Acro tips browning and dieing

[dawgface]

Alright guys and girls I need some advice and recommendations. Lately I've noticed a few of my acros tips starting to brown and die off. I'm sure it is due to Po4 running away from me, currently at .27. Reason I'm questioning this to be the cause is I would have assumed high phosphates to completely kill not burn tips???

Other parameters

Cal 440
Mag 1400
Alkalinity 4
No3 .064 Little high

 

[jesse'sgirl]

whats ur feeding habit like?

sometimes heavy nutrients will do it!

 

[dawgface]

I used to feed crazy but for the last month only pellets and target fed to reduce waste.

 

[jesse'sgirl]

i had some brown out in the past due to heavy feeding, they tend to store the nutrients and brown out,

what pieces are they

 

[dawgface]

Well not just browning, browing and dieing... Most of the tips now have algea growing on them.

 

[jesse'sgirl]

u can get calcium burn, and alk burn, r u getting any spikes at nite

 

[KrisDeitz]

Do you think the Red bugs are causing this?

 

[dawgface]

No, Red Bugs attack the tissue throughout.

 

[ripped tide]

Did you recently add them? What kinda lights are you running? Are they frags or colonies? Are they randomly placed? How is the flow?

 

[dawgface]

All the ones with problems have been in there for over 6 months. Mix of frags and colonies effected, total of 7 pieces out of 45. I'm sure whatever is effecting these will eventually effect the others.

As far as flow, depth and placement it is a mix of high flow and low as well as mid tank to high. I run (2) 400 watt halides over a 30" deep tank.

 

[dawgface]

It's got to be Po4.

I just changed my GFO and switch the other reactor off carbon and added PhosGuard.

 

[ralph atl]

DawgFace;716932 wrote: Alright guys and girls I need some advice and recommendations. Lately I've noticed a few of my acros tips starting to brown and die off. I'm sure it is due to Po4 running away from me, currently at .27. Reason I'm questioning this to be the cause is I would have assumed high phosphates to completely kill not burn tips???

Other parameters

Cal 440
Mag 1400
Alkalinity 4
No3 .064 Little high

bingo! that's the problem!

Edit: change gfo weekly for a while, and insure the top 2-5% of the gfo is percolating in reactor...the whole time!

 

[dawgface]

mysterybox;716982 wrote: bingo! that's the problem!

Edit: change gfo weekly for a while, and insure the top 2-5% of the gfo is percolating in reactor...the whole time!

Plan on changing it every 4 days until its unreadable then setting up my biopellet reactor.

 

[ralph atl]

That will work, but I think u still need gfo after bio pellets..

 

[dawgface]

Agreed, I thought I read however that you must stop using for the first week or so.

 

[mvm]

I think you're actually supposed to keep the gfo online until the bp populates.