for now and kill the GFO and leave everything else alone. Then double-check your salinity (refractometer... maybe have someone else like Manny or Dustin double check for you) and look into your RO/DI system. I had a similar experience when I was doing my transfusions of new/old tank water and looking back now, hindsight is 20/20, but all I was doing was adding 1.032 salinity water to my 1.026 system and causing all my SPS to already get ticked, even prior to the move. Then I threw them in a brand new cycled tank with a salinity of 1.032... then corrected the problem but took my biopellets offline chasing the problem, and double-whammied them with super high nitrates (>50ppm), then decided to run an experiment with adding PO4 to my system and actually lowering my NO3, but it lowered it so quickly that my PO4 went from 0.1 ppm to 0.03 ppm and my NO3 went from >50ppm to <5ppm in two days! Let's just say it's rebuilding time with my SPS. I'd hate for the same thing to happen to you so hopefully my experiences with the upgrade can give you some insight and possible avenues to go down for a resolution. Sorry if I droned on and on but this is what you get from me at this hour of the night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sascha D. Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 Both. Flow through the gfo reactor wasn't exactly fast. Media tumbled on the top layer as it should an the effluent was probably a lid a half pinky sized stream. Probably 15-20 gph if I had to guess *edit: also, contrary to a lot of people in the hobby, I'm not concerned with a little algae. It's natural and largely unavoidable in some sense. It makes up a massive part of the food chain in the natural reef so I don't make it my number one goal to fight algae. I try to focus instead on making corals happy, rather than making algae unhappy. Do I wish I had no bubble algae? Sure, is it worth scrapping my stock entirely over? No. Anyhow. I greatly reduced the flow through my biopellet reactor. It was wide open on flow and I turned the ball valve down to about half to where it actually tumbles similar to the same rate the gfo did. Rather than a violent churn. My sps colors are *ok but not great. A lot of sps frags I've sold to people either die because the new owners were Ill equipped to care for them, or they end up looking tenfold better than they did in my tank, and it's with people running far simpler setups than me. Just figured I may be over doing it on something. Pale colors I could deal with to a point. Bit RTN/STN I have to address or risk losing them all. I've been feeding about three big pinches of NLS Thera+ pellets daily a couple few times, plus brs reef chili 3-4 days a week target fed to sps, plus elos amino acid and carbohydrates 3-4 days a week, PLUS a cube of mysis/reef frenzy/rods food/pellets/amino acid mix I blended up and froze in a big block (3-4 days a week). Fairly heavy feeding regiment. But my sps colors have the pale pastel look which would indicate they're fairly hungry. That was not my intention. It is true that I do not run GFO or BP and I am unlikely to start, but that does not mean I meant to turn it into a battle algae discussion. I hope your corals get better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 5, 2014 Author Share Posted June 5, 2014 Both. Flow through the gfo reactor wasn't exactly fast. Media tumbled on the top layer as it should an the effluent was probably a lid a half pinky sized stream. Probably 15-20 gph if I had to guess *edit: also, contrary to a lot of people in the hobby, I'm not concerned with a little algae. It's natural and largely unavoidable in some sense. It makes up a massive part of the food chain in the natural reef so I don't make it my number one goal to fight algae. I try to focus instead on making corals happy, rather than making algae unhappy. Do I wish I had no bubble algae? Sure, is it worth scrapping my stock entirely over? No. Anyhow. I greatly reduced the flow through my biopellet reactor. It was wide open on flow and I turned the ball valve down to about half to where it actually tumbles similar to the same rate the gfo did. Rather than a violent churn. My sps colors are *ok but not great. A lot of sps frags I've sold to people either die because the new owners were Ill equipped to care for them, or they end up looking tenfold better than they did in my tank, and it's with people running far simpler setups than me. Just figured I may be over doing it on something. Pale colors I could deal with to a point. Bit RTN/STN I have to address or risk losing them all. I've been feeding about three big pinches of NLS Thera+ pellets daily a couple few times, plus brs reef chili 3-4 days a week target fed to sps, plus elos amino acid and carbohydrates 3-4 days a week, PLUS a cube of mysis/reef frenzy/rods food/pellets/amino acid mix I blended up and froze in a big block (3-4 days a week). Fairly heavy feeding regiment. But my sps colors have the pale pastel look which would indicate they're fairly hungry. That was not my intention. It is true that I do not run GFO or BP and I am unlikely to start, but that does not mean I meant to turn it into a battle algae discussion. I hope your corals get better.Oh by no means did I take it that way. We are totally good and I'm happy to receive advice. My algae comment was more of an FYI on my reef keeping values, than a disagreement per se. Sometimes I just word stuff wrong. Ty, excellent advice. Gonna take me a minute to reply there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juiceman Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 I just make sure to feed the crap out of the tank when I feed my fish frozen. Don't have any trouble with starving coral. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bpb Posted June 5, 2014 Author Share Posted June 5, 2014 Ty, in the interest of simplicity I'll reply to each number 1). I've been borrowing mannys Hanna phosphate checker. I agree on the pale sps, but sascha also has a point on the algae. Inconclusive I guess is the best I can say, but the test numbers are really the only thing I have to go off of. I'll run a round of gfo again when I change tanks. Just in case there is a lot of sponge die off and such. I'll be changing my aquascape and adding about 60 pounds of rock. 2). I left the biopellets as is. I'll continue running them as is. Tbh I can't remember exactly how much is in there. Whatever the recommendation was, Something around 2 cups or so. I haven't added more since reaching full concentration about 6 months ago. 3). Gfo offline as of yesterday. I returned mannys phosphate checker to him. I should get one at some point. Would you recommend a higher resolution one? 4). I'll replace my carbon again next week. Replaced it last week. I had reduced my carbon changes to once a month or more for a while. Perhaps that lead to some buildup of chemical warfare from the leathers. Fair possibility of carbon fines, but I think I'm pretty meticulous about rinsing it. I soak the rox carbon in RODI for 24 hrs prior to use every time and I still rinse it thoroughly 5-10 times. While it's a possibility, that's not my big suspicion currently. 5). Water transfusion stopped now. I'm worried though. After dosing about 500-700 mL of calcium chloride in each container and waiting 24 hrs, alk didn't budge. Not worried about the higher calcium because that's fairly benign, but it surprises the heck out of me that it didn't make the alk budge at all. Salinity in each container is 1.025. Calibrated the refractometer with 35 ppt solution this morning. Checks out. I do to know how to get that alk down any further. My only idea now is to raise the display tank to 9 dKH, but with biopellets I'm hesitant to bring it up that high, especially with sps already suddenly stressed. 6). RODI sediment and carbon blocks have been replaced like clockwork every 6 months and I use 0.5 micron rating on each. Never missed a change by more than a day. I only make about 15 gallons a week or so. Calibrated my tds meter with 342 ppm tds calibration fluid today as well and it checks out. My RODI product water is 0 tds as of today. I haven't replaced my membrane or di resin in 2 years because with the 0 tds reading I don't see what the benefit of replacing would be. Am I off the mark there? 7). Metal halides haven't actually gone up yet. And am not seeing any ph spikes or temp spikes or dips. In conclusion. Tested again this morning. Here is what I got. A little surprising on the display Salinity 1.026 Alk: 7.6 dKH... Checked twice. Odd Calcium: 380 ppm....also odd Mg: 1260. I knew that. Dosing more today 30 gal brute: 9.2 dKH. @ 1.025 45 gal brute: 8.8 dKH @. 1.025 Going to bring a water sample to manny today as well as some frags to babysit for me. Hopefully his tests check out the same as mine. I'll also be in Austin on Saturday. Would love to bring a water sample and see if someone who is an avid tester wouldn't mind running a battery of their own tests? It's a tall order I know but I gotta ask. What can I do to match my display and new water alk. They're about 1.5 dKH apart. Ideas? Seems like bringing the old tank up is the only way but how will everything react to that high of alk with my carbon dosing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 So you went from 8.4 to 7.6 in the span of a day? perhaps in concert with zero readable pO4 could be the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.