Need help! Corals dying slowly

[bguile]

Has anyone had this problem before? I have a 40 breeder tank where my corals have been dying off slowly for the past month and a half. It has been fallow for a total of two months due to ich. Here are my latest test results:

SG: 1.026
Temp: 80-83 F
ammonia: 0
Nitrates: 5ppm
Calcium: 320ppm
Alkalinity: 11dKh
Phos: 0
Copper: 0
pH range: 7.8 (night) 8.12(day)

I am getting a lot of algae growth and have cleaned PHs several times. Within a week or two I'm cleaning them again b/c they're covered in cyano. I've placed ROWAphos in the sump and am running carbon. All help is appreciated as I'm losing all of my investments and hard work.

[kevinpo]

Hello,
Sorry to hear about your losses
I would recommend lowering your temperature to the 78F-80F range. Also you need to lower your nitrates. This can be done by large water changes, adding macro algae to the tank or preferably a remote location like a refugium. What types of corals are you having trouble with?

Regards,
Kevin

[Reefland]

What types of corals? What do you dose to the tank, if anything? Any medications added to the tank?

[Briney Dave]

Two things strike me right away, first the nitrates. It is common for waste nutrient levels to read low when there are algae blooms. This is because much of it is tied up in those algae but are being released during decay phases and may be the likely guy to blame here.

Water changes of 10-15% weekly until the problems of algae and corals are eliminated. Couple this with as aggresive a skimmer set up as you can manage. You should expect a good amount of skimmate produced daily. Reduce your feedings to absolutely no more than what is eaten in a minute

Second concern are the very large pH swings between day and night. most tanks swing no more than .1-.2 and even then that might be considered too much of a shift. pH is more complex than a bottle of up or down. Check on line for a comprehenisive artcle, but I know your numbers show too big of a shift.

Briney Dave

[bguile]

kevinpo...Also you need to lower your nitrates. This can be done by large water changes, adding macro algae to the tank or preferably a remote location like a refugium. What types of corals are you having trouble with?

Unfortunately, with this setup I dont have much room for a refugium so i setup an RDSB bucket to hopefully compensate and remove the nitrates. I guess it hasn't been running long enough yet. ALL my corals are closing up and withering away including zooanthids, ricordea, xenia, mushrooms. Others I've already lost include branching torch (6 heads), green star polyps, and sun corals. I have 2 fanworms in the tank that don't seem to be affected at all.

Reefland: What types of corals? What do you dose to the tank, if anything? Any medications added to the tank?

The only thing I have dosed is B-ionic to raise the calcium levels. Other than that, during the fallow period I didn't dose anything at all. I dropped a Formula 1 pellet or 2 in the tank to feed my fire shrimp and hermit crabs every few days, but thats about it. No meds. Only Proper pH 8.2 to keep the pH levels from dropping too much.

Briney Dave: Two things strike me right away, first the nitrates.
Water changes of 10-15% weekly
Second concern are the very large pH swings


I will look to do the weekly water changes. What can I do about the pH swings? As mentioned earlier, I dont have the room for a rev daylight refugium. However, last night after noticing my hermit crabs were alive but weren't moving much I placed an airstone in the tank and the pH went up almost immediately to 8.2 and didn't drop below 8.12 all night.

[Briney Dave]

air stones are bad for most everything salt related, (I know that is too broad a statement) but the bubbles harm gills and, if I am not mistaken also harm coral tissues as well

Start with the water changes, that should help to stabilize the pH then because of not seeing your set up and knowing all the parameters it would be better for me to not send an uneducated guess but to send you to a on-line type of article which describes all the factors of pH so you can better judge where your tank fits in and adjust accordingly.

what filtering system are you using? bio-ball media?

[bguile]

air stones are bad for most everything salt related, (I know that is too broad a statement) but the bubbles harm gills and, if I am not mistaken also harm coral tissues as well

Start with the water changes, that should help to stabilize the pH then because of not seeing your set up and knowing all the parameters it would be better for me to not send an uneducated guess but to send you to a on-line type of article which describes all the factors of pH so you can better judge where your tank fits in and adjust accordingly.

what filtering system are you using? bio-ball media?

Wow..thanks for the quick response. My system is simply from an overflow to the sump where there's a protein skimmer, carbon, and ROWAphos, then back to the display. The skimmer (MRC-1) has been temporarily decommissioned as it is plummed to the RDSB bucket which was the last thing I added to the system. So by working backwards to find the solution, the bucket was the first to get removed even though the die off really began before it was plumbed. I'm going to replumb it later this evening.

[dougc]

If the airstone is keeping the pH stable, it sounds like your CO2 levels are too high. I never heard that an airstone is bad in saltwater, just that the bubbles can be unsightly. Getting the skimmer back in operation might help. If that is not enough, you could use a powerhead to increase the surface agitation, either in the tank or in the sump.

[bguile]

Here's my test results from today:
temp: 81.8
pH 8.3
Salinity 1.023
NO3 (ppm) 2.5
NH3 0
Ca (ppm) 290
KH (dKH) 13.1
This is approx 4 hours after the lights have come on. Calcium has dropped back down and alkalinity has actually risen. I haven't added anything to the display since the last test.

Important Note: Yesterday's SG results were based on a refractometer. I obtained today's results from a floating hydrometer. The refractometer has been recalibrated and was found to be +.002 so yesterdays SG reading should have been 1.024.

[kevinpo]

Air stones and air bubbles are generally not harmful in salt water tanks. We used them for years with under gravel filters and stand alone in the eighties (Glad those days are gone though ). You can have a problem with micro bubbles or too many bubbles if they are sticking to the corals and rockwork. They will irritate the corals and cause some of them to produce slime which gets on other corals and irritates them. The biggest problem with using an airstone is salt creep. As the bubbles pop they spray a small amount of salt into the air and over time makes a mess.
A powerhead aimed across the water's surface will do the same thing without the mess.

If you have a bucket that you are putting water through just add some Chaetomorpha and a light and you will have an even better nitrate sink.
NutrientControl

Regards,
Kevin

[bguile]

..If you have a bucket that you are putting water through just add some Chaetomorpha and a light and you will have an even better nitrate sink...

I can't with this type of bucket. Part of it's premise of working is the absence of light giving you the benefits of a DSB without high levels of sand in the display.

[bguile]

I decided to do some make-up water tests this evening since I have to do a water change for my Qtank. Here are my results:
Tap Water
Alk: 4.5dKH
NO3: 5ppm
Post Filter
Alk: 4.2dKH
NO3: 5ppm
Make Up Water
Alk: 15 dKH
NO3: 5ppm
I am using Instant Ocean salt. I'll have to go back and read up on Alkalinity, but is this cause for concern? (the high level after adding salt)

[kevinpo]

I see that Anthony stresses very good water flow for this type of bucket DSB. So that may be something to check if your nitrates don't seem to be lowering.

What test kit are you using for alkalinity? IO usually runs much lower although I haven't tested it lately (I will test some today). Also what was the calcium level? IO usually runs about 350-360ppm which if you bring it up to 400ppm it will drop your alkalinity. I recommend Salifert, Hatch, and LaMotte test kits for reliability and accuracy.

I would also recommend not using tap water but RO/DI or distilled.
It will be hard to lower your nitrates to 0 by water changes if your new water contains 5ppm of nitrates. It is like fertilizing the algae each water change. The tap water here has gone from 5ppm to 10ppm nitrates over the last 10 years or so

Regards,
Kevin

[bguile]

Currently I have my input and output from the bucket using 1.25" inch PVC. I've been considering changing it to maybe 2" output just so the water moves through a bit faster and doesn't sit so high on top of the sand. I began reading your nitrates link and it alarmed me when it mentioned silicates as an aggregate of algae. I filled the bucket with Yardright sand, but I did notice that the labeling looked a little different from when I setup my 90G and I can't recall seeing the "from the carribbean" stamp. I thought I read somewhere that they aren't putting it on the labels anymore but it's still the same thing. I'll have to check that, but could I have added a silicate sand and made it worse?

[zhenya]

I'll have to check that, but could I have added a silicate sand and made it worse?

You can easily run a test using vinegar to determine if it was aragonite or silica sand. It will fizz if it is aragonite and won;t do anything if it is indeed a silica sand. Just take a little sample of dry sand and drop few drops of vinegar, it should be the easiest thing without doing all the research. ;)

HTH.

[bguile]

You can easily run a test using vinegar to determine if it was aragonite or silicate sand. It will fizz if it is aragonite and won;t do anything if it is indeed a silicate sand. Just take a little sample of dry sand and drop few drops of vinegar, it should be the easiest thing without doing all the research. ;)

HTH.

Thanks. I'll give that a try. If it does prove to be silicate, could that have helped cause problems? Is that something I should test for?

[bguile]

What test kit are you using for alkalinity?

I use Salifert test kits for Ca, KH, and NO3.

[zhenya]

Thanks. I'll give that a try. If it does prove to be silicate, could that have helped cause problems? Is that something I should test for?

It's hard to say if it was or wasn't the cause for the problems you had.
Some people used it without incident and I think Dr.Shimek said it is OK to use. I personally wouldn't use it, though.

Here's an exellent post by Ninong explaining the risk of silica sand...
DSB and Algae bloom

[bguile]

I thought I'd update this thread since I think I may have found the cause of my mysterious depletion. When I moved, I had come to my apt 2 days before my move date to prepare SW for the tank move. However, I was unable to connect my filter right away due to "modification" restrictions at the complex. So I made my SW using tap water. The next day, I went to Home Depot to find an adapter that I could connect from the sink faucet through my filter. The "solution" given to me at the time was a rubber "universal" adapter that had a brass connector on the opposite end for a hose. At the time i didn't think it would do any harm since I was just passing water through it and not SW. I used it only to do the fill to get the tap water out and threw it in a box with all my other collected devices and parts.

I was looking in the box the other day for some pvc connectors and happened to see it. It hit me instantly, when I saw it. That was quite a costly mistake. I was going to post a pic of it...but I can't find it now. I think I took it out to make sure I posted a pic, but must've hidden it from myself.